CLASSIFICATION: KITBASH
BASE FIGURE: STAR WARS: EPISODE I R2-D2
MATERIALS USED: HOBBY KNIFE, DUCT TAPE, SILICONE GLUE, SUPER GLUE
FIRST APPEARANCE: STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE

"What message?  The one you're carrying around inside your rusty innards!"

Preamble: The main gimmick of the Star Wars: Episode I figures was that each figure came with a display stand with a computer chip inside it, called a CommTech chip.  They were designed to interact with the electronic CommTech reader, which played sound effects or lines from the movie encoded inside each chip. Most of the dialogue sounded pretty awful, but one character who was particularly well-suited to this technology was R2-D2.  The digital sound effects are perfect.  However, it's pretty silly for a tripodal droid to come with a figure stand, especially when he can't even stand on it properly. I did notice, however, that the square-shaped CommTech circuit would fit quite nicely inside his equally square-shaped foot.

Construction: The CommTech stand is just two pieces of clear plastic with the voice chip sandwiched between them, so it was a simple matter of prying them apart to get to the chip inside.  I whittled away at the bottom of R2-D2's foot to make room for it, making sure to save the wheels on the bottom of his foot.  After I'd cut enough plastic out of the inside of his foot, I fitted the chip in place, painted it white, and glued the wheels back on top of it.  The chip is practically invisible, but it functions as well as ever.

While this is one of the best R2-D2 sculpts to date, it's not perfect, so I also made a bunch of cosmetic changes to the toy.  I added the new cables to his ankles (which, as of this writing, no Hasbro toy has ever gotten right) and a third sensor to the back of his head (which I borrowed from another R2-D2 toy).  I decided to get rid of the silly rocket thrusters, since Artoo never used them in the movie and the gimmick severely limited his head's range of motion.  He was designed with a notch inside his body that prevented his head from turning 360º, so all I had to do was chop that off.  To cover up the slots where the thrusters used to pop out, I took a piece of thin sheet plastic, painted it white, and glued it to the inside of his body.  At the same time, I gave his center leg some articulation at the ankle by cutting around the outline of the foot and reattaching it with a piece of paper clip.  I also cleared out some of his innards to give his middle leg more room to retract, so it didn't just dangle stupidly in a mid-retracted state.

I also made a few minor changes to the paint scheme, most notably painting over the blue light piping to make his eye a nice, dark black.  (I think the only time it's ever been blue in the movies is for about three-tenths of a second during one scene in Return of the Jedi when the light hits him just right.)

Comments: Even though I made a fair number of cosmetic improvements to the toy, the most important change is the addition of the CommTech chip.  Click here to download a zip file with a short movie (891KB; *.MOV format) demonstrating the embedded CommTech chip in action.

(click to download movie)