The Star Wars Black Series store exclusive train keeps a rolling this week with the Target exclusive Droid Technician Babu Frik and his accessory C-3P0. Let’s take a look!
Red and Black Box. Nice character Art. Moving on.
Actually, on a pre-movie release figure like it is always nice to read the little descriptions of the new characters to get some sort of sense of who they are. Babu Frik is a droid expert and since we see him working on 3PO in the trailer, that tracks.
Babu Frik comes with an entire C-3PO figure and a Chewbacca Bandolier and Bowcaster. We’ve seen promo art of 3PO holding Chewie and Rey’s weapons, so this release felt somewhat inevitable with it’s tempting amount of inherent parts re-use.
The Bowcaster and Bandolier look like they come straight from the TFA Chewbacca, though the bandolier feels like a softer plastic than the previous bandolier. It is kind of weird that a 3PO figure holds Chewie’s Bowcaster better than Chewie does, but thanks to the additional articulation and gun holding hands from 4-LOM, he actually does.
The 3PO figure does appear to be re-use of previous 3PO and Protocol Droid figures and originally I thought it was the same figure as the one that came with the Disneyland Droid Depot set because of the more articulated arms.
However, the mid-torso is different with a more messy wiring set up (like TFA 3PO) and the head has a removeable covering plate. The messy wire torso makes him slightly taller.
The visible “skull” underneath looks appropriately like the 3PO from Episode I when he didn’t have coverings and has a lot of great wire and metal frame detail.
The articulation is very good on this figure. The mid torso joint alone gets a great range of motion which is helpful getting 3PO into his classic poses.
The hands pop off easily, so it would have been really nice to include some relaxed hands for a more classic 3PO look, but I love the additional bicep swivel and elbow hinges they added to these arms when they made 4-LOM working their way into more 3PO figures. They really should have done this on the first one, but I appreciate when a company fixes their mistakes in later releases.
The paint is also very shiny, if a little more burnished gold than previous figures. I think it looks great, and even though it doesn’t quite reach the high a vac-metal 3PO would for me, it works.
The eyes are painted with a heat reactive effect so when it’s cold his eyes will go red. It’s a fun little gimmick, though I have to say I really like the way they eyes look normally. The paint effectively conveys how you can sometimes tell there are three lights in each eye. I do wonder if it might have been better to make the red the standard mode and white the cold reaction since this figure is specific to this moment in the film.
Babu Frik is the cutest, tiniest little figure we’ve got in the Black Series so far (though I imagine Hasbro’s got something even cuter for us coming down the pike). The character design feels perfectly Star Wars to me, especially leaning into the Henson feel of some of the Return of the Jedi creatures.
He’s got a surprising amount of articulation for such a little guy with ball and socket arms, a swivel waist, and a hinged visor. I’m also really glad that he stands up and balances well. I was a little worried the top-heavy design would have him toppling frequently, but he stands stably.
The paint is also fairly detailed with a overspray for his fleshtone and some neat symbols on his helmet.
Overall I’m glad I picked up this exclusive. It’s a very good basic 3PO and Babu Frik is a cool little figure in his own right.
