Star Wars Figure of the Day: Day 2,882: R5-D33R (Droid Factory)

R5-D33R Disney Parks Holiday Exclusive
Star Wars Droid Factory
Item No.: ???
Manufacturer: Disney
Number: n/a
Includes: Antler hat
Action Feature: Comes apart
Retail: $12.99
Availability: October 2021
Appearances: n/a

Bio: All different types of Astromech droids populate the Star Wars galaxy. Each droid is different and has their own unique personality and colors. This droid is optimized to function in the sub-zero environments of Hoth and amongst its dangerous creatures. Join R5-D33R on his adventures throughout the galaxy! May the Force be with you... and your Droids! (Taken from the figure's packaging.)

Image: Adam's photo lab.

Availability: Click here to buy it at Amazon now!

Commentary: Christmas is almost here, so we get a new holiday droid continuing the ongoing tradition! R5-D33R takes a break from previous naming conventions, all of which had the model number prefix (R3, R2, etc.) followed by HXX, the XX being the current year. (This year also saw a reissue 4-pack of droids from 2015-2018, but more on that in the future.) This R5 unit uses existing robot tooling and adds a newly tooled antler hat to, I assume, invoke either Rudolph the Red-Nosed Montgomery Ward mascot or perhaps the Caffeine-Free Coca-Cola cans of the 1990s. Only you can decide!

The droid uses the standard legs and feet cast in gold plastic, while the body and dome are cast in white plastic and painted gold. The match is excellent, but the shine is very different with the paint. At a glance, you wouldn't know they were different materials and that's quite the achievement. The droid body adds numerous gold panels to the front and back, and it looks like it could hang out with any small holiday village collectible shelf you may have seen in someone's home. Without the hat, it's just a cool-looking and original droid design, which is more or less exactly what I want from these releases.

The red beanie sort of looks like Rudolph's noses, with the antlers looking like antlers. Presumably you can hang a coat or a bra on them, if you have one sized appropriately. It fits on this figure's dome without any fuss, but it also has a small hole in it so it can cap R2 domes without being blocked. It's nice that they considered hat sharing. While it is very goofy, we've also had R5 units with gun heads - seeing horns or other accoutrements stapled to a robot head feels like something we could see in an upcoming streaming series nowadays. They're ready to get weird.

If you can find this one at a fair price, I'd say buy it. It looks neat, it fits in with pretty much any scenario, and you can lose the hat if you want. It's just a cool-looking droid repaint, and Hasbro hasn't given us a new astromech colorway in over a year, and prior to those three Droid Factory sets at Target, it was R1-J5 in 2019. I miss droids in stores outside of theme parks.

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

--Adam Pawlus

Day 2,882: December 16, 2021