Star Wars Droid Factory Advent Calendar

For the second year in a row I was a very lucky boy and had a Star Wars Droid Factory advent calendar. The basic premise is every day you get pieces to build a festive-themed droid and you end up with a collection of droids by the time Christmas comes.

The advent calendar is designed to look like a sandcrawler - the iconic vehicle full of salvaged (ie stolen) droids in Star Wars: A New Hope.

The first piece out was a leg for an R2 unit, sporting a gingerbread-themed paint finish.

The complete R2 unit has already featured on my blog, but here he is again. He is carrying a tray of drinks like R2-D2 does on Jabba's sail barge in Return of the Jedi. 

I hope he's mixing egg nog, but surely in the Star Wars galaxy they would use blue milk so the nog is the wrong colour.

Gingerbread R2 was soon joined by a mate - a snowman version of BB-8 from The Force Awakens. 

I was highly amused one day to just get a pair of feet.

The feet belonged to a Gonk Droid, who was both wrapped up as a gift and sported a Santa hat.

Now, that's a possible Star Wars Christmas song. "Santa Gonky, slip a laser under the tree, for me, I've been an awful good droid, so hurry to the crawler tonight!"

Well, maybe not. 

I don't know the identity of this droid. It's large and stripey like a candy cane.

However, I did recognise the holidayfied version of B2EMO, who first appeared in the series Andor.

I'm not sure if he be too emo, but he does seem to have a fringe.

One day there was a complete droid - D-0 from one of the newer Disney-era films. If you didn't know it's name, don't feel bad. I had to look it up too.

I think they missed a trick with this. Painted brown with a red nose it would make a cute little Rudolph.

The final droid was a mystery. Literally. This is what was printed on the back of the calendar.

Well, I say a mystery but the little wheel on the middle leg and arms coming out of the head gave it away. I guessed it would be Chopper from Star Wars Rebels.

And it was!

The wreath doesn't sit easily and it interferes with the droid's little arms. But eventually I got it to pose for a photo. I think it's meant to be decorated as a penguin. I'm not certain though.

I added the droids from last year's advent calendar to the display as well. The final line up of 13 droids looks great.

Comparing this year to last year, there is more variety. The selection peaked with the first droid, gingerbread R2, but this year's Gonk droid had a much better pattern (and a Santa hat!) It was also cool to get BB-8 after getting his nemesis droid (BB-9E) last year.

I really enjoyed building these droids from the Droid Factory and with any luck a new sandcrawler will wend its way from the depths of the deserts of Tatooine in time for Christmas next year.

Some cheery Chrimbo things

With all the work going on in the house, Christmas decorating has taken a back seat.

However, my sister sent us a festive dinosaur diorama that is on the side in the kitchen.

And this year I have a Star Wars Droid Factory advent calendar again. It's taken five days to get all the pieces for the first droid - a gingerbread R2 unit with a mixer tray of drinks. I hope it's mixing whatever the version of egg nog they drink in a galaxy far, far away.

Wolverhampton graffiti Jedi wisdom

Star Wars graffiti spotted in Wolverhampton. Poor old Artoo getting clamped!

Yoda's advice was very timely as we were on our way to a gig!

"If we only had a droid" are champions

We (i.e. me, Cathy, Clare and Tom) went to the first Monday night quiz at The Gate last night and walked away the winners. Our success meant our ironic team name was wrong - we didn't need a droid after all to win our free round of drinks.

It would be great though if you could get real R2-D2 droids to help out in pub quizzes. "R2, quick - use your wireless interface and surf the net - what's the captial of Luxembourg?" (We got that one wrong, because I got it confused with Liechtenstein and said it was Vaduz)

Of course, every answer he gave would be "bee boop be boop". And I'm not sure the quizmaster general would accept that.

"I don't want to survive - I want to live!" (Wall-E film review)

I've been surprised by the core messages of a few films recently, and Wall-E was no exception.

By now just about anyone with a passing interest in films will have heard/read/worked out the gist of the plot: a cute little cleaning robot struggling to make sense of the mess the planet has been left in meets a sleek explorer-bot and falls in love. Everyone is raving about the animation (how many more times can Pixar raise the quality bar?), and the brilliance needed to write a film with virtually no dialogue for the main characters. The best description I've read so far was in the Times, which described the hero as "the lovechild of R2-D2 and ET".

There have also been plenty of comments about the 'environmental message' and the criticism of corporate consumerism, the latter being ironic in a Disney film, which is all about corporate branding and selling Wall-E toys to the masses. But there are also some human characters in the film, mollycoddled into roly-poly flab-sacks by their robot attendants until they've forgotten all about Earth.

In a sinister scene stolen from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the humans discover their servant robots are actually preventing them from returning to Earth because it's deemed too risky. But the captain realises humans need to take responsibility for their mess and sort things out. He asks whether they should do nothing, then says: "I've been doing nothing my whole life." In a face off between the sentient auto-pilot and the captain, the auto-pilot insists the humans stay off-planet, because here they will survive. The captain responds by saying: "I don't want to survive - I want to live!"

That line really made me think as we walked back to our car afterwards. We so often take our freedom for granted - Cath and I were free to go out and watch a film, which other people were free to make, and distribute, even though it contained a critical appraisal of our society's self-destructive tendencies. We had the freedom of so many choices - to drive or walk, to go out or stay in. We could do what we wanted in almost total safety. Actually, that's something many world citizens would aspire to, or dream of... or wouldn't dare to even dream of, for fear of those in authority.

And I was struck by how valuable and precious freedom is. There's a line in a Midnight Oil song, which they've borrowed from somewhere, that 'it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees'. And, of course in America, where they take liberty seriously (and then take liberties with it!) one of the main rallying cries in the War of Independence was 'Live free or die'. Because to live in chains is to die a long, slow death.

I'm not sure the writers of Wall-E meant to inspire such thoughts. But they did. And it was a cracking film too.

Jongudmund's rating: 9.5/10 It don't get much better than this!

Do the robot

Me as the true hero of the Star Wars films (at the Elevation Christmas party)

Bee boop boo boo BEEP

Ever wondered how R2-D2 would pronounce your name? Type it into the R2-D2 translator and find out!

Brought to you by Jongudmund - cruising the web in work hours so you don't have to!