9492 Tie Fighter: close-up on R5-J2

I'm enjoying these two photos posted by Huw Millington (Brickset) on his flickr gallery to come back to the great novelty of this set 9492 Tie Fighter : the new conical piece on astromech droids.

R5-J2 is one of those droids decked out in this dome that opens up new possibilities as to the models that may be offered in the future. This droid, seen a few seconds in theEpisode VI: Return of the Jedi, was assigned to the second Death Star.

In 2012 we will also be entitled to R5-D8, another droid equipped with the same dome, in the set 9493 X-Wing Starfighter. This Droid was in the service of Jek Porkins and his X-Wing during the Battle of Yavin ( Episode IV: A New Hope).

The series of astromech droids are easy to distribute: those with round dome are of class R2, R3, R4, R8 or even R9, those with flat conical dome are of class G8, R5 or R6 and those with pointed conical dome are of class R7.

In the R5 series, the best known models are arguably R5-A2, seen around Mos Eisley on Tatooine in theEpisode IV: A New Hope, R5-D4 bought by Owen Lars from the Jawas in the same episode or even R5-M2 seen during the Battle of Hoth in theEpisode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

In fact, the different episodes of the Original Trilogy are peppered with astromech droids in many scenes and some don't even have a specific name or bio.

So many models, which could now become reality and integrate our collections of minifigs even if they are not necessarily significant in the Star Wars universe.

By the way, if you like astromech droids, go to this site, you will be served ....