Jabba the Hutt Rubber Band Shooter by Bimbo Bakeries (Mexico)

When I bought this on eBay, I wasn’t sure what it was. Still, I knew it was an interesting Jabba item that I didn’t have, and that was good enough for me. The fact that it was made by “Bimbo” was just the icing on the cake… When it arrived, I was pretty surprised by how small it was — maybe two inches long. It’s a piece of plastic card with a lot of little pieces cut into it that you can remove to assemble… Something. A cursory examination of the parts didn’t help much in figuring out what it was. A figure? A model of Jabba’s Palace? I finally figured out that it’s a rubber band shooter — kind of a crossbow that uses rubber bands. Bimbo released a number of these to coincide with the release of Revenge of the Sith in 2005 (here’s an English press release about it).

After examining the pieces closely, I noticed a small diagram on one of the pieces (it’s to Jabba’s right in the second image above). It’s laughably small — maybe a centimeter long at best — and very very difficult to see. I finally had to use the photo I had taken of the card to blow up the instructions on my screen, and even then they are quite difficult to decipher. The biggest problem is that there’s no indication of what the thing is supposed to look like when it’s finished.

In the end, I think I got fairly close to the right answer, but the circular piece in front was very difficult to figure out — I’m still not sure I have that right. I’m guessing that the round piece with Jabba’s head is intended as a target for you to shoot at. (This should have come with a small rubber band, but mine was missing.) The section in the back pulls back to allow you to shoot, but I’m still pretty unsure about how it was really supposed to be used. The only online reference with pictures I could find was here, and the owner of that site also had no idea of how they were supposed be assembled!