Here is yet another early Saga Collection figure that is a (slightly retooled) repack from earlier in the line.  In this case, it’s from the 2002 (Blue) SAGA Deluxe line.  That deluxe figure set was actually kind of awesome at the time, and still maintains a decent bit of collector value today.  However, this figure is nothing more than a stripped down version of the predecessor.  More on that in a bit.

This C-3PO has a decent sculpt.  Despite only being 5POA, it looks nice, and was one of the better protocol droid sculpts in the early years of the modern line.  The paint application made him sufficiently…second-hand looking.  Unfortunately, the coloring is off, and lacks the dull metallic look of the film version.

The figure comes with the swappable heads of C-3PO as well as a red battle droid.  The heads pop in and out easily to give you two versions of Threepio from the Arena battle.  If you choose the battle droid version, you can use the backpack (although not screen accurate) and blaster accessories to complete the look.  Sadly, he doesn’t really hold the blaster all that well.  If you opt for the full C-3PO look, then he works for any AOTC diorama.

The problem with the figure is that it loses much of what made it cool in 2002.  Most importantly, it lacks the companion battle droid body. This would have made an excellent 2-pack.  The deluxe offering not only came with both, but also included a piece of the Geonosian assembly line which has a feature to swap the heads.  Also, whole thing attached to the Arena Playset along with other modular sets.  Neat!  Finally,  small magnets in both heads interacted with the 2002 SAGA R2-D2, so that you could re-enact the scene where Artoo saves Threepio (again).  All of this was dropped for this version.

So this isn’t as good as the 2002 release on which it is based, as it is lacking pretty much all the versatility of that deluxe version.  Perhaps the only redeeming quality is that by dropping the small magnets in the heads, it makes this TSC release a bit more realistic.  Frankly, it’s not a big deal, since the magnets are tiny and positioned at the tops of the heads, so there’s almost no aesthetic trade-off. But that tiny bit of difference might have saved this from obsolescence, except for one problem.

This figure is utterly annihilated by the phenomenal C-3PO from the 2010 Legacy Collection Geonosian Arena Showdown Target 2-pack.  The sculpt, metallic finish, and superior articulation make it light years better than this TSC C-3PO. 

This is a step back in almost every way from the deluxe version that preceeded it by 4 years, and is almost laughable when compared to the tremendous TLC figure that came 4 years later.  It’s not really a bad figure, it’s just that there’s a far superior AOTC figure available.  It gets a 5/10, but we give it the dreaded “obsolete” status.  It can safely be retired.