I know a lot of folks found this guy in their stores months back, but I was not so lucky. I do feel fortunate that my Amazon pre-order did actually ship timely when it came in stock, so let’s take a look at the six inch scale Probe Droid figure from Hasbro!
The Probe Droid box is standard deluxe packaging with a bit of a nice twist. Since it’s coming out in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, it has that nice retro ESB logo and a little silver border around the window that gives it a bit of that vintage card feel.
The droid comes with a flight stand and that’s it. That’s pretty much all I needed in terms of accessories. I suppose a muzzle flash for the cannon would have been nice, but the stand is what I needed. The base is a piece of white plastic sculpted to resemble snow and the droid plugs into a clear plastic rod via a hole in the underside. There is no tilting mechanism, the droid only swivels on the base. I think that is probably for stability, but I would have like a ball and socket so I could tilt the droid a little.
The sculpting on this thing is exquisite. I haven’t been comparing the details to film stills, but it looks very accurate to me. All the details are very sharp and the paint enhances those details with little battle damage knicks, some washes and drybrushes.
The articulation is just what you need with the head swiveling on the base and each arm swiveling where they attach underneath the base. Each arm also hinges where there is a sculpted hinge mechanism. I think the main body is cast in that gun metal color plastic, but it’s really effective.
The antennae raise and lower together, so if you pull one up, the other one goes up too.
The cannon also swivels for better Han and Chewie blasting action.
Overall, I’m really happy with this item. It feels like a solid hunk of nicely painted and sculpted plastic. I think the only thing I would have liked would be a little electronics pack with a LED in one of the “eyes” and a sound chip with that iconic probe droid sound.
He looks great with the Hoth display or any imperial group shot.
