Digger’s Society “Mr. Loverman” Jabba the Hutt T-Shirt (Shabba Ranks Parody)

This is an interesting shirt that cropped up on eBay recently. It was originally sold by the Digger’s Society a few years ago, which was apparently a sort of “shirt of the month club” run by the site Digital Gravel. I don’t believe they’re still doing it, but the idea was that you’d pay a certain amount up front and then get a shirt each month. They tended to be from somewhat obscure urban designers. I guess it preceded the “cheap shirt for one day” concept that is so popular now.

I thought there was something familiar about this Jabba when I first saw it, but it didn’t hit me until I got the shirt in hand. The designer has simply traced an image of the Attakus Jabba the Hutt statue and added a few details, like the bottle of booze and the bucket of “body butter.” Take a look and compare for yourself:

The angle is slightly different on my shot, but it’s clearly identical. How lazy is that? It reminds me of the “Koopa the Hutt” shirt from TeeFury, which also borrowed its designs from some collectibles with pictures easily found online. But at least that one was a fully realized image and not something that looks like it could be knocked off in five minutes. It may be hard to see in the photos, but the lines are a sort of greenish brown, which seems appropriate for the subject matter.

The shirt is a reference to the Shabba Ranks song “Mr. Loverman,” in which a girl repeats the name “Shabba” a number of times, and in fact it does sound something like “Jabba” in the actual song. They carry the joke over to the back of the shirt, which has Salacious Crumb screaming “Jabba!”

It’s an interesting shirt, since it has a music reference similar to the “Big Jabba” shirt I have (a Notorious B.I.G. parody). And it’s kind of funny how it flagrantly copies the Attakus Jabba. In any case, it only cost a couple of dollars, so I’m happy to have it in the collection.