Another Star Wars movie brings with it another brand new droid. New droids is a Star Wars tradition, with everyone’s favorite life partners C-3P0 and R2-D2 leading the pack, followed up by a long list of names with letters and numbers in them: 2-1B, FX-7, IG-88, 4-LOM, 8D8, EV-9D9, and so many astromechs you could fill a room.
When The Force Awakens began rolling out its promotional campaign, something else rolled out with it, literally — BB-8, one of the most huggable droids ever. If there breathes a Star Wars fan that wasn’t completely taken in by BB-8 and his spunkiness, then there’s a person who’s dead inside.
This time, however, the droid in question isn’t a cute and cuddly little soccer ball zipping along and chirping merrily. This time the brand new droid is a large, imposing ebony behemoth with dead white eyes and murder in its transistors. You pretty much can’t get more 180 than that.
When the prequels came out, I sucked up as much information as I could beforehand. I knew the names of the new characters, the places they’d be going, the events — basically, I knew as much as possible before the movie hit. But I’ve been taking a different tactic with the new movies. While here in internetland a certain level of “overheard knowledge” is impossible to ignore, for the most part if you really try, you can maintain a certain level of willful ignorance. I really want to discover these movies while I’m watching them instead of being so saturated with data that the movie itself becomes a fill-in-the-blank march towards the closing credits.
In this attempt at going in nearly blind, I do allow myself to watch the trailers, and I usually pick up small bits here and there just by cyberspace osmosis. It’s the toys that provide the largest information dump. Last year, I didn’t know there was a “Zuvio” until I saw the toy itself. I didn’t want to look too deep, so I waited until the movie to see who Zuvio was and what his role in the movie was going to be.
Still waiting on that one …
For Rogue One, I only just learned with the Force Friday barrage of toys that K-2S0 was a former Imperial Security Droid reprogrammed by Cassian, which is no doubt information others have had for months. So he’s a good guy that looks like a bad guy, and he sounds like Alan Tudyk. There’s really nothing wrong about any of that.
My huge weakness for droids meant that K-2SO was my absolutely most wanted of the first wave of figures. I’ve already preordered the Figuarts, and I’m going to get the model kit as well. I don’t care if he ends up being the Captain Phasma of Rogue One (cool-looking character that doesn’t have much on-screen action but is still awesome). That doesn’t stop me from digging 2-1B and his five seconds of cinematic fame. New droid? Love.
I say I’ve preordered the Figuarts figure, and those figures are, to me, a gold standard in what a Star Wars figure should be. With that said, it is very high praise to say that Figuarts will have to pull some impressive rabbits out of its hat to top this figure. Hasbro did a superb job in bringing this design to plastic life, even implementing some things I wish it had done in one of their previous killer droids, namely IG-88 and his stiff-ass hips.
K-2SO is extremely articulated. I’m very curious at this point to see if his on-screen compatriot will be as agile as this figure is. It would be interesting to see a droid go absolutely friggin’ nuts and do a crazy Exorcist stair-walk on the bad guys. Without the burden of traditional kneecaps or elbows, Kaytoo (Yeah, I’m shortening it to Kaytoo at this point) can get a full forward and backward range out of both his arms and legs, which leads to some interesting posing options. His ankles get an extreme amount of pivot as well, couple with a huge range of side to side. Couple that with ball-jointed hips and torso and a double-ball-jointed neck and this is running up near crazy wacky Figuarts level of articulation. The only thing Figuarts has that this doesn’t is swappable hands. So yeah, right now the standard has been set and there’s a LOT to try to beat later on, kind of similar to the way Hasbro’s Kylo Ren figure was really good last year.
The double-ball-jointed neck is my favorite aspect by far of the figure. I know I keep bringing up Figuarts, but their ball-jointed necks allow a certain level of subtle head-tilts that you don’t ordinarily get with most mass-market heads, and it’s nice to have a standard toy get that level of poseability. Kaytoo seems like the kind of droid that would look quizzically at a fleshy human and wonder what their bones would sound like as he’s snapping them, so it fits.
He has clear pegs at his elbows, knees, and ankles. That’s kind of odd, but the effect is cool. It makes him feel a little more alien in his appearance, if that makes sense.
Kaytoo is a lot of black, but in keeping with Star Wars being a “used universe,” he already looks like he’s been through the wringer. There’s a decent amount of scuffed metal spread over his body where the bare metal looks like it’s showing through. It’s not too much, but it’s just enough to give a sense of wear. You can imagine at one point he might have been all shined and polished along with all the other Imperial weapons of war, but his time with the rebellion has not been kind to him. I wonder how he feels about that, if anything?
One area that Kaytoo is lacking is accessories. He has none. While a big giant murderdroid might not seem like he would need weapons, his hands seem like he should be gripping … something. You can give him someone else’s weapon, of course, but I wonder if there’s something special he’ll be using in the movie for ranged killing. Or closeup. Maybe he’s got a lightsaber? I have no idea if there will be a lightsaber fight in this movie. It would be cool if this time it was a droid using one. Maybe that’s why he came with nothing, so as not to spoil the surprise, like how Rey wasn’t initially packed with one. Maybe not. Who knows.
I love the entire figure, but it’s his face that I dig the most. There’s something infinitely creepy about those round, hollow eyes. He looks exactly like the kind of droid the Empire would build to freak out anybody who tried to start crap. Seven-foot-tall robots with dead eyes are not the kind of thing you want to eff with.
Not even a little bit.