Original Review by Chris 2/21/2014

Weeeeeee.  That’s the first thing that popped into my head when I articulated the legs on FA-4 and it looked like someone gliding along on a giant set of roller blades.  Then I got jealous because I want a giant set of roller blades.  It would be much better than walking everywhere like a chump.

So as you probably know, but in case you don’t, FA-4 was originally planned to be a Build-A-Droid in the revival of the Legacy Collection.  Due to costing issues, that line was cancelled and replaced with the depressingly drab Black Series which has to be the brainchild of Buzz Killington.  Since this was originally planned as a Build-A-Droid, it’s really the sum of some accessories rather than a figure.  I should note that I tried to disassemble FA-4 into its component BAD pieces, but I chickened out the second I was met with the slightest resistance.  I’ve cavemanned too many of my figures into oblivion trying to activate features that aren’t there.  The nozzles on the jetpack of my 6” Boba Fett now have white fatigue lines when I tried to rotate them.  I thought they might rotate.  But no coconut.

So I suspect some slight retooling took place to make the joints a little more permanent in this release.  I don’t really get upset when a Build-A-Droid gets released as a mainline figure since most of the time they are indistinguishable from “real” figures.  In this case, it very much feels like an accessory.  If you paid $10 for this as a single figure, you’d probably engage in a series of misfortunes that ends with you getting body slammed by a lowland gorilla. 

This is a featherweight figure that can’t really do much.  Still when the first two waves of TLC figures were announced, FA-4 garnered a decent bit of excitement because it was a never before released character in a sea of re-releases, repaints and retools.  So for that reason, a lot of fans want to get their hands on it.  When considering the Amazon MSRP for the full Build-A-Droid set of $60, a lot of fans justified it as $60 for seven figures (6 carded figures plus the TC-70 Build-A-Droid).  It’s really like 6.5 figures. 5 out of 10.

Updated Review by Bret 4/25/2020:

I’m always a fan of figures that are of “never-before-made” characters.  Those are generally hard to come by these days. (Except for Disney-era figures.)  Even the recent announcement of the TVC K-2SO, which we were thrilled to be able to exclusively reveal, is a slight downer because it does exist - albeit in the crappy 5POA format.  So it’s technically not a “never-before-made” character.  The last such figure we received from either the OT or PT was Vedain, which was sheer joy for collectors.  Prior to that - and I could be wrong - was way back in 2014 with the release of Mosep Binneed in Phase 2 of the Black Series.  So in the last 6 years, we’ve gotten 2 never-before-made figures from either the OT or PT. 

FA-4, from the PT, came out before that 6 year drought, but it was still a treat to me.  FA-4 was on my wishlist ever since AOTC came out.  Back then, we collectors could make long wishlists, and we assumed that eventually - even if it was five, eight, ten, or more years down the road - we’d see that character realized in 3.75” plastic form.  I was glad to finally get FA-4 over 10 years after the droid was seen piloting Count Dooku’s Solar Sailor away from Geonosis. 

As Chris mentioned, FA-4 was originally meant to be a B-A-D figure, but after a bunch of starts and stops, the Legacy Collection 2 “Droid Factory” line was pretty much D.O.A., as it was quickly supplanted by the Black Series - the worst thing to happen since Dwight Gooden threw a no hitter for the Yankees.  Like Chris, I also tried to test the figure to see if it would pull apart into its B.A.D. parts and almost instantly backed off out of fear of breakage. 

FA-4 is pretty lame as an action figure, but as a small droid, it does what it’s supposed to do, and can recreate its on-screen scenes, which consist of rolling around and then being a pilot.  The only problem is that Hasbro never made a Solar Sailor for it to actually pilot.  That ship was also on my list, but I’m resigned to the fact that it will never happen. 

Finally, FA-4, itself a former B.A.D, is packed with the torso of a B.A.D TC-70, Jabba’s Clone Wars-era protocol droid.  Machines making machines, indeed.

I’ll keep Chris’s 5/10.  It’s not a great figure, but it’s cool that it was made.