This custom requires some background as to why I made it. If you'd rather skip to the pictures of this modified Star Wars astromech just scroll down now. I won't take it personally.
Back when I was working on my Coke machine robot, I came across several pictures of what appeared to be an R2-D2 looking Coke robot. Apparently, the Coca-Cola Company liked the little Star Wars robot so much after the film's release they decided to make one of their own and use it for trade shows and marketing. It could move via remote control, had a robot synthesized voice to talk to customers, and a lighted "SMILE" sign. The Coke robot was a hit and so the company ordered several hundred more to send to vendors for promotional purposes at grocery stores and even in a couple of commercials. This of course caught Lucas' attention, but a deal was struck so Coke was able to continue using the Coke robot, or Cobot as he became known. They made small remote controlled versions of it as a toy. The Japanese took it one step further and made a keychain version ,which is what I originally saw. Unfortunately the keychain version is under 2" tall.
I like Coke, Star Wars, and robots, so this was a no brainer to make as a custom. But while researching all of this I found something else. Dr. Pepper attempted to cash in on the Cobot fame and created some unlicensed Dr. Pepper paper cut out robots. Of course the only reasonable thing to do was to create an intelligent little side kick for my Coke machine and who better than a Dr.? All I could think of while making it was that disc of Dr. Theopolis Twiki wears in Buck Rogers. A robot that tags along and spouts factoids no one is interested in. Kind of like this post.
A bit of luck led me to Claire's boutique wear they were selling soda flavored lip gloss 2 for $5. Popped out the gloss stick, drilled some holes, and attached some left over Build-A-Droid parts. The gloss was held on by a rotating stick that twisted from the bottom. If I would have known that mechanism before hand I wouldn't have had to cut it from the top. That left an ugly line that no matter how many times I tried to match the varying grades of maroon, it just doesn't look quite right. However the benefit is that the steering foot/wheel pivots 45 degrees left or right and the whole bottom comes off so he can stand with the wheel "retracted". Now you know way more about this project then you ever wanted to. Congratulations, Winner is You!
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