Came here to vent my frustrations with this R2. A 'technical" achievement, but poorly made, and thought out. The compartments and springs are just not good. The ESB 'life scanner' doesn't stay up, it just opens and falls back down. The Dagobah "periscope", I get it, you have to twist it to get it to stay up.
The lightsaber compartment, you're supposed to push down and slide it to the side, but the spring pushes it back so you have to use something else to hold the door back to put the lightsaber in there. . . and it becomes so frustrating, why even put it in there in the first place? After I fidgeted with it for five minutes I got the saber in there, and got it closed, but when you try and open the panel again, the spring loaded saber is pushing against the compartment door, so it doesn't want to open. It took me a bunch more fidgeting to get it loose again. . . so lesson learned, don't put the lightsaber where it's supposed to go.
And the front panels are all loose as well. Turn R2 upside down and they all hang open. Just frustrating. It's just not solidly built. Handling this with my Tamashii, it's just no comparison, one feels like it's worth $300, the other feels like it's worth $30.
The lights. . . sorry, I don't want a spastic R2. Turning on the lights make everything flash and cycle through, like R2 does when he gets attacked. There should be some way to operate the lights independently.
The weathering. . . the scratches on the blue areas, look like they messed up, rather than "weathering". Ironic how people were defending the lack of weathering on Snake Plissken's jacket because "too much weathering can look bad". . . well, here's an example.
In the earlier pics, I was dismayed by the "neon" green sludge in the cups. In hand, it's not bad. I would've preferred empty cups, but it's not obtrusive and distracting like I had previously thought. My nit about the serving tray is that the dispenser arm moves oddly and it's very difficult to position the spout directly over the cups as if R2 were dispensing drinks.
I have no opinion on the seam.
The articulation on the legs is oddly tight, considering how loose all the other compartments are. Different types of joints, I know, but it's these little things I notice. It's almost hard to rotate the legs compared to how easily and "sloppily" everything else falls open and spins. Which reminds me of the dome, it just kind of spins, there's no friction there. Just contributes to the "looseness" of the whole piece, and takes away from the feeling of value.
I'll have to take a few days to determine if this is worth returning or not. I paid full price with tax and shipping so it's quite a hefty chunk of change to have something I'm not satisfied with.
When the inevitable Hot Toys R2 comes I want to see them tighten up the engineering. I'd much rather pay $250 for an R2 that does not frustrate me. I paid $280 for the Tamashii because I could tell it was great. Paying $174 for this R2 does not feel like a good value. I would gladly pay $300 for a Tamashii R2 that was as solid as their 3PO.
