SDCC-Exclusive Jabba the Hutt Figure: What You Need To Know
I’m a little late out of the gate with this information, but I thought it might be useful to anyone in the market for the SDCC-Exclusive Jabba’s Throne Room set that just came out. As I expected, eBay is currently flooded with them, as scalpers try to unload them from their hotel rooms at SDCC. Against my better judgment, I bought a “preorder” before the show, which turned out to be a big mistake as I ended up overpaying by a significant amount.
I’d say as of this writing (Saturday night, July 26th), the cheapest sets on eBay are hovering around the $120 mark, but they really are are all over the place in terms of price. However, BBTS has already listed the set for just $115, and RobotKingdom has it for $79.99 (however, shipping is quite expensive as they are in Asia). Limited stock will also be sold at retail price on HasbroToyShop sometime in the next few days — probably not until Monday at the earliest and maybe Wednesday is more likely. However, these will probably sell out in minutes, so if you’re not checking the site and/or related forums all the time, you will probably miss out.
If you’re willing to put in the time checking the site, HasbroToyShop would be the best option, and even if you happen to miss it there you can probably still put in an order from someplace like BBTS. I would not recommend buying from eBay unless you find a really good BIN price.
There have been some rumblings about Hasbro releasing the Crumb and Hooka part of the set separately (possibly with the Han in Carbonite figure), making the “throne room” packaging the only thing special abut the SDCC set. I wouldn’t mind this if they told us about it ahead of time, but it doesn’t seem cool to say that something is an exclusive that can only be purchased at SDCC (encouraging people to pay scalper prices for fear of missing out) only to turn around and release all of the elements of the set later. But I should stress that this all might just be a misunderstanding at this point. I don’t know of any official confirmation that they will be releasing the parts separately.
Mighty Jabba's Collection 
Not to mention how the final product is so different than those promo pics. If you look at the in-hand pics, it is not that quality packaging that is shown – it’s cheap filmsy cardboard just like every other Black Series item at retail. I haven’t seen one that wasn’t dinged up or warped, either. I would have been proud to display what’s in the promo pics – but the box itself is just junk from what I have seen.
You can clearly tell the difference – there are all kinds of little serration marks all over where the cheap cardboard was separated from perforations, and if you compare the gate flaps you can clearly see that in the promo pics, it’s actually thick cardboard making up the grates, while in the in-hand pics you can see it’s just cheap ink giving it “dimension”. That’s the other thing – I guess they thought it “spiffed” it up, like it looks like “slime” – but it appears that they just randomly slobbed it all over, so every package is “unique” and it just looks like a defect/stain.
So not happy about this. AT ALL.
Do you actually have one of these? Mine haven’t arrived yet, so this is a little discouraging. I would say the promo shots show the cardboard being pretty thin though:
Thanks for all the information, I enjoy shopping tips like that very much, even though for me unfortunately it comes a little too late. When I checked 2 days ago, the cheapest BIN price I could find on eBay which in addition was labeled as “in hand”, was $115. So I bought that one in fear I could miss out – just as you said. Seeing for what it retails at the show, I am still glad that I know now that I will get one, even if I overpaid. I live in Germany and there may or may not be the chance to get these later for less money, but I did not want to take the risk of missing out.
But there is another item marked as SDCC 2014 exclusive, which I found out later is not truly an exclusive: The Han Solo and Greedo Cantina Showdown set can be bought online @ TRU for 40 bucks. I bought it on eBay for 70. 😦 Maybe the TRU one does not have the SDCC sticker, but if I had known earlier, I would have snatched this.
All that being said, there is one thing I really hate about the companies calling things “exclusives” nowadays and it’s getting worse every year it seems. Take a look 1 year back, the 6″ Black Series Boba Fett with Han in Carbonite was labeled Celebration Europe II exclusive. Then the exact same thing was the SDCC 2013 exclusive. WTF? How can a thing be a show exclusive if it shows up at another one? Don’t get me wrong, I am glad that this way collector’s from Europe and US have had their chance to get these for their collection, but is it OK to label something a show exclusive, when one month later it is a show exclusive at another show (only replacing the sticker on the front). Then – and that was even worse – there were the Gentle Giant Celebration Europe II and SDCC exclusives. It seems they had overstock after the shows, which you were then able to order – even including their “exclusive show stickers” – via their online store. This year you can – as Premium Guild member – even “preorder” the SDCC 2014 exclusive figure (AT-AT Driver). I “preordered” YESTERDAY.
Conclusion: Exclusive my a$$.
If it’s any consolation, you paid way less than I did (for my first one, anyway). I snagged a second quite cheaply last night since I want one in the package and one to open. I don’t think $115 is too out of line for an exclusive like this, though.
As for the exclusives, it can be tricky sometimes. I don’t think the Cantina set is actually billed as an SDCC-exclusive. It’s a Toys R Us exclusive that happens to be debuting at SDCC, but that probably got confused by some people. And it’s pretty common for US “exclusives” to be available elsewhere in the world. The Black Series Fett is one of the worst examples, as you mention, since in addition to those shows it was also made into an exclusive for a Japanese online toy retailer, and possibly some others.
I don’t really mind the store exclusives that much, but these show exclusives are terrible, and I really fail to see what the point is, since they just end up antagonizing the fans.