R-3PO (7879) Lego Star Wars Minifigure Review

Now I thought I had seen The Empire Strikes Back a few times.  If not measured in the thousands, certainly in the high hundreds.  But for the life of me I could not recall a red protocol droid in Echo Base on Hoth.  A white protocol droid – yes, clear as day in the command centre.

I thought my powers of observation were pretty good, although the last few times I watched the film with an inquisitive child sat next to me – it has not been quite the same:  “What do Taun-Tans eat daddy?” Does snow really burn daddy? (Probe Droid Crater at the start of the film) and boy do I rue the day when I first mentioned force ghosts!

So having sat down in peace to watch the film with the sole intention of spotting a red protocol droid I succeeded.  He appears in two scenes in the hangar bay of Echo Base.  When Solo returns to the base on Taun-Taun at the start of the film having placed his sensors, R-3PO walks round the front of an X-Wing.   You see him again loitering in the hangar just prior to Princess Leia briefing the pilots before the battle.

As a relatively recent collector, personally I would have much preferred the white protocol droid K-3PO, but he appeared in the 2007 set 7666 Hoth Rebel Base, unfortunately prior to my Lego and Star Wars re-awakening/resurrection.

Read a little deeper and you find that R-3PO has a backstory courtesy of the Star Wars Customizable Card Game released in 1996.  Well I’m overwhelmed (Please feel free to replace with the more emotive quote from Al Pacino’s character in the film Heat from 1995).  So he is a protocol droid that has been re-programmed in a counter espionage role and sports a tattoo on his left posterior that reads “Thank The Maker”.

Enough flannelling around, onto the minifigure.  R-3PO is a unique minifigure that can only be found in the 7879 Hoth Echo Base set released in 2011.  And it’s probably fair to say that Lego fans are not going to be crying out for a second variant any time soon.

The minifigure is composed of 3 pieces and is not equipped with any accessories or weapons.

In appearance the head, torso and legs resemble the C-3PO minifigure variant that we have seen from 2008 up to the 2012 redesign, with the exception that the pieces are a crimson red.  So we have the same black detailing breastplates and concentric zone detailing on the front of the Torso and black detailing on the rear.  Crimson red legs.  And no Tattoo on the posterior.  Boo.

Interestingly, reading some of the set reviews from 2011 I see a lot of excitement around this minifigure – how cool he is etc.  Personally I don’t see it and get far more excited about the Luke, Han and Leia minifigures in this set.

Perhaps part of the problem is that my first protocol droid minifigure was the 2012 C-3PO redesign found in 9490 Droid Escape.  This variant shows you how minifigure protocol droids have evolved.  As a bare minimum it would have been nice to see yellow photoreceptors (eyes) on R-3PO against the crimson red background.

In short if you don’t have access to a chemistry graduate who knows the formula for changing a gold C-3PO variant into a crimson shade then you are probably going to get some enjoyment out of this minifigure.  It left me a little non-plussed, but tell us what you think…

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