This cup was used in 1983 at 7-11 stores for Slurpee frozen drinks. The first thing that struck me when I got it in hand was how small it was. It’s apparently a 16-ounce cup, though, which is probably about the same as the current “small” size. We don’t have any 7-11 stores in the area, but my impression of Slurpees is that they usually come in much larger sizes than this.

In any case, it is decorated with Jabba’s Sail Barge on one side and C-3PO, Yak Face and Ree Yees on the other. They made several other designs as well. This one has yellowed rather badly with age, although it’s made of a thick enough plastic that I imagine many people took them home and saved them, rather than just tossing them after drinking.

Strangely, this is the first gift wrap to make its way into my collection. I’m not sure if it’s because they don’t normally put Jabba on wrapping paper, or because wrapping paper is such a disposable commodity that people don’t normally collect it. Probably a bit of both.

The label has no date on it, but the fact that it uses the CGI version of Jabba obviously puts it at least in the late 90s, after the “Special Editions” were released. The color scheme certainly has a 90′s feel to it, but it’s hard to say exactly when it was made.

There’s something kind of hilarious about this whole design.

This is some very impressive custom work! Joe Amaro sculpted these figures to be in scale with Hasbro’s upcoming line of 6″ Star Wars figures, aka the “Black Series.” Joe is a professional sculptor, but apparently did this for his own satisfaction, and to accompany the upcoming Black Series Boba Fett figure. What a stellar job. I know I’d buy one of these. Click through to his site for more pictures, some “making of” shots, and a picture of his next figure — a Gamorrean Guard!

In honor of May the Fourth, Sideshow Collectibles is giving away a very nice set of 1/6 scale Jabba’s Palace figures. It’s not the complete lineup, as it’s missing Gamorrean Guards and the archway piece, but it’s a fantastic selection of stuff. I’ll be sitting this one out, of course, since I have everything already.

I haven’t been able to figure out who produced this shirt, but it’s pretty cool. It has Jabba, Salacious Crumb, a Gamorrean Guard, and the rancor, with a tusken raider in the background. About all I can say for sure is that it’s an adult size.

Has anyone seen this one before, or know who produced it?

It’s funny, but there are still Jabba-related products out there that I’ve never seen before. This is one of them. Until it popped up on eBay, I had no idea that it existed. According to the Star Wars Collector’s Archive, Sales Corporation made hats for several different characters: Darth Vader, C-3PO, R2-D2, Paploo (the ewok), Chewbacca and the Gamorrean Guard. Most of those choices make sense, since they’re major characters, and while Paploo isn’t anybody’s favorite ewok, he was probably more of a placeholder for ewoks in general.

The Gamorrean though is a bit of a head-scratcher. It’s really interesting that the Gamorreans got so many clothing items and collectibles dedicated to them, given the fact that the they were essentially background characters who did very little and said nothing. This isn’t even the only vintage Gamorrean hat I have! There’s also a baseball cap, also by Sales Corporation. In fact, I’m thinking of doing a little article listing all of the Gamorrean Guard items that have been made. It should be fun.

Maybe sometime my son can wear this and I can wear one of my Jabba hats (like this one, this one, this one or this one.)

This is an older piece of artwork, but I stumbled upon it for the first time a few weeks ago and contacted UK-based artist Matt Dixon to see if I could get a print. It’s a clever concept. It sort of illustrates how Leia turned the tables on Jabba in the film, but this time she’s making him her pet (just as Jabba did to her) rather than strangling him. I like the “J” dog tag.

The title of the piece is “Walkies!” which is a reference to famed dog trainer Barbara Woodhouse, who always used to use that phrase when talking her dogs out for a walk to encourage them to do their business. The print is an 8×10.

A couple of years ago, I got a sketch card by John Soukup from the Topps Galaxy Series 5 (here’s his DeviantArt page). I like it a lot and have it framed it my office. So I was quite interested when I saw some painted wooden Star Wars figures that he made being sold on eBay. I had never seen them before, but apparently he’s made quite a number of these, and for properties other than Star Wars, as well.

I won Jabba and Han in Carbonite and since the seller turned out to be John himself, I inquired about making some others, which he kindly agreed to. They’re made out of 3/4″ thick wood that’s been cut into simple shapes and then painted appropriately.

They’re simple in a way, and certainly have a bit of a folk art feel to them, but they’re very well done (and not too expensive either). The humanoid figures are around 3.5″ tall (which makes them basically in scale with vintage and modern Star Wars figures, now that I think about it), while the tallest is the rancor at about 5″ tall.

My favorites are probably Jabba, the rancor, the Gamorrean and Max Rebo. Here are some individual shots so you can get a better look at the detail. They’re painted all the way around. I particularly like the rancor’s backside

I’m tempted to get more, but it’s hard to know where to stop when Jabba’s Palace is concerned — there’s just so many characters!

This is a Star Warsy version of the classic electronic Operation game. Instead of operating on what I can only assume is a late-stage alcoholic, you’re trying to remove various foreign objects from R2-D2 (and a couple from C-3PO), but the basic concept is the same.

It’s called a “silly skill game” on the box, and I guess that’s a pretty accurate description. I suppose you do need a steady hand to be able to remove the items in the cavities with the tweezers without touching the sides, but I found it to be surprisingly easy. My son had a slightly harder time, but we were both able to do it pretty easily, which made it a lot less tense than I had remembered the game being as a kid. If you do touch the side, a sound clip from R2 or C-3PO is played. The “screaming” R2 seemed very appropriate, but some of the other clips (like C-3PO saying that he would gladly donate any of his circuits or gears) seemed a little out of place.

I know what you’re thinking. What does this have to do with Jabba? The pieces you’re removing have some Star Wars connection, like a “Rusty Restraining Bolt,” a “Bad Motivator,” or an “Overweight Glob of Grease.” Of course that phrase was originally said by C-3PO of R2 in A New Hope, but they’ve chosen to represent it as everyone’s favorite Hutt.

And yeah, I did kind of buy the game just to get this piece (which now lives on one of my collection shelves), but I got it cheaply second hand, and my son and I also had some fun with it.

I first posted about the Attacktix Jabba the Hutt figure (on the right above) more than 3 years ago. The prototype on the left would have been used at some point in the production process for that figure. In some cases, the figures called “prototypes” in eBay auctions are actually just bootleg versions of figures that people working in the Chinese factory have made using leftover plastic for the express purpose of selling on eBay. They’re interesting curiosities, but weren’t actually used in the production of the figure. And of course it’s not unheard of for someone to simply remove the paint from a production figure to try and pass it off as a prototype as well.

There are couple of things that lead me to believe that this one is a legitimate prototype. One is the lack of any copyright information on the bottom. It’s also missing the painted text, but the copyright information is part of the plastic itself and is often missing from prototypes.

It also uses a different colored plastic for the lever on the back (white instead of green). (On the production figure, the white on Jabba’s front is actually paint that has been applied over the green plastic.) I got one of the blue balls that Jabba fires with this prototype, and it’s also a slightly different color than the production balls (a darker blue).

The internal mechanism is also white. Part of it actually has a marble pattern, which I thought was interesting.

Here it is with the unreleased Gamorrean Guard figure that I posted about a while ago. (The Gamorrean, I now notice, has copyright info on it as well as paint on the base, which might indicate that it was from later in the production process.) Anyway, I enjoy finding these kinds of unpainted prototypes since they’re rare and give you a little glimpse into the production process.