The Bandai Star Wars 1/12 model kits are really fun projects, so I had to grab this when I saw it at my local Japanese market. The kits snap together, are fairly easy to assemble, and you can decide how much customization you want to add. I like that I can choose to do the bare minimum of assembly work and still come out with a model that fits in nicely with my 1/12 scale figure collection or I can completely repaint the whole model and make a brand new droid alltogether. Let’s take a look at R4-I9!
The box for the model kits have always struck me as odd as the front has a nice illustration and the sides show sample pictures of the model, but the back is completely blank glossy black paper. It seems like such wasted real estate, but now that I think about the old models I put together as a kid, the back was always just a plain gray cardboard.
The box includes several trays worth of sprues of differing colors, one set of stickers and a set of instructions. I was kind of bummed to see that they discontinued the water slide decals as I liked working with them for certain types of decals.
I thought it might be fun to document a little of the build process and talk about a couple of the things I noticed as I was working through this model. The nice thing about the kit is that you don’t really need a lot of tools to build it. I basically have a pair of snippers to cut the pieces off the sprue, a pair of tweezers for grabbing tiny pieces, and some sandpaper of varying grit to wear down the pieces of sprue that didn’t come off the pieces cleanly.
The build process was familiar because I had build R5-D4 and R2-D2 before. The first little thing I did notice is that you really need to get the sprue remnants well sanded down on the disks that make up the bottom of the head assembly or they don’t snap together properly and will have big gap.
The tweezers come in handy when installing the little wires into the feet. I may glue those later because they just peg in. I had an R5 take a shelf dive and two of those wires popped out, never to be seen again in my carpeting.
One of the points where I veered away from the directions was this piece that fits in the main body of the droid. The little points I circled pop through and show up on the front when assembled.
They are supposed to be silver on the final figure and there are some decals to make a silver ring around each, but I found in previous builds the decals were too large and odd looking. It was a lot easier to drybrush silver on this piece prior to adding it in.
The long pieces right under the head are also supposed to be silver, but were manufactured on the blue/black sprue tray, so I also dry brushed these silver. There are stickers for these pieces too, but I think it was probably easier to paint. I didn’t have to be neat about it either and only the silver shows through.
This little piece is shown as black on the sample model and the box art, but is on a blue/black sprue piece. There doesn’t appear to be a decal for it, so I also painted it black prior to adding it.
All together I like the look without decals quite a bit.
I think he looks nice with my previously built model kits and I enjoy the unique blue/black gloss finish.
I did want the black panel details for the head, so I did try to add the stickers. They were very unforgiving and I ended up destroying two of the tiny black stickers that went on the head so I had to paint a couple of those small panels by hand. The sample model also showed one black panel on the top of the head, but I couldn’t find a decal for that and ended up painting it too.
The long stripe that goes around the head is also a very delicate sticker. I ended up stretching it somehow when I has holding it to apply, so it’s a little messier than I’d like. I also ended up just painting the silver stripe wound round the leg myself rather than try stretching another tiny silver sticker.
The set also comes with a little drink tray that you can add to R2 for his skiff duties. Having assembled it, I kind of want to paint it because I don’t find the gold plastic very convincing. I think the cups are also supposed to have some gold details on them too.
The little cups look weird to me empty and clean, so I think I might get some translucent green to paint the insides of the cups and make it look like there is liquid in there.
The tray fits on R4-I9 too, so I suppose he could be an Imperial party droid.
R4 also comes with some extra panel pieces and tiny tools so you can pose the figure using one of the various common R2 implements. I think these all need some paint, but I haven’t decided if I want to use them enough to do the work. I never finished them for my R2, so I probably won’t.
Overall, I’m super happy with this model kit. Once assembled, R4 has all the requisite Astromech articulation you need with swivel head, swivel arms, hinged feet, and a retractable third leg. There were some bumps along the way, but in the end I love the way this guy looks with my Imperials on the shelf.
