C-3PO (Resistance Base) - TBS [P3] - Six Inch Figures (29)

A fastidious and worry-prone protocol droid, C-3PO longs for more peaceful times, but his continued service to Princess Leia keeps him in the frontlines of galactic conflict.

You got a red arm stuck in my C-3PO! No, you got a C-3PO stuck in my red arm! Obviously there will be no meeting of the minds for those on opposite ends of the opinion spectrum when it comes to the new look of C-3PO as he appeared in Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. But one thing that all Star Wars collectors can probably agree on that C-3PO (Resistance Base) SHOULDN’T have been the first C-3PO 6” figure released into the main line. (By the way, how does a droid go from a red arm to a gold arm without any rhyme or reason in one film? He starts off with an arm that looks like it was ripped off of R-3PO, but at the Resistance Base gathering he is seen with a gold arm. Whatever.) Maybe you’re excited for an Episode VII version of C-3PO and that’s great. But Hasbro should be making the Original Trilogy versions first. This is a collectors’ line, isn’t it? To add a little bit of salt into the wound, what makes matters worse is that the Original Trilogy version of C-3PO is a Walgreens exclusive. (It’s clear where Hasbro’s priorities are when it comes to Star Wars action figures, isn’t it?) Hopefully it will be an easily attainable exclusive for those that want the “real” things. Perhaps it’s more important to focus of the good brought forth by C-3PO (Resistance Base) into The Black Series [Phase III] 6” line. It’s a fine figure as far as the sculpt is concerned. But it also feels like it’s missing something.

At face value, we have very little to complain about when it comes to C-3PO (Resistance Base). It looks like C-3PO. It feels like C-3PO. It even moves like C-3PO. For all intents and purposes this IS C-3PO, just rescaled. So what’s the problem? Well, when JTA broke the news that C-3PO was indeed coming into the 6” line about two years before it was officially confirmed, Hasbro unequivocally assured us that this IF they did make C-3PO in The Black Series 6” line, he would come vac-metallized. Now that we have the final figure, it’s obvious that this didn’t come to pass. A major environmental issue, fans should basically never expect to see a vac-metallized C-3PO action figure ever again. How sad is that? We digress. Obviously the lack of shiny armor is a disappointment, but to be fair Hasbro did the next best thing by selecting a gold color that has metallic properties and picks up light nicely. It allows the human eye to see an illusion of a metal finish, which works fairly well here. In short, all is not lost. C-3PO (Resistance Base) has a few colorful finer paint details. They’ve all been beautifully applied. The wires in his belly and those three dots in each of his photoreceptors are all perfectly applied. C-3PO (Resistance Base) looks very nice. That is not arguable.

The articulation on C-3PO (Resistance Base) is interesting. At first glance it appears the figure has articulation that the onscreen character doesn’t have and the figure doesn’t have articulation that the onscreen character does. Maybe this ultimately just balances out in the end, but we’re not sure if we fully agree with the approach Hasbro has taken here, although the articulation they gave C-3PO (Resistance Base) give him generous movement. A part of us wants to see some articulation in the elbows. But then we are reminded of the onscreen character and they don’t seem to move all that much in any of the films. So maybe Hasbro is right here. Still, Sideshow’s C-3PO 1:6 Scale Figure has hinge-jointed elbows, so we’d imagine that this would be what the onscreen costume had. The Black Series [Phase III] 6” C-3PO (Resistance Base) definitely looks too stiff in the arms, but at the same time it looks passable. It sort of works. The rest of C-3PO (Resistance Base) comes with the articulation you’d expect him to have. And Hasbro has done a wonderful job in working them into the figure. Collectors of this line should be satisfied with what Hasbro has provided here. Aesthetically, C-3PO (Resistance Base) works, but we personally can’t call him definitive. Maybe fans of the line will be able to rank him as such, but for us he needs a little more fine tuning before we’re willing to go that far praising him.