Figures That Make Me Happy:  FA-4

FA-4

FA-4

My most figure-intensive shelf is my Attack of the Clones display. I love all the Jedi figures that we have. In an absolute stroke of genius, I put that shelf at exactly dog tail height. I'm having to constantly stand figures back up. The other day, Mr. Wrecker unleashed a tail thrashing that was the equivalent of the apocalypse for my little Episode II world. No one, from Anakin to Zam Wessel, was spared. I don't really mind when this particular display gets spilled because it gives me a chance to reminisce about all the weird, niche characters we have from that source, which brings me to the subject of this article: FA-4.

One of the goals for this site is to record the history of this hobby we all love. I'm always worried, to the point of paranoia, that things will slip through the cracks of our collective memory. That's the reason that I was nagging Mr. Nomadscout to update the "Shadows of the Dark Side" Republic Commando multipack. I felt that a lot of fans had either forgotten that set existed, or never knew about it in the first place. I kept seeing the inferior ankle-less set from the Saga Collection sell for big bucks on Ebay. I'm a little bit worried about the same for Dooku's pilot droid.

In 2013, Hasbro, probably in concert with their retail partners, decided that the first iteration of the Vintage Collection needed to rest. They forgot the first rule of business: once you strike oil, you stop drilling. Thankfully, TVC 2.0 is having the longest line look run in history to include the vintage Kenner era. This may be a byproduct of the deemphasis on brick and mortar, who usually lead the "refresh" charge. Anyway, the pivot from TVC 1.0 was supposed to lead to TLC 2.0. The intent was for the Legacy Collection to return - complete with the Build-A-Droid parts. Then some sort of cataclysm happened, and the pivot pivoted to the worst line look in the history of 3.75" Star Wars toys: The Black Series Phase I. But one wave's worth of that would-be TLC 2.0 look was siphoned off into an Amazon exclusive. It's something I still find bizarre.

If you're a long timer, you already know all of this. If you joined the hobby after 2013, you might not be aware of this "blink and you miss it" moment in the line's history. That Amazon wave was only sold as a complete set. You couldn't order individual figure directly through Amazon. Most of the figures can be forgotten today. They were mostly repacks of existing figures, though the TIE Fighter Pilot does come with a unique accessory: a replica of the Kenner TFP blaster. One of the few pockets of newness in that wave was FA-4. It was originally intended to be a Build-A-Droid in the canceled TLC 2.0 main line. For the Amazon exclusive it got a single carded release.

I love that this figure exists, but the figure itself isn't particularly amazing. Honestly that's been the case for a couple of these Figures that Make Me Happy entries. It's a small figure, and isn't a paragon of articulation. That's in part due to its design. As a treaded droid, even the lower body articulation it does have doesn't make a ton of sense. The arms are as spindly as needles, but they have elbows. It does the job, but it's not a milestone in action figure technology. But that's hardly the point. The value comes merely from the fact that Dooku's barely on screen pilot droid was immortalized in plastic. We will never see another FA-4 figure.

There isn't a huge supply of this figure on Ebay. If you'd like to check, CLICK HERE (sponsored).

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