R5-P8 - TBS [P3] - Six Inch Figures (Exclusive)

R5-P8 is Hondo Ohnaka's most capable astromech and serves as an automated repair mechanic on Hondo's many starships. This sassy droid calls Hondo out on occasion, always keeping the pirate on his toes.

There’s a lot of strange focus on characters from Galaxy’s Edge in the Hasbro Star Wars line. They released The Vintage Collection Millennium Falcon (Smuggler’s Run) vehicle. Then they released a host of The Black Series [Phase III] 6” figures singly that were once available in multipacks at Disney Parks. Now, Hasbro is releasing “new” figures under the Galaxy’s Edge banner. Collectors, welcome R5-P8 to the 6” line. Although based on previously existing tooling, Hasbro repainted the character to look like the astromech droid we see in both The Clone Wars television show and Disney’s Galaxy’s Edge theme park attraction. If you purchased any of the previous astromech droids from Hasbro’s The Black Series 6” many lines, then you know what you’re getting here. Frustratingly, R5-P8 is still too short in stature and small in scale, yet Hasbro won’t do a thing to remedy the issues. While it’s nice to have R5-P8 in the 6” line, it also feels slightly out of place. What other characters can interact with it?

With SO MANY other astromech droids in The Clone Wars series, Hasbro couldn’t find other characters to produce that would make sense for R5-P8? Thankfully, 3.75” collectors have multiple versions of R5-P8 to consider for their scale, but 6” collectors don’t have many other options, and it’s hard to build a display when you’re missing most of the characters that make it up. R5-P8 looks like something you’d see in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (look at its face). This figure is a sentry droid, and although produced for the 3.75” range, the astromech droid doesn’t come with the gun accessory. The accessory would fit into the hole on top of its dome, usually. First seen in The Gungan General episode (and then three more after that), R5-P8 is stunningly decorated. We’re thoroughly impressed with what Disney and Hasbro have done to make this droid screen accurate. We’re pleased with the R5-P8 droid, but we feel Hasbro could have gone further with it. The paint operations could use some work. And it still doesn’t feel right to pay $25 for an astromech droid.

R5-P8 could use some additional enhancements when it comes to its paint operations. The dome feels out of scale a bit still, so we’ll reiterate that t’s time to develop an all-new astromech droid from the ground up. Admittedly, Hasbro went cheap on R5-P8’s paint operations. The coloring is off, and they only added a little dirt and battle damage. It doesn’t do much for the figure at all. R5-P8 has the same features as previous R5 unit releases, and the front panels open up sports utility tools. And the legs side panels are removable as well. Hasbro should have glued them in place because there is no reason to have these panels removable. We’re confident that the consensus will be that this droid is an unnecessary release, simply because there aren’t any other figures to interact with it. Your mileage may vary on this, however. Released as another TARGET exclusive, R5-P8 is part of TARGET’s boutique Galaxy’s Edge end cap collection, and we expect more products to follow in the future. But should this be an area of focus for Hasbro?