Just in time for the 2017 holiday shopping season, Star Wars and Sphero are releasing a menacing new app-enabled droid: R2-Q5. The evil twin to everyone’s favorite astromech, R2-D2, the shiny, black model gives new meaning to the First Order (the heirs to the Empire in the new Star Wars movies), because if you want to buy one of these as a gift this year, you better get your order in first.
The $199 toy will have very limited availability. Attendees of the New York Comic Con will be able to purchase the 100 units available at Sphero’s booth today. Otherwise Star Wars fans will have to either go to Best Buy or Bestbuy.com to get this bad looking “bucket of bolts” (as C3-P0 once referred to his friend, Artoo).
Preorders for R2-Q5 also begin today at Best Buy’s website, and the toy will be available on store shelves on Nov. 5.
The same size and offering the same abilities as the R2-D2 released in August by Star Wars and Sphero, R2-Q5 has sounds and a personality all its own. The bad robot can interact with other Sphero droids, for example, and it can also launch users into an augmented reality layer of the toy’s app.
It’s currently unclear what role the new R2 will play in The Last Jedi, which comes out Dec. 15, but at the moment it’s offering a great reminder that the next tale in the Star Wars sage is not that far, far away.