Color-Changing Droids [B] - DD

All different types of Astromech droids populate the galaxy. Each droid is different and has their own unique personality and colors. These droids have the special ability to change color!

In place of the Disney Parks’ Droid Factory line is Galaxy Edge’s Droid Depot. The new Droid Depot line takes most of the same sculpts introduced in the Droid Factory line and reinvents them with new gimmicky features like color-changing as well as the age-old Build A Droid novelty. The color-changing feature is interesting and a selling point for kids. But we don’t think it will have the wow factor it needs to interest collectors who have supported the Star Wars line since 1978. Then again, maybe it will. The Droid Depot line takes concepts from across the entire Star Wars saga and puts together a group of interesting droids that probably wouldn’t be seen together as a group, yet provide a nice diverse range of interesting drones for your collection. In these sets, however, you technically get eight characters for the price of four. The color-changing features, however short-lived it is after the droids warm up, provides a whole new cast of characters for which collectors and kids can enjoy. Many of the figures included in this et resemble the familiar characters of the Star Wars saga, while others are first time offerings.

The first figure is a C-3PO lookalike. This droid has the same color scheme and style of the favorite Original Trilogy character. The nest figure included here is a BB-8 lookalike. Hasbro changed up some of the tooling on this BB unit, and while the changes don’t stand out, they are still present nonetheless. The third figure is an R4-M9 lookalike, but this droid has more than just a few changes from the character we see in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The green, silver, black, and white color is beautiful on this figure, and Disney did a great job at making this figure look great. The final figure is a CZ-3/CZ-4 lookalike. But just like the R2-D2 lookalike from set Z, the CZ Protocol Droid suffers from having a pink-hued plastic when it should be off-white. Disney added some dirt accumulation throughout the figure’s body, but the pink makes the character look “off” at best. The protocol droid comes with a generous 14 points of articulation, while the R4 Astromech comes with eight points. The BB Unit only comes with one point. As a set, these figures look great together in any configuration, warm or cold, and we enjoy them in the middle of transitioning too.

The color-changing feature works like this. There is a range of temperatures, and within these ranges, the color will be one color or the other. Disney describes a WARM range of 86℉ to 107.6℉ Fahrenheit. They also describe the COLD range as any temperature between 32℉ and 64℉ Fahrenheit. Of course, there are intermediate temperatures when the droid begin changing back to their room temperature color (which more often than not falls under the WARM range). Interestingly, after we placed our figures in the freezer to get cold for our photoshoot, we came back the next day, and they still maintained their “COLD” colors. It wasn’t until we began touching them and running them under WARM water that they began transitioning back to their original colors. Here is how the color-changing feature works for the four included droids in Color-Changing Droids [B]. The gold 3PO Protocol Droid turns completely black. The white and orange BB Unit converts to a navy blue and orange droid. The R4 Astromech converts to a black astromech droid that looks a lot like R4-I9. Finally, the CZ Protocol Droid converts to a bright neon orange color, something that we haven’t see in the Star Wars saga at any point. But that could change on a dime. This set retails for $39.99.