For many years now, my action figure collecting has been pretty narrowly focused: 6-inch Marvel and DC superheroes. Very rarely do I venture off the reservation. But my relationship with Star Wars goes all the way back to the original 1978 vintage figures. While I managed to cut the tie to the 4-inch figures somewhere along the way, the appearance of 6-inch articulated figures has been difficult to resist.
But two years into Hasbro’s Black Series, and my most wanted figure was nowhere in sight. Threepio? Threepio? Where could he be?!
Enter: The Fwoosh. This has always been a great place for me to learn about toys, and when RoboKillah and some others began the constant drumbeat about Bandai model kits, it caught my attention. How could a regular, sprue kit model be considered akin to an action figure? A model is not an action figure! Right?
That was my thinking. But then I saw the beauty that is the C-3PO kit from Bandai. I looked around and noticed that a 6-inch Hasbro Threepio was nowhere in sight (not to mention I had my doubts about how well a mass-market version of C-3PO would be executed in the Black Series), so I took the plunge.
When this imported droid arrived, I opened the box, took a long stare at the gazillion tiny parts I would have to assemble . . . and I closed it up and let it sit on a desk for about three months.
Finally, a sick day kept me home for a long weekend and I set to work (with Robo’s helpful YouTube tutorial playing close at hand) putting together this bad boy.
I couldn’t be happier with the end result: a perfectly scaled 1/12 C-3PO with all the shiny vac metal you’d expect, with a sculpt that’s an absolutely perfect likeness, and even with all the articulation you’d need from a protocol droid. It’s easily my favorite figure of 2015.
And now I have the Bandai model kit R2-D2 waiting for my next sick day.
