Are you too?

It’s almost the ultimate, “how it started, how it’s going” comparison;

Back in the late 1970s, when Star Wars was beginning to become the phenomenon it became, part of its success was the merchandising support and specifically the Kenner toy range. Part of that toy range’s success was having popular characters such as the droid Artoo-Detoo, with an iconic toy form that captured his blue/white colour scheme, barrel form and two legs, yet had a dome with robotic eyes unlike what had been seen in the films.

But it didn’t matter, it was R2-D2 as a toy!

For 3 films and 6 years, the supporting toy for the character had the same image and only 3 different versions, 1 per film. The only changes being key elements from the 2nd and 3rd films; a periscope for The Empire Strikes Back’s release and a replica lightsaber in the dome for Return of the Jedi’s version.

When the films returned in the late 1990s, with the Special Editions followed by the “Prequels”, the supporting toy-range had new versions of Artoo with better designs influenced by superior manufacturing technology, to be far more representative of it’s form. These have evolved over time to the ultimate representative forms of the Black Series range.

Yet there was something about that original toy design that resonated with many collectors, or specifically grown up kids that had the toys to play with back in the late 70s and early 80s. When toy-maker Hasbro announced a “Retro collection” range imitating the original designs of the Kenner 1970s toys, one of the most anticipated was a new version of the original 1970s Artoo, and Hasbro delivered.

However, in August 2023 when the first episode of series Ahsoka aired, many fans noticed the resemblance of an Astromech droid housed in the socket of a space vehicle in certain scenes (an E-wing), to the original Kenner R2-D2 toy. The resemblance was clearly intended and an “Easter Egg” for fans of a certain age, subsequently followed by the naming of the character as KE4-N4, a nod to the Kenner brand name of the 1970s.

There’s no ‘in-canon’ explanation for why this Astromech has a naming convention that differs form the typical “R-series” and indeed implies that its not an “R-series Astromech”. Reliable internet database “Wookipedia’ lists the character as an Astromech, manufactured by fictional company Industrial Automaton.

I do enjoy to speculate regarding alternatives, so for this character, what if the droid has been made by a competing manufacturing company to Industrial Automaton? What if it’s not an “R-series’ Astromech at all, but some equivalent, copy “KE” series. Obviously that leads to lower quality risks etc as its not the original production, think “knock-offs’, and begs the question would the Republic really risk purchasing alternatively made Astromech equivalents from some cheaper company?

Or maybe this is a new “K series” Astromech, potentially as pre-cursor to the BB Astromech range that appeared for the sequel era.

Whatever the story, KE4-N4 is simply a beautiful looking Astromech, nodding to the classic original design that many older Star Wars fans knew and loved. I’d love to see more variants being brought out, with a better backstory to support the range, however as an individual character and reflecting the original classic Artoo-Detoo design, I am a huge fan.