Vintage Jabba the Hutt Pajamas by Wilker Bros. (Yellow)

I like character pajamas, since they remind me of a time in my life when things were a bit simpler and I might have worn something like this to bed. I like the ones with Jabba on them in particular because of the mismatch between the character and his place on a child’s pajamas (which one might assume would normally be reserved for the likes of superheroes, rather than bloated intergalactic gangsters). So I’ve been trying to get my hands on these for years.

In the 5+ years I’ve been running this site, I’ve been searching eBay for Jabba items daily, and have automated searches for Jabba pajamas set up. I’ve posted multiple requests on Star Wars forums and asked around to people “in the know.” And yet the only things I was able to find during that entire time were one used pajama top (no bottoms) and one used robe. Finding anything in the package seemed like a pipe dream. There don’t seem to be all that many people who actually want to collect the Return of the Jedi pajamas, so they’re not particularly valuable, but if my own experience is any indication, these are actually more rare than even the rarest of production Star Wars toys.

That’s why I was so excited to see these pop up on eBay recently. Luckily, I was able to negotiate a direct sale with the seller. Interestingly, I can actually trace the chain of ownership of this particular item, because someone I knew contacted me to tell me that they originally sold it to the person I bought it from! That person acquired it from an auction that Lucasfilm ran when they were purging their archives of licensing samples. That means that this was apparently one of a group originally supplied by Wilker Bros. to Lucasfilm as examples of their product. That’s kind of cool, and would explain how it remained in the package all this time, as it was sitting in a Lucasfilm vault until a few years ago.

This set is white and yellow, and has Lando in his skiff guard disguise standing next to Jabba. (There are two “Return of the Jedi” logos, but the lower one is on the plastic of the packaging and not the pajamas themselves.) The pajama top I linked to above just has Jabba on his own, and also has a white and blue color scheme, so there are actually two variations of Jabba pajamas out there. I’d love to get an example of that in the package as well — I guess the search continues! I also wonder if there was a yellow version of the robe made.