You might not recognize him because of the red arm, but Hasbro has finally released C-3PO in the Black Series 6-inch line. In a somewhat puzzling move, the red arm version from The Force Awakens is getting a wider release than the classic trilogy version (a Walgreens exclusive). Let’s take a look at C-3PO!
Threepio comes with nothing but himself, which is a little disappointing. I wish Hasbro could have thrown something cool in with him like a simple mouse droid figure or, ideally, a swappable left arm to create a uniformly gold Threepio.
The sculpt on C-3PO is pretty nice with sharp details on the body. It does suffer a little softness on parts of the head sculpt, especially around the eyes and nose. I do wish the neck was a teensy bit higher, but that’s a bit of a nitpick. He does seem a little short when doing direct comparisons to figures like Luke, but he looks good in a group. It does make him look nicer with the undersized R2.
Threepio has almost standard Black Series articulation with the following POA:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, neck, wrists, hips and ankles
- Ball-and-socket head and torso
- Single-hinged knees
- Thigh swivel
- Shoulder coverings swivel
The main missing articulation point is the elbows as the arm is one solid piece from shoulder to wrist.
The lack of an elbow hinge/swivel joint is disappointing, though I can understand that the tiny engineering required to get the pistons to move is more than Hasbro is either willing or able to do in this line. I’m actually okay with the choice to keep the pistons rather than articulate the elbows, but what really bugs me when posing is the lack of the bicep swivel.
The Hasbro arm articulation scheme depends on the combination of the shoulder and elbow swivel hinge to mimic natural movement. When you remove the elbow swivel, the arms lose a lot of natural movement and it makes posing frustrating. The way the arms rest is not 100 percent where I would like them for a perfect Threepio pose. I kept wanting to swivel the arms out slightly, but couldn’t. The picture above shows the Bandai figure moving the left arm outward, the Black Series figure can’t do this simple movement.
That said, you can hit a lot of great Threepio poses with this figure. The leg movement is impressive and the neck and mid-torso ball-and-socket joints have nice range and work well to achieve some good Threepio poses.
It’s pretty close to the mark, but it doesn’t quite hit it. I still had a ton of fun taking pictures of this figure despite the articulation issues.
There was a lot of early criticism about the paint job on this figure, and while nothing beats a well-weathered vac-metal, the shiny gold on this figure looks pretty great and does a nice job representing the duller finish Threepio has in The Force Awakens.
The red arm could use a wash or something because it looks really plastic and plain next to the gold paint. Oddly enough, I saw this figure again on the pegs at Target today and it had a nicer, darker red paint job, so maybe there is a running change or maybe the finish varies.
I don’t think they quite centered the eye dots on my figure either. I’ve seen it look better on other figures, but he paint on the torso wires looks great and is very detailed.
Even though Threepio is the last of the main characters to see release in the Black Series line, there have been no shortage of 6-inch scaled figures of our favorite fussy protocol droid. There are already Revoltech, Mafex, and Bandai model kit figures available. Robo does a nice comparison to these in his video:
Each version has different flaws and different things featured. I’m particularly enamored of the shiny Bandai model kit, but I do like how solid and playable this figure is.
VeeBee once mentioned an idea on the Fwooshcast that stuck with me. The gist of it was that sometimes the appeal of mass retail figures is they can take a beating and are still playable. He called it “bathtub ready” because unlike customs that will always have a nicer finish, the mass retail fig can withstand being dunked in the tub.
While I won’t be taking baths with any of my figures any time soon, I do think I would feel better about taking this Threepio with me on an outdoor shoot over the other versions I have.
It is a flawed figure, but surprisingly fun despite those flaws and I’m looking forward to tracking down the Walgreens version.
