The Star Wars comics have been a little hit-or-miss with me and one of the hits for my taste is Dr. Aphra and her droid friends BT-1 and 0-0-0 so I’m glad we are getting figures in 1/12 scale. 0-0-0, Triple Zero, or just Trip is a sociopathic artificial intelligence installed in a protocol body. Bandai released a Star Wars Celebration Exclusive version of 0-0-0 and a friend was kind enough to pick one up for me, so let’s take a look!
Today was a lazy Sunday, so I spent a few pleasant hours putting this murder-droid together. I have already built the Threepio kit, so I was already familiar with some of the ins and outs and pitfalls of construction.
The box is a plain gloss black with Trip’s designation on the front and some unreadables (thanks, Robo) on the sides. The directions are the directions from the Threepio kit, however there is an extra page that tells you what to omit and gives some paint color tips.
If you aren’t familiar with putting together these model kits, I suggest you grab the following tools before starting:
- Sprue cutters (Bandai has a brand that works great and are cheap to find on Amazon)
- Some fine sandpaper
- Tweezers (some of the pieces are too small for my sausage fingers)
One of the first parts that’s easy to miss is you need to add the silver decals to the inside of the model’s head before you put the translucent red eyepieces on.
One modification I make to these protocol droid models is I don’t apply the provided stickers to the mid torso for the wires. I find that the sticker doesn’t work well because the torso is bumpy.
What I like to do is go over the wires very lightly with paint. Since they are raised, I almost work it like drybrushing.
The legs do have an option part for the inside of the back of the leg.
You can either add a piece that looks like a wire area similar to the torso or straight metal. I chose the metal part because I don’t care for the wire stickers and the wire detail was extremely fine. Too fine for me to paint well.
Another modification I make is I put a dab of glue on these little pieces on the sides of the knee. They aren’t very securely attached and seem like the kind of thing that will go flying away if the figure falls over.
You have two hand options and enough parts to build both, so I go ahead and do it even though they aren’t terribly different. The bent hands have a place where you can attach an included communicator piece and they swap easily.
The back panel can also be removed and shows off a neat little control panel with some translucent red pieces. It might be cool just to leave off to add a little more visual interest to this guy.
The sculpting work on this figure is pretty darn great and it captures the protocol droid look very well with a lot of sharp detail.
He’s about the same size as the Hasbro Threepio body, but I like the proportions on the model kit a bit better.
There are a lot of articulation points. Trip has:
- Ball and socket head, neck, and mid-torso
- Swivel/hinge hips, shoulders, and feet
- Single hinged knees and elbows
- Bicep and wrist swivel
The figure’s movement is somewhat limited despite all the articulation. The swivel/hinges don’t get a lot of movement, but the arms, torso and head all move okay and allow for plenty of protocol droid type movement.
Paint is really up to you, but I think the stock gloss black most of the figure is cast in works perfectly for Triple Zero. It’s really a gloss black and not metallic black, but I’ve seen Trip portrayed a variety of ways and this works for me.
Overall, this model kit was the perfect project for a lazy Sunday afternoon and the final figure is a great display piece if not as sturdy as a regular toy. I’ll be curious to see how the Hasbro version stacks up and this model will feel a lot more at home when the Hasbro BT and Aphra arrive.
It seems like Bandai is phasing out the Star Wars model kits, concentrating mainly on repaints of the older models. That’s a shame, but there is still a lot they could do with this base body with just repaints like K-3PO, TC-14, and R-3PO. With a few new pieces they could make the Death Star Droid and variants of that. What would you want to see?
