Sega Toys presented the new Home Star R2-D2 planetarium at Christmas Toy Fair 2011, the first of their planetariums to be based off an actual character of any kind. Like all of their previous Home Star planetariums, the R2-D2 planetarium has a brilliant display showing roughly 10,000 stars. The R2-D2 unit does have one significant difference from it’s predecessors though; it projects the Death Star onto your ceiling. That’s right.
“In our Home Star series of home planetariums, this is the first version featuring a character.”
“Lots of other companies make home planetariums, but the Home Star series uses the same optical projection system as commercial planetariums. Home Star planetariums can show about 10,000 stars.”
“As well as being shaped like R2-D2 from Star Wars, this planetarium enables users to find “digital stars,” which don’t actually exist, in the night sky that it projects.”
“One reason is that customers actually need that kind of feature. Another reason is that we wanted to create a really inspiring product, by giving the Home Star series a closer connection with Star Wars. That’s how we came up with this idea.”
“We hope that people who haven’t used a Home Star planetarium before will find this product attractive, and start enjoying the night sky at home.”
[stream provider=youtube flv=x:/youtu.be/1oc8yFnDvVI embed=true share=false width=640 height=480 dock=true controlbar=over bandwidth=high autostart=false /]
This Video is provided to you by DigInfo.tv
The 8 inch tall Droid will be hitting stores in Japan next month at a price of around 6800 yen, which is roughly $90, depending on the exchange rate. The Home Star R2-D2 planetarium projection runs off a 1 Watt white LED and 3 AAA batteries, for a continuous 3 hours of stargazing. If you’re stateside and this is the droid you’re looking for, you can pick it up in online import stores like Japan Trend Shop or JBox.
