Custom Version of Gentle Giant Slave Leia Statue (for Sideshow 1/6 Scale Jabba Display)

There has never been a high-end Slave Leia figure made in 1/6 scale (I’m not counting the Hasbro version, which is basically a Barbie doll, or the Kotobukiya version, which is a vinyl statue and also undersized for 1/6 scale). This is almost certainly because highly articulated figure bodies look terrible in skimpy outfits like this. Still, figure bodies are getting better all the time, and some even have rubber “skin” that hides their joints, so I expect that it’s only a matter of time before a good Slave Leia is made. But until then, a lot of people have been searching for alternatives. Gentle Giant’s Slave Leia statue is considered by many to be the best sculpture of Carrie Fisher as Slave Leia, and it’s in 1/6 scale, which means that it would theoretically fit in with Sideshow’s line of figures.

Unfortunately, she’s permanently attached to her base (above), so you can’t easily display her on the throne with the Sideshow Jabba figure. Some people have just plopped her there as is, but that doesn’t look too great in my opinion. Some brave souls have cut her away from the base using tools like dremels and the like, but I had never had the guts to try — especially since it’s a fairly expensive statue. I did finally find one on eBay that someone had already cut from the base, and while it had some minor damage, it wasn’t bad and the price was right, so I bought it. When it arrived, it had been damaged in transit and looked like this:

Her left hand was broken off, and unfortunately it had splintered rather than breaking cleanly. Three fingers and the thumb were also broken off (and one of the fingers was missing completely). Also, the cloth hanging from her waist was broken off. The seller was nice about it and gave me a partial refund, making the final price very reasonable, and this made the repairs I had to do a little more palatable. I started by super-gluing the cloth and arm/finger fragments back in place, but there were still obvious cracks, and of course there was the little matter of a missing finger as well.

So I used some epoxy putty to smooth over the cracks and sculpt a new finger.

I also sculpted a new section of cloth, because the piece I had was broken off on a straight edge, which looked very odd.

Here’s the hand after repainting. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s certainly acceptable — especially since it’s tucked around the back of the figure anyway. I just wanted to make sure it didn’t stand out too much. The hardest part was matching the paint color that Gentle Giant used for the skin — especially since I discovered that many of my paints had dried out since I used them last. I got somewhat close after some trial and error.

The color of the cloth turned out to be much easier to match.

This is what it looked like on the bottom, by the way. You can see how it has literally been scraped away from the base.

And here she is with my repainted Sideshow Jabba the Hutt figure.

And here’s the whole display. Of course it’s a little odd to have two Leias in the display, but let’s not quibble…

In the picture above, you can see all of the other parts of the Sideshow Jabba throne room setup. From left to right, roughly: the Bubo Creature Pack, Leia as Boushh Figure, Han Solo in Carbonite, Boba Fett Figure, Gartogg the Gamorrean Guard Figure, Hasbro Jawa and C-3PO figures, custom Gentle Giant Slave Leia statue, Bib Fortuna Figure, Salacious Crumb Creature Pack, scratch-built Gonk Droid, regular Gamorrean Guard figure, Jabba’s Palace Archway Environment, Jedi Luke Figure, and Hasbro Drink-Serving R2-D2 figure. (Items that aren’t linked are ones that I haven’t written about for the site yet.)