At last! After nearly a year in waiting, Droid Factory has finally launched at Star Traders in Disneyland Anaheim! MouseWait has the photo confirmation and big thanks to Yakface.com for the heads up!

The Disney booth was ripe with activity as Celebrationers clamored for their Star Wars meets Mouse themed exclusives. Their Holographic Leia Vinylmation that was limited to 2,500 pieces sold out by Saturday.

It's called a good problem for Disney but less than ideal for vacationing collectors. Dan Curto is at Disney Star Wars Weekends and reported some changes with the Droid Factory packaging and availability of parts.

Hasbro's Star Wars action figure line has a long history of including "bonus" pack-ins with each figure: Freeze Frames, 3-D dioramas, Commtech Chips, Force Files, display stands, mini-hologram figures, collector coins, weapons lockers, and most recently...battle cards and battle dice.

Because we can't get enough of the awesomeness of this new shop at Disney Tatooine Traders, here's video of the Droid Factory stand courtesy of Attractions magazine.

The biggest chatter of the year comes from Florida, where Droid Factory is being deployed at Disney Hollywood Studios. You can build your own Astromech Droid, but what does the whole set-up look like? Our pal Chuck sent us some awesome images over teh Twitter, and you can click through to see them (and follow him) after the break.

First up, one of our pals on Twitter tweeted us last night that the Star Tours Astromech Droids would run about $12.95 each, or 2 for $18.95.  This article shows more pictures of retooled heads and other changes, and the claim that only the R6, R8, and R9 heads are exclusive is something of a half-truth-- remember, the R5 droids appear to have no antennas this time around, plus all the droids have holes in their head.

Galactic Hunter: The easiest and hardest question to tackle was partially answered at Celebration V. As collectors asked whether the Young Boba Fett's Slave I from The Clone Wars animated series would lead to Slave 1 from The Empire Strikes Back, the answer was simple and obvious —'Yes, if it sells well enough.' So there's an additional sales pitch! The question is, hypothetically (aside from paint ops) what changes could/would be made, and what figures (again hypothetically) would the team like to see included? This would be the perfect chance to get a mustachioed Bespin Guard out, or is he going to get the fully carded treatment?

Galactic Hunter: Did all of the children swapping droid parts (and showing off their "kitbash" droids) at the along with the adults offering to buy them do anything to persuade Team Star Wars to put together a little Build-A-Droid/Droid Factory playset? (It can be mostly cardboard even - it's obvious that the droids are the focus and play pattern. That was COOL!)

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Press Release:

Hasbro will be hosting the Galactic Swap Meet at the Hasbro booth at Celebration V!  Bring your surplus Build-a-Droid parts and trade with us, and other fans, as our booth becomes the hub for some serious droid-part-swapping!
 
We will have a limited supply of complete parts available for 14 of the buildable droids from the Legacy/Droid Factory basic figure line (see attached poster for exact droids we will have). Just bring your extra Legacy/Droid Factory parts and trade them 1-for-1 for parts you need to complete your unfinished droids.
 
Even if you don’t see the droids for which you need parts on the list, bring what you have anyway... there’s always a chance that another fan will have what you need.
 
To ensure that as many people as possible can complete their droids, we ask that only 2 Droid pieces be exchanged per person per day.

[Editor's Note: Massive thanks to the Boss for putting this together.]