Created September 2005
Story and Images by David Syczylo (Boba Binks)

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE GOLD
A fussy and worry-prone protocol droid, C-3PO was cobbled together from
discarded scrap and salvage by a nine-year old prodigy on the desert planet
Tatooine. Young Anakin Skywalker had intended the homemade droid to help his mother, Shmi. With limited resources, the droid that Anakin built was truly
remarkable. It lacked an outer shell, though, and Threepio had to live with
the indignity of being "naked," with his parts and wiring showing.

Tragedy struck the Lars family when savage Tusken Raiders abducted Shmi. A
month after this sad event, Anakin Skywalker suddenly returned to Tatooine,
seeking out his mother. There was no time for sentimental reunions, Anakin
sped off into the desert, and returned with Shmi's body. After a quiet funeral, Anakin and Padmé left on an important mission to rescue Obi-Wan Kenobi. Since Threepio was the rightful property of Anakin, the Larse’s let the young Jedi take the protocol droid with him. This marked the first time the nervous Threepio had ever been aboard a starship.

Years later, Threepio would become the property of the Royal House of
Alderaan, an influential family of nobles with ties to the growing Rebel
Alliance. The two droids were aboard Princess Leia Organa's consular vessel
when an Imperial Star Destroyer due to attacked it suspected complicity in
Rebel actions. The vessel crippled, Leia stored vital Rebel information in
Artoo's memory systems -- unbeknownst to Threepio. Artoo then took it upon
himself to complete Leia's failed mission, though Threepio knew nothing of
its details.

R2-D2 counterpart to C-3PO commandeered an escape pod, and rocketed away from the captured craft, crash-landing on the barren desert world of Tatooine. There, the droids were taken captive by Jawa traders, and sold to moisture farmer Owen Lars and his nephew Luke Skywalker. Determined to complete his mission of finding famed war hero General Obi-Wan Kenobi, Artoo ran away in the middle of the night, leaving Threepio and Luke to search for him the next morning. This started an incredible chain of events that saw Threepio catapulted into an adventure beyond his imagination. Threepio and Artoo were crucial in assisting Luke spearhead a rescue mission to free Princess Leia from the heart of the gargantuan Imperial space station, the Death Star.

Having returned to the Alliance base with Princess Leia, Threepio and Artoo continued to be mainstays with the core group of Rebel heroes. During the relocation to Hoth, Threepio braved having his joints frozen by subzero temperatures to assist in Echo Base's command centers. Threepio's fluency in millions of languages allowed him to postulate that an intercepted signal was in fact an Imperial code, alerting the Rebels to the presence of a probe droid dangerously close to their base. During the evacuation from Hoth, Threepio and Artoo were separated. Threepio, accompanying Princess Leia, left Hoth aboard Captain Han Solo's recalcitrant freighter, the Millennium Falcon.

During a respite in the Bespin system, in the pastel-hued corridors of Cloud City, an Imperial Stormtrooper blasted Threepio into pieces. His shattered remains were the first clue to the Rebel fugitives that Cloud City was an Imperial trap. The Wookiee Chewbacca attempted to piece together Threepio's remains, but lack of time and resources meant that Threepio would have to remain incomplete for the time being. Gentle Giant has created a Chewbacca statue with the dismantled C-3PO on his back.

During a daring mission to rescue a captive Han Solo from the loathsome gangster Jabba the Hutt, Threepio and Artoo were sent into the Hutt's palace
on Tatooine. There, they became the gristly crime lord's property. Threepio
was pressed into service as Jabba's translator until Luke Skywalker came to
rescue his friends.

Shortly thereafter, Threepio accompanied the Rebel strike force that was sent to knock out the Imperial shield generator on Endor. Although some would question the addition of a protocol droid on this military mission, it ended up quite fortunate that Threepio went along. On Endor, the strike team encountered an indigenous species of primitives that worshipped the golden droid as a god. The Ewoks, a tree-dwelling tribal people, proved to be valuable allies. Were it not for their allegiance, which was won by Threepio's impressive retelling of key events of the Galactic Civil War, the Rebellion would not have been victorious at the decisive Battle of Endor. With all of this in C-3PO’s history Gentle Giants recaptured the exact likeness of C-3PO in their statue line of collectibles. The C- 3PO statue stands 12” tall and is gold plated.