Galactic Village Collection Jabba’s Sail Barge by Hawthorne Village

I posted about the Hawthorne Village Jabba’s Palace a while ago. I suggest you read that post for the full story, but in short, these statues are part of the Galactic Village Collection, which only sells its statues on a subscription basis. This is a pain if you want just one or two items. While you can send back ones that you don’t want, I’m sure you have to pay shipping and it’s a hassle. Plus you never know which item you’ll be getting at a particular time, so it could be months before you get the one you want. I decided to forgo all of that and just wait for them to come up on eBay, since I only wanted one or two of them. It took a while to get the Palace and even longer to get the Sail Barge (since it’s a newer item and few people have received it), but I think I’m done with Hawthorne Village now.

The barge is fairly large. At around 10″ long, it’s one of the largest sail barge collectibles out there, smaller only than the LEGO barge and the papercraft one. But of course there are relatively few barge collectibles in existence. They never made a barge playset for the action figures (although I have my fingers crossed that Hasbro may finally do so in the near future), so all that’s left are relatively small ones like Hasbro’s Titanium Sail Barge model or the Deagostini Sail Barge model.

All of the Galactic Village models light up in some way, but they’re kind of disappointing. The palace’s lighting was underwhelming, and this one is just pathetic. It’s just one light on the deck of the barge. They should have had the light come out from the shuttered windows along the side of the ship. As it is, it seems like an afterthought.

The palace model came with Jabba, and the barge comes with Slave Leia. She looks pretty terrible in the picture here, but keep in mind that she’s only about an inch long, so in person she looks okay. They seem to have taken the pose directly from the Gentle Giant Slave Leia statue (which I don’t have yet). She’s more or less in scale with the Jabba that came with the palace, as you can see below. Click for a larger view.

The barge isn’t bad, but considering how difficult it is to get, I don’t think I would recommend it except to a big Jabba fan. It’s really more of a statue than a model. It looks okay from a distance, but doesn’t have quite the level of detail I’d like.

The original concept art by Christopher Lauria (found here on Deviantart) is below.