Editor’s Note:  This review has been updated with our second look at TVC…

Original Review:  Chris - 1/27/11 06:53 PM

No review given at time of release.

Updated Review: Bret-

Here’s some neat background on good ol’ R5-D4.  The droid was actually seen in Attack of the Clones, passing in front of Anakin and Padme’s rickshaw (and R2’s-D2 trailing behind it) when they were looking for Watto on Tatooine.  Strangely, other than R5-D4 being mentioned as sourced from AOTC, there is no information on what the droid was up to 22 years before he was almost sold to Owen Lars..

Many of you may be familiar with the old, never-canon story, Skippy the Jedi Droid.  R5 was depicted as being Force-sensitive, and after sensing Luke Skywalker’s destiny, sacrificed himself so that Luke could join with R2-D2 and fulfill that destiny.  Well, thanks to “The Red One”, the short story from the book From a Certain Point of View, R5-D4 now has a similar, but less ridiculous, canon backstory.  You can read the review HERE, but basically R2-D2 explains his vital mission to R5-D4 on board the sandcrawler. R5, who was previously an Alliance operative but had his memory wiped, decides to sacrifice himself so that R2 could be purchased instead.  R5 later survives the stormtrooper attack on the sandcrawler, and eventually manages to find his way back into the service of the Rebellion.

There’s a big problem when this figure was released in the Vintage Collection:  It’s not the best R5-D4 out there.  In fact the same could be said for the 212th Clone Trooper we just reviewed yesterday.  That’s a big no-no when it comes to TVC.  TVC should be the channel through which Hasbro releases the very best available figure of a particular character.  There’s no reason to take a step backwards.  In this case, R5-D4 was reissued in TVC using the Build-A-Droid sculpt.  On its own, that’s not a bad thing.  But back in 2006, 5 years before this figure was released, there was a superior R5-D4 in The Saga Collection.  That figure had a terrific basic mold, but also had two key aspects that were left off the TVC version.  First, and perhaps most importantly, the TSC mold included the “bad motivator” in the top of the dome - a gizmo that extended and retracted when you turned the droid’s head.  That’s a big miss here.  Also, the TSC figure was painted with a better dirt wash.  Again, the TVC dirt wash is not bad, but it’s not as good as the TSC paint application.

Being the BAD mold means there is one additional detractor for this TVC figure:  it has those extra holes on either side of the barrel body, towards the bottom.  Interestingly, this was FINALLY rectified recently with the TLJ (5POA basic line) R2-D2.  Such a fix to the mold back in 2011 would have made this release more palatable.  On the positive side, there is one paint detail that was corrected/added here:  The blue horizontal stripe just below the dome, and above the red chest panels.  It’s one minor detail where this figure beats out its TSC predecessor. 

One final note.  Neither version of R5-D4 has the rear panels painted red as seen in A New Hope HERE.  However, for his appearance in Attack of the Clones, you can see HERE that the rear panels appear unpainted.  Most likely by coincidence, this figure is more accurately representative of its appearance in AOTC.  That would make this figure pretty definitive for Episode II, while if the TSC version was re-issued with the rear panels painted red (and the blue stripe on the chest added), the included bad motivator feature would make it the definitive Episode IV version.

Since this figure was not rated at the time of release, I’m going to give it a disappointing 5 now, because Hasbro went backwards for this TVC figure.

There is a low to moderate demand for this figure on the secondary market.  If the card art were changed to AOTC, this would be a definitive version of the droid as it appeared in that film.  However, it’s frustrating that Hasbro not only didn’t add the red rear panels for TVC, but opted to go with the inferior mold.  If Hasbro were to ever look to throw R5-D4 back into the mix, they should go with the TSC version, and paint the rear panels.  That would be definitive.