Vintage Gamorrean Guard Halloween Costume by Ben Cooper

I don’t think I’m going to surprise anybody by saying that I was a pretty big Star Wars fan as a kid. That’s me on the right in the photo below, dressed as a sandperson for Halloween in 1982. My costume consisted of a Ben Cooper mask, my Dad’s orange bathrobe, a belt of some kind, and a stick.

But actually, that costume was a lot more convincing than many Halloween costumes at the time. Here’s a picture of some other kids from my class in elementary school.

You’ve got a devil, two Darth Vaders, a skeleton, and a Superman. 4 out of 5 costumes are just plain vinyl suits with a picture of the character on the chest. Pretty uninspired stuff, in my opinion. This particular costume is from about the same time as the ones above, but luckily it actually attempts to recreate the Gamorrean Guard’s outfit rather than plastering his face on your chest.

The box has seen better days, but I only paid about $5 for it. I believe some versions were printed with “Revenge of the Jedi” on it before they made the change to “Return of the Jedi.”

My mask has apparently gotten smashed, because the one you can see here looks a lot better. But the vinyl jumpsuit part of the costume was actually still in the plastic.

I was considering leaving it that way, but I thought it would be nice to actually see it, and my son expressed some interest in trying it on. It’s a little big on him, but it fits better than I thought it would. I think it’s about as good as you can expect a vinyl jumpsuit-style costume to look. True, the real Gamorreans didn’t have “GAMORREAN GUARD” written on their chests, and I’m relatively sure their belt buckles didn’t read “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi,” but we’ll let that slide.

This is one of only two Jabba-related Halloween costumes that were available while the Star Wars movies were still in theaters, with the other being Klaatu for some reason. (There were also rubber masks of the Gamorrean and Klaatu available for a brief time, but they had to be withdrawn from the market because Ben Cooper didn’t have the license to make rubber masks.)

I know that actually having a Jabba costume might be difficult for logistical reasons (they didn’t really even solve this with the modern Jabba costume from Rubies). But Klaatu? How many little boys were clamoring to be Klaatu for Halloween? (Or a Gamorrean for that matter…?) Somehow I think there might have been better choices.