R2-D2 (Tatooine Mission) - SW [S - P3] - Hall Of Fame

Princess Leia hides information about the Empire's latest weapon in the memory system of the resourceful, spunky and adventurous R2-D2, just before the consular ship they are on is captured by Imperial forces. She tasks R2-D2 to continue her mission to contact the long-lost Jedi Knight and Republic General, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Commandeering an escape pod, R2-D2 and C-3PO rocket away from the captured consular ship and crash-land on Tatooine.

Things were bustling and rustling at Hasbro by the time the Star Wars “Saga” line reached its third phase in mid 2003. The reception to the focus on the Original Trilogy delighted hardcore Star Wars fans and Hasbro was scrambling to get out the wonderful characters that make up the Original Trilogy out to collectors. Never forsaking the latest Star Wars film at the time, Attack Of The Clones, figures from all over the Star Wars saga were peppered throughout the line. It was obvious however that gears had shifted and that Hasbro was intent on producing/releasing products from the films that started it all. With the desperate need to keep core figures in the line at all times, Hasbro developed a line with the unofficial name Hall Of Fame. This line wasn’t intended to deviate that much from the standard Star Wars “Saga” basic figure line. In fact, the card backs were nearly identical, save for the lacking sequencing number (it just didn’t exist on the Hall Of Fame line). The Hall Of Fame sub-line had a goal to bring the most popular characters of the Star Wars saga to the marketplace in an effort to keep collectors of all ages engaged. With some straight repacks and even a few “new” figures, the Hall Of Fame line performed better than most had suspected it would. Obviously the Original Trilogy figures sold like crazy and even the Prequel Trilogy figures sold well too.

Quite a bit of time had passed since an Episode IV specific version of R2-D2 had been released in the basic figure line. Of course, R2-D2 rarely looks different from one film to the next, except for maybe a scene specific accessory or two. But sometimes placing the same figure in different packaging while sourcing it to a film makes the figure look differently. In the case of R2-D2 (Tatooine Mission), the figure looked different in more ways than one. Let us clearly explain. The Power Of The Jedi line brought collectors a pretty fine version of R2 entitled R2-D2 (Naboo Escape). This figure had dirt on it as the figure was meant to reproduce R2-D2 as he appeared in Episode I fixing as best he could the hyperdrive on the Naboo Royal Starship. It was a very good figure by most accounts, but you could really only pose the figure in one way thanks to the lack of articulation in the “feet” and the permanently angled third leg. But Hasbro decided to give this figure a completely clean repaint and package it into the Star Wars “Saga” line’s Hall Of Fame series. It looked great, albeit inaccurate to the “Tatooine Mission” scene on which it was inspired. R2-D2 (Tatooine Mission) was born and became one of the briskest selling Hall Of Fame figures thanks to its uniqueness. (It would also be released in The Original Trilogy Collection basic figure line a few months later.)

Other than the new paint job, not much new is brought to the table. The Hall Of Fame line originally came with clear action figure display stands, but they were soon changed to the standard metallic gray stands that were common in the Star Wars “Saga” basic line. We have noticed a few cleaned up paint operations on R2-D2 (Tatooine Mission) as well, but there subtle and not worthy of making a big deal of them. The intent to release this figure in the Hall Of Fame line was to complement the awesome C-3PO With Escape Pod (Tatooine Escape) Ultra figure. What good is C-3PO without R2-D2 and vice versa? Hasbro remedied that with the release of the Hall Of Fame line. What “stinks” about R2-D2 (Tatooine Mission) however is that R2-D2 is way too clean. This would be the perfect “Yavin ceremony” R2-D2 figure thanks to his cleanliness, but when R2-D2 was on a mission to find Obi-Wan Kenobi, he was totally filthy. Obviously that gets into semantics at this point. Is it not R2-D2 from this scene if his paint job isn’t perfect? Did we worry about such things as kids in the vintage Kenner era? Whatever your take, you should know that R2-D2 (Tatooine Escape) has arrived in perfect timing for the Star Wars “Saga” line. It’s not the best iteration of this character, but it’s a fitting contemporary when gauged against the other releases of the year.