CLASSIFICATION: KITBASH
BASE FIGURE: R2-D2 (STAR WARS: EPISODE I); R5-D4 (STAR WARS: POWER OF THE FORCE)
MATERIALS USED: SUPER GLUE, ELECTRICAL WIRING, ACRYLIC PAINTS
FIRST APPEARANCE: STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE

"We're running out of droids, fast!"

Preamble: R5-A7 meets his spectacular demise while attempting to make repairs to the damaged shield generator of Queen Amidala's royal starship.  Working on the exterior surface of the starship and under heavy laser fire, poor R5-A7 gets knocked into space when a laser bolt strikes him dead center and blows him into pieces.  He lets out a pitiful scream as he's blasted off the hull of the ship and his pieces are scattered into oblivion.

Well, not too long after I saw The Phantom Menace, I set about making action figures representing the droid complement from the royal starship, and bought some extra R2-D2 toys for the project.  I knew that R5-A7 would require a lot more work than the others, being of a different design than the rest of the droids on board.

Construction: This little agromech droid required extensive retooling, since as an R5 unit, his head has a radically different shape than an R2 unit.  I traded off one of my extra toys for an old R5-D4, whose head I chopped off and attached it to an Artoo Detoo body.  R5-D4's head was designed to split in half to reveal a missile launcher (he was released back when Kenner was still determined to make Star Wars an exciting, action-packed toy line) so I had to glue the halves together.  He was also sculpted with an extra-tall head (safety regulations dictate launching missiles must be a certain length) so I had to saw the head in half at the neck, whittle down the size of the head, and glue the neck back on.  (The tricky part was sanding down the new parts so that they lined up perfectly with the body.)  I also sliced his three eyes off with a sharp blade and reattached them higher up on his face.  

After I glued everything together, I painted the head white, glued on some painted sheet plastic to make the head panels, and replaced the antenna.  

Comments:  The Phantom Menace hadn't yet been released on video or DVD when I made these guys, so all I had to work from was a tiny little screen shot from the Random House Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace Scrapbook.  Considering the lack of reference materials, though, I think he turned out really nicely.