Star Wars Figure of the Day: Day 3,301: R4-TR3 (Droid Factory)

R4-TR3 Holiday Edition
Star Wars Droid Factory
Item No.: ???
Manufacturer: Disney
Number: n/a
Includes: Star topper
Action Feature: Comes apart
Retail: $14.99
Availability: October 2024
Appearances: n/a 

Bio: All different types of droids populate the Star Wars galaxy. Each droid is different and has their own unique personality and colors. This droid is right at home on the forest moon of Endor. Join R4-TR3 on their adventures throughout the galaxy. May the Force be with you... and your Droids! (Taken from the packaging.)

Image: Adam's photo lab.

Availability: Click here to buy it at eBay now!  

Commentary: I admit my enthusiasm for holiday droids is waning a bit - they're very good, but also are increasingly exhausting. They're more a collectible unto themselves, and when it comes to making a toy of a theme park attraction or an unrelated holiday it should probably be special. Or cheap. Lucky for me, I got R4-TR3 for $11.38 (no joke) last year thanks to a sale and a coupon that got a bunch of holiday droids down to a more reasonable per-figure price. Nothing against the holidays, but I have over 20 Christmas droids and I don't decorate for Christmas. Which I guess is a big mark in this guy's favor. I got a fully-decorated Playmobil tree [16bit.com FOTD #2,368] in a set I got super duper cheap on clearance, which sometimes make an appearance. I bought it for the easy chair in the set. But I digress.

This droid is neat as a collectible or piece of holiday festiveness, and it's a little too garish to fit in with your Endor diorama. It's not bad, nor did the designer do a bad job - I just want my figures to go with all my movie figures, and this guy is close. The green body with brown feet? Perfect. The dark green panels and mid-century dome markings look fantastic. Even the red eye works for me. The differing colors on the feet are a little odd, and I don't love the gold dot lights or red box outlines. They're great ideas to make this guy look like a decorated tree, with everything lining up well and lots of little tidbits like red, gold, and silver vents as well as a blue projector to really make it look like something in a home somewhere. The gold star on top really drives the point home - all five of them.

But is it Star Wars? That's the question. I'm sure everybody is saying "Well, yeah" and they aren't wrong. I would be a lot happier with this droid if it kept the star, the green, the brown, and the silver, but lost some of the other colors. And I assume a ton of people who bought it love it for those other colors.

If you missed it last year, you can still get it on eBay for about $25-$30 shipped in the USA. If that sounds outrageous, keep in mind that early adopters for this year's R2-H25 paid $14.99 plus tax and shipping - about $27.21. After the increase it's over $30. Is it worth paying $30 to ship a droid to your house? I'm starting to lean toward "no." I'm not asking Disney to cut the price, but maybe put the Halloween and Christmas droids together as a bundle or on the same day - Disney can reduce labor and materials costs, and we can pay to ship one box instead of two. Win win.

I took more than a year to crack mine open. I like it, but I don't love it. I'm coming more from a place of fatigue and excess more than actual dislike. Over the past 15 or so years, I've bought hundreds of Disney droids based on this mold ranging from $7-$30 shipped. I've missed and/or skipped a couple, especially some bundled with big expensive vehicles that I didn't necessarily have a crack at. With shipping charges, you're probably going to get at least 3-4 holiday droids per year at $25-$30 a whack, and that starts to add up. Is it worth $120 a year for something you'll look at, chuckle, and chuck in a drawer? Probably not. But people who don't have 3,000 figures will probably love this as a nice bit of holiday fun rather than another symbol of decades of plastic debauchery.

Collector's Notes: I got mine from Shop Disney.

--Adam Pawlus

Day 3,301: December 11, 2025