Bring your own hacksaw (see today’s video)

Brilliant move, Disney, to reassure Star Wars fans about the new caretakers of the universe by rolling the ball-with-a-head droid BB-8 onto the stage at the Star Wars Celebration. Not only is the droid itself pretty great, a perfect re-imagination of that original trilogy flavor, but it’s actually a machine. In real life, we mean. BB-8 is a practical effect, not just a blob of CGI like so many others that stained the prequels (and the legacy of the entire series). That little droid, with its head hovering impossibly over a spinning sphere of a body, managed to, against all odds, restore a sense of actual wonder to Star Wars.

BB-8 also stoked a lust for Star Wars merchandise unseen since you had to send in coupons to get Boba Fett. How do they do that? was quickly followed by How do I get one? I want one! IwantarealonerightnowHOWDOIGETONE?!?

You can’t. Not a real one. Not… quite… yet.

Sphero is indeed prepping its own official BB-8 for release to the public at an unknown date. Since the real BB-8 was essentially based on a Sphero, it makes sense. And it means you can hack one yourself, with a saw, some glue, and a devil-may-care attitude toward product warranty.

It took Make magazine’s Christian Paulsen less than a day to hack a Sphero into his own working BB-8. And, we bet, a lot less money than the actual BB-8 will cost, even considering his time.

If you just can’t wait and you want to try your hand at hacking one up, or you want to build your Sphero-piloting skillz now so you’re ready to roll when BB-8 comes out, you came to the right wretched hive of fun and revelry. Get this Sphero 2.0 right now. It’s the closest thing to a BB-8 you can buy.

Did you get that? IT’S ALMOST A BB-8! Almost all the fun of a BB-8 without all that hacking and sawing! It also includes a rubber Nubby Cover for rolling over rugged terrain, and some augmented-reality game apps that may or may not be more fun than just driving it around in real life. For now, Sphero is the most ball-droid fun in the known universe.

Man, why didn’t we think of this earlier? All it takes to boost a product’s perceived value is to have it featured as a main character in the most popular movie franchise of all time. There’s nothing wrong with any product that a $200 million Hollywood budget can’t fix!

Well, see you guys later. We’re headed to Hollywood to start pitching Star Wars Episode VIII: Speaker Docks From Beyond The Galaxy.