My ongoing quest for a freakishly gold Kenner C-3PO

by Bill Cable
on 2026-01-14, 10:07:11

Hello readers! Happy New Year (14 days too late). How about we start out 2026 with a deep cut?

Back in 2004, as part of my character focus goal of getting C-3PO on every Kenner cardback, I scored a MOC that stood out. I posted about the find in the RebelScum Vintage Forum here: https://forum.rebelscum.com/threads/my-freakishly-gold-c-3po.880260/

This MOC was just your standard ESB41 blue "group photo" card, but the figure itself was just much, much more golden. I dubbed it my "freakishly gold" C-3PO, and inquired whether anybody had one with such a deep gold hue. A few chimed in that theirs was very gold, but I never saw any that matched mine.

Thus began my quest to score a loose freakishly gold 3PO for my collection. It's been TWO FREAKING DECADES without success. A few weeks ago, during my daily eBay searches, I came across a promising candidate.

Now, I've won many, many eBay auctions in my quest where the photos looked deeply gold, but when I got the figure in-hand it was just regular. Cameras always have a hard time accurately capturing the hue of C-3POs. And I'm certain over the years I've been a victim to sellers who tweaked their photos in Photoshop to make their figures look deeper gold. But this one didn't appear to be altered, the background was plain white, and the hue was consistent from one photo to another. $30 is more than I'd typically drop on one of these, but I decided to take the risk.

When the figure arrived, I was quite happy. It is indeed very deeply gold. But was it freakishly gold? It was time to compare...

As you can see, it is every so slightly less freakishly gold than my MOC. But wow is it close!

It's by far the closest loose figure I've scored. Agonizingly close. I am very tempted to declare my quest over... but I want an exact match. Which is insane because the hue of these figures was always subject to the variability of whatever mixture of pigments some random employee decided to dump into the vac-metalizing vat on any particular day.

Still, it's pretty darn gold...

It's the goldest I've found. It's even a deeper gold that Takara 3POs, and they're notoriously deeply gold. I'm thrilled to have it. But... I think I gotta say the hunt will continue.