#r4 unit

[falldownthemountain]

My last droid from this set of customs is R4-G9 from Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Not 100% screen accurate but still a cool little droid imho.

[droidspotting]

DAY 5: GROOVY 70’S R4 UNIT

Episode II: Attack of the Clones

If you look at the bonus materials for Attack of the Clones in various visual encyclopedias, DVDs, and official online sources, you'll find there are several Astromech droids built for the scenes on Coruscant. Hasbro's already made three of these droids, in fact. Thing is... virtually none of them actually show up in the film itself. After scouring the street-level sequences, the best I could find is a pair in a single shot in the background as the Jedi pull the now one-handed Zam Wessel out of the club. One rolling way in the background looks to be the yellow R3-T7, which already has a (lousy) figure, and a headless Astro-corpse that looks to be the same body as R2-R9, the red-bodied droid from Amidala's starship. That one also has a figure, and is in fact getting a new one using the “Droid Factory” body, so making the headless corpse will be easy!

But this awesome-looking fellow? Nowhere. It shows up in a tiny, blurry production shot outside of Dexter's Diner, and the nice images shown here come from the official Star Wars store on Zazzle. This droid is labeled “R4-A22”... but there's already an R4-A22 figure, and it's based on a different not-seen-in-the-film droid that pops up in production materials. This one has no official name, though somewhere “R4-T8” started making the rounds. Personally, don't care what they name it, so long as they make it. I love this pointlessly complex, random deco. It's so Seventies.

Figure? “Build-A-Droid” R4 mold, almost out of necessity, not merely my preference. The only other mold used to make R4 droids is severely outdated, with chunky detailing, and it has some severe proportion problems to boot. The main body is way too long, which makes the tripod mode look particularly awkward. Hasbro’s pretty much nailed the Astromech body with the Vintage and Build-A-Droid bodies, and since the dome is ready to go from past BAD R4s, use it! Of course, just how to release it is tricky. Given it doesn't even show up in the movie, a solo release is questionable, and Dexter's Diner isn't exactly “Battle Pack” material. And we're probably never getting another random Astromech multi-pack again, Pity the pack-in BAD program ended.