Star Wars Figure of the Day: Day 3,086: BB Droid (Silver, Advent Calendar 2022)

BB DROID Droid Cosplay
Star Wars Droid Factory
Item No.: ???
Manufacturer: Disney
Number: n/a
Includes: Silver BB droid, Nutcracker R5 droid, Gold R4 droid, Giftwrapped Power Droid with bow, Elf R6 Droid with hat, C1 droid
Action Feature: Comes apart
Retail: $69.99
Availability: August 2022
Appearances: n/a
Bio: All different types of astromech droid populate the Star Wars galaxy. Each droid is different and has their own unique personality and colors. Open up the Sandcrawler to reveal and build 6 new droids to celebrate along with them for 25 days this season. May the Force be with you... and your droids!" This droid is optimized to function in the sparsely settled, unspoiled frontier world of Vandor. Join R6-SNO on their adventures throughout the galaxy! (Taken from the packaging. Yes, the one quotation mark and reference to R6-SNO, who is not included, was on the box in three languages.)

Image: Adam's photo lab.

Availability: Click here to buy it at eBay now!

Commentary: It was Thanksgiving last week, but it's not December yet, so let's look at the Advent Calendar BB Droid. While some of you say that the gold R4 droid is a bell, I don't buy it - but I could buy this one being a bell, or maybe a snowflake, or just a riff on a traditional ball ornament. Or not. I guess I have no idea what the authorial intent is, but the author is dead so I guess I'll just say it's a nice silver ball robot.

Riffing on the BB-9E head on a BB-8 body, you get a blue-gray metallic plastic robot with painted metallic blue and matte white highlights. The design doesn't feel holiday specific - if you squint you could probably place it at another holiday, or just as a robot rolling around in a post-Empire galaxy. Since the mold is nothing new, you're buying this for the colors and I'd say they're just fine. (Maybe it's a snowflake?) There's a lot to like here in its simplicity. It's not an eye explosion like the elf or nutcracker, it's not painfully obviously Christmas incarnate. You can let this little one roll around anywhere you like, and I can admire that - expanding the universe is something Star Wars should do more often, although it can be tough to do. If you come up with something too weird it's uncomfortable, but within the context of a droid redeco that adheres to the coloring book lines we've seen before it's easy to like this droid. You can put him in a sandcrawler, or under a tree. Options are nice to have, especially if you don't celebrate Christmas and just want a nice little new droid.

For those of you who don't have any BB droids from Disney, they're sort of like Weebles. The round ball robot cracks open like a plastic Easter Egg with a weighted ball inside. Curiously, the weighted interior ball has a lot of silver paint that you'll never see after you assemble it. I'm sure a lot of collectors will express admiration for attention to detail, but I'd rather not pay for paint applications I'll probably never see after I buy it. I wouldn't mind if Disney started to mold these things in color so we can - I hope - put off a price increase a little bit longer. (The exterior paint is perfectly good, don't change a thing, Disney.)

Somehow this figure is more interesting as a "Christmas" droid that's not very "Christmas" than it would be as a random grab of parts out of a bin. The silver top of the head and bright white around a big black eye give him just enough life that it seems he could go beep at any second now. For you reading this in the future, he has no given name. How you'll find it on eBay I don't know - Sandcrawler Advent Calendar BB Droid? Blue Silver BB Unit? Good luck. But do find one, if you are so inclined. He's part of a big set that's arguably worth getting if you swing that way, and I'm more willing to accept a droid with open arms if it's smaller and more reasonably priced. And this one is.

Collector's Notes: I got mine from some guy on eBay for a lower price!

--Adam Pawlus

Day 3,086: November 30, 2023