Jabba the Hutt “Happy Kuji” Lucky Draw Prize from Japan

“Lucky draws” (kuji) have been around for quite a while in Japan, and while the details may differ the main idea is the same. You buy a ticket and you win something. I think many if not all of them guarantee you some sort of prize, but of course the better prizes are harder to win. Interestingly they have entire stores in the electronics districts of Osaka and Tokyo that sell leftover prizes from these.

“Happy Kuji” appears to have prizes from all sorts of popular franchises, including Disney, Marvel and Star Wars (which are all the same thing now, really). Looking at the Star Wars section of the website shows that the prizes range from a badge/button for last place, up to posters, Bearbrick figures, and finally the larger prizes. These include individual figures like this one I’m posting about today, as well as some “pair figures” that include two in one box.

These figures aren’t fantastic but they are certainly competently done. I haven’t seen the others in person, but at least on the Jabba, the paint is pretty good. They did get his arm tattoo, which one thing I always like to check for, and the eyes look cool as well, even if the entire thing is the “wrong” color from my point of view (not the orangey color we know from Return of the Jedi). But I guess this is the official coloration for Jabba now, so that can’t be helped. Similarly, Jabba officially has three fingers and a thumb now (despite having more alien-looking hands in Return of the Jedi) and this is also reflected in the sculpt. It’s a nice size — the Jabba is a fairly hefty chunk of plastic. I’m not sure if all of them are unique sculpts, but the Jabba does appear to be, which is nice to see.

They also included Jabba as one of the “pair figures” I mentioned earlier, along with Boba Fett. But since both of the figures are the same ones as in the single packs, I am not going to go to a lot of trouble to try and track that version down.