OOM-9 - EI - Basic

As a commander droid for the Trade Federation army, OOM-9 strategically coordinates the fully automated droid army against the Naboo and Gungan combined forces.

OOM-9 is an actual specific name to a single character in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. It’s pretty rare to find any of the Gungans or Separatist Droid Army B1 battle droids get an identity, but Hasbro made an exception with this figure. OOM-9 is an OOM command battle droid who led the battle droid army of the Trade Federation into the Battle of Naboo. Clearly overseeing a large droid army, it’s hard to believe that OOM-9 really had any true concept of what was transpiring during this history changing battle. OOM-9 differs from a standard B1 Battle Droid by the addition of yellow markings on the droid’s exterior. A large yellow circle is present on its chest and its head has also been given a yellow capping of color too. OOM-9 also differs by coming with an antenna on its back instead of a backpack. This must be for some important communications purpose, but it is pretty cool to see this particular droid get so much uniqueness compared to the infantry soldiers. But how does this character stack up as an action figure? We believe you might be impressed.

OOM-9 has a decent amount of articulation. It comes with ten points of articulation including a ball-socket head and sliding neck (which will tuck into the chest cavity of the figure when in “huddled mode”) We wonder if this small upgrade was to be applied to regular B1 Battle Droid action figures, but that never seemed to come to pass. OOM-9 actually comes with an all-new body and head. The tooling is completely different than 1999’s EI Battle Droid [Clean] figure and we think it is a tremendous update by comparison. The shape of the head and the scale of the parts appear to be right on the money now. So we appreciate Hasbro going the extra mile and not going lazy by offering us just a simple repaint. The figure doesn’t come with ankle articulation (which seems very needed on this character) but it does come with hinge-jointed shoulders, elbows, hips and knees which give a wide array of movement. But with no body articulation, you ultimately are limited with how aggressively you can pose this action figure. These types of characters definitely need waist and ankle articulation to be effective action figures.

As far as accessories, OOM-9 comes with the standard droid blaster, the aforementioned and removable antenna, and macrobinoculars. We are thoroughly impressed with the tooling of the macrobinoculars. It is a very impressive accessory that has exquisitely fine details and a beautiful paint job. Should Hasbro ever update the OOM-9 action figure down the road, you’re probably going to want to take these macrobinoculars with you. That’s how good they are. We don’t believe they could be perfected any more. They already are perfect as is. It’s great to get the leader of the regular B1 Battle Droid so early in the Episode I line. OOM-9 is a great complement to all four different varieties of Battle Droids we already have in the line. You certainly can command a large army now if you’re buying these in multiples. For variation hunters, there are two distinct packaging variations. One has OOM-9 holding the macrobinoculars. The other style packaging has a special floating tray for the macrobinoculars which is unneeded and silly. We honestly forget which one is the variant and which one is the running change so we’ll leave that up to you to figure out.