Upcoming: Bib Fortuna Mini-Bust from Gentle Giant
This isn’t exactly breaking news, since it was announced back during SDCC, but I thought it would be worth a post. While Gentle Giant has made a number of mini-busts for Jabba’s Palace characters (including Slave Leia, Oola, Gamorrean Guard, Leia as Boushh, Lando in Skiff Guard Outfit, and Yak Face), Bib Fortuna and of course Jabba himself were notable omissions. While Jabba might not be possible due to his size, it’s good to see that they’re finally giving Bib his due. I think he looks quite good (the photos are taken from this thread on Rebelscum.com created by user LightSword).
The bad news is that he is apparently going to be limited to just 550 pieces, and will be a sort of “surprise” release sometime in the latter half of the year. By that I mean that there won’t be a preorder, and instead the bust will just be announced as “in stock” at some point. There will be priority ordering for Premier Guild members, though, so if you want to make sure you get one and aren’t forced to rely on the secondary market, joining the PGM program might not be a bad idea.
Giga Pets Rancor Monster Digital Pet Review Now on YouTube
I wrote an article about this years ago, but here’s a full video review of the Giga Pets Rancor.
Even though I don’t particularly like die-cast cars, I’ve spent a lot of time looking for the Jabba the Hutt Character Car by Hot Wheels. While I didn’t make special trips to search for it, every time I was in a store that carried the Star Wars Hot Wheels cars, I made a point to check whether they had a Jabba, and I literally never found one after months of looking. It seems that for whatever reason, the Jabba car was mostly relegated to discount stores (and also to Canadian retailers, it seems).
So when I saw that Hollar.com (a site that primarily sells off surplus products that didn’t sell at normal retailers) was selling this and other Star Wars cars for just $1.25, I had to buy… a few. Of note, the ones I got from Hollar were all the original artwork, instead of the alternative artwork found on the one in the center of the photo above. (Check my post about these cars for more info about these versions and a look at the original artwork for the product.) Also related: the two-pack with Han in Carbonite and Jabba.
By the way, Hollar is also the only place I know of that currently sells the Jabba the Hutt plush bag clip I posted about a while back. They are still available as of this writing.
The Buffalo Bisons minor league baseball team is going to be donning Jabba-themed jerseys for their Star Wars Night event. These actually look really nice. They are auctioning off several of game-worn autographed jerseys on their site. I would love to have one of these, but I have a feeling these will go out of my price range for this kind of item. (There is a buy-it-now option for $500.)
This isn’t the first time a baseball team has worn Jabba jerseys. A couple of years ago, I posted about how the Altoona Curve was wearing Jabba-themed jerseys for their own Star Wars night event. The jerseys themselves were not the best though, since they just had a poorly photoshopped image of the Ultra Jabba action figure on them. Seriously!
The Michigan Whitecaps also had great Jabba-themed t-shirts and baseballs for their event back in 2013.
Jabba the Hutt MyMoji Figures from Funko
Funko has a growing line of emoji-inspired vinyl figures called MyMoji, and it is now joined by this set of Star Wars characters. There are 8 different characters, each with 3 different expressions, for a total of 24 unique figures. I bought the entire box since I thought they were all cute, but I’ll admit I probably wouldn’t have done so if they hadn’t have included Jabba. The figures are around an inch tall and sell for about $3 apiece in blind bags.
I unboxed the entire box of 24 in the video at the end of this post, and here are photos of the rest of the characters:
I posted about my quest to recreate the original Pepperidge Farm Star Wars cookies from 1983 a little while ago, and while I was making that I picked up some skills that I wanted to put to use making a cartoony Jabba cookie cutter of my own. I based this off of the design from some plastic Hallmark cups that I posted about a while ago. I found a full version of the artwork from the cup online, then traced the individual parts of his body using illustrator.
I then converted the individual parts into 3D models using a program called Rhino 3D. I’m using the demo version and it works well, but it turns out that it costs $649, so I’m not going to be buying it. You could also use a site like Selva3D, which is what I used for my Pepperidge Farm cutter.
Then I used TinkerCAD to assemble the various parts into a single cutter. The main point here is to make the different parts be different elevations so that some parts of the cookie stick out, and others are recessed.
I did have to do a fair amount of experimenting with various designs to get the best one. I originally wanted to make it a one-piece cutter, but it was too difficult to get the dough out, so I used a two-part design. The inside imprints the details of the design, and the outside cuts out the cookie. This works pretty well.
Here’s some dough after being cut.
I’ve already posted a picture of the finished cookie at the top of this post, but I also made a green version by adding some green tea powder to the dough, so let me show you that:
I also took this opportunity to finally use my Star Jars Jabba the Hutt cookie jar for actually storing cookies.
The 3D model for the cookie cutter is available on Thingiverse if you have a 3D printer. I made a video about making this cutter if you’re interested.
Jabba the Hutt & Salacious B. Crumb Galactic Plushies by Funko (Celebration 2017 Exclusives)
These were released for Star Wars Celebration 2017 in Orlando, but they’re also a shared exclusive with Amazon.com, which means you can just get them on Amazon’s site for $20 instead of paying scalpers’ prices. This is part of Funko’s newish line of plushes. These are both very high quality plushes, constructed with soft fabric and well designed. I think for the $20 price they are a great deal.
There have only been a couple of Salacious Crumb plushes made. One is the Star Wars Buddies plush, and the other was the talking Salacious Crumb by Underground Toys, which I still haven’t had any luck finding. This one i quite cute and will sit up on his own, which is nice.
Jabba is also well made and quite large compared to the other characters in this line. He sort of reminds me of a custom Jabba plush I had made a few years ago. See the video below for a closer look at these.
I first posted about these Celebration Orlando 2017 exclusives about a month ago, and at the time I was afraid I would have to spend quite a bit to get them, but as it turns out they are available directly from ThinkGeek.com. They come in a nice box that shows the other Star Wars-related Geeki Tikis on the back.
I’m really quite impressed with them. They’re not very practical to use as actual cups, and Jabba himself is pretty huge at more than 6″ tall. But as display pieces (or maybe as holders or planters) they are quite well done. ThinkGeek is also giving away a pin based on the same design if you buy fifty dollars worth of Star Wars merchandise (the pin is about 2″ tall and supposedly retails for $14.99).
See the video review below for a more detailed look at these.
The Jabba and Salacious plushes I mentioned a little while ago turned out to be a shared exclusive with Amazon, which is awesome since I don’t have to pay anything extra to get them! They are up for preorder now for $20 and will apparently be shipping on April 20th. Again, I was afraid I would have to pay through the nose for these, so this is very welcome news.
Click through to Amazon to order. Thanks go to Jenmarie for the heads-up on these.
Mighty Jabba's Collection 