Chris likes to “Sunday Funday”, an opportunity to throw in a review of an older item.  In that spirit, I’m calling this one Saturday Shmaturday.  Also, like the recent SAGA TIE Fighter review, this is a two-fer.  Not only is this gallery posted (with a review), but we’re also adding a link to the earlier figure on which this one is based, as a “stealth” update to our galleries, which is linked below.

OK, so here’s a rather dull R2-D2 figure overall, but does have a couple of notable aspects.

In 1999/2000, Hasbro tried to keep the Original Trilogy on the minds of consumers in the midst of TPM madness, and released a handful of OT commtech figures.  At the time, they were quite good, upping the ante on sculpting and realism as compared to earlier releases.  One of my favorites was the R2-D2 with the little holographic Leia.  I loved that figure.  I thought the accessory was super cool, but I definitely enjoyed the R2 itself, and saw it as a nice improvement over existing versions.  It had great scaling, weathering, and features. And it had the first instance of his Jawa-installed restraining bolt.

For some reason, just a year or so later in POTJ, Hasbro moved on from that sculpt and introduced an all new [Prepare for stealth link:] R2-D2 (Escape from Naboo).  That figure was decent looking, but lacked almost all the personality inherent in the Commtech version.  It was strangely decorated, with some weak-looking carbon blotches which weren’t accurate to the grimy “battle damage” that R2 sustained while repairing the Naboo Royal Starship’s Hyperdrive. 

Fast forward to 2004.  In the waning days of Saga, Hasbro repacked 12 “favorites” from across the films, in a sub line called “Hall of Fame.”  The figures were unnumbered, and generally not all that exciting.  11 of the 12 were straight repacks (sometimes with accessories that varied from the original releases). 

This R2 was the only one of the 12 HOF figures that was changed.  This time, the lame battle damage was removed, giving R2 a clean look.  That’s fine and dandy, however, the figure is attributed to the “Tatooine Mission”, and the image on the bubble insert shows R2 in the Jundland Wastes looking all filthy.  So the clean version makes no sense.  In fact, the weathering in the Tatooine image is pretty similar to how he looked after saving the Naboo Royal Starship.  In both cases, the figure’s deco is wrong, and they should have just gone with a grimy look that could have worked for both releases.

The other thing worth noting about this repaint is that the original sculpt has wheels on the feet for the first time.  So regardless of the deco not matching the scene depicted on the card, it was still a neat milestone in astromech evolution.  If you wanted a clean R2-D2 with wheels, this was the figure to get.

Bottom line, this has been surpassed, and can be safely ignored.  But it does stand out as the only figure in the Saga HOF sub-line that was different from its original release.