“Jabba the Hutt Presents Podracing” T-Shirt
This kids’ T-shirt is from around 1999 when The Phantom Menace came out. The connection to Jabba is a little tenuous, but it does have his name at the top. The idea was that Jabba was the sponsor of the podrace that Anakin took part in, and this is an imagined poster for that race. I’ve also seen this in poster form.
“Jabba Hutt” Sticker by Adam de la Mare
I got this sticker (on the left) from RedBubble.com, which is another one of those places that print up custom items like stickers or t-shirts on demand. As I’m sure you can tell, it’s a parody of the Pizza Hut logo. It’s not really a new idea (it dates at least back to Spaceballs and Pizza the Hutt) but I thought it was kind of cute. You can get it on a shirt (and I originally heard about the shirt through the Jabba the Hutt Facebook page), but the T-shirt was quite expensive and I didn’t see myself wearing it, so I went with the sticker. It’s about 3.5″ wide.
Edit: The Jabba image seems to have come from this page of instructions about how to draw Jabba the Hutt. I’m really not very happy about how many RedBubble.com designs are just slightly tweaked versions of other people’s art.
Vintage Metal Return of the Jedi Tray by Cheinco
This tray measures around 12.5″ by 17.5″ and is made of pretty sturdy metal. Mine has a bit of damage, which is probably part of the reason I managed to win it for only $0.10 on eBay. But it still looks pretty decent. It turned out that the seller had greatly underestimated the shipping as well, so I’m sure they ended up losing some money on the auction.
In any case, it shows various characters from Return of the Jedi, including Jabba, Oola, Salacious Crumb, and Jabba’s sail barge. The part with Jabba is the same image that Cheinco (aka Chein Industries) put on a smaller tin.
I got my print of Steve Bialik’s Samurai-style Jabba and Leia drawing a few days ago. He’s now selling them here as part of the “Ninja Star: Wars” series of Japanese-style Star Wars art. There’s even a coupon here for 33% off, making them pretty darned cheap.
It’s pretty large at 11″ x 27″. It came rolled and I don’t have a frame for it yet, so I had to prop it open flat to take a picture. It’s on nice thick paper and the colors are bright. The whole line would look very impressive all framed up, although they would take a lot of space.
These drawings are skewed more toward the “Japanese” side rather than the “Star Wars” side, so it’s entirely possible that you could show this to somebody and they wouldn’t make the connection to Jabba, but as a Japanese translator and Jabba enthusiast, it seems like a perfect match.
It’s #14 out of an edition of #450.
Micro Machines Slave I Transforming Action Set
This is one of the last Jabba-related Micro Machines items that I had to check off my list. This is Boba Fett’s ship, of course, but they decided to make it open up into some Tatooine scenes, including the infamous one where Han Solo talks to Jabba at Mos Eisley Spaceport.
It’s actually a pretty decent ship in its non-transformed state. It has firing lasers and could be used as a toy ship in and of itself. When you open it up, it breaks into three sections.
On the left is a Jawa, sandcrawler, droids, and a Ronto. The Ronto moves its leg as you move it, and if you move the Jawa to the right, the droids are revealed.
In the center is a spring-loaded T-16 skyhopper and some pop-up womp rats that get pushed down as the ship flies past.
And finally, on the right is Jabba and Han talking next to the Millennium Falcon. You can turn the droid behind them to rotate them back and forth. One thing I do like about these Micro Machines pieces is that from what I can tell, they always made new sculpts for the Jabbas they used, instead of recycling the same figure.
Notice anything missing? Yep, no Boba Fett figure. That seems like a pretty odd choice considering that this is Boba Fett’s ship. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, considering that Galoob made Jabba’s head turn into Mos Eisley Spaceport, and R2-D2 turn into Jabba’s Palace. Boba Fett does appear in one of the stickers in the background, though.
Reusable Return of the Jedi Stickers by Topps Canada
These stickers date from 1997, around the release of George Lucas’s “Special Editions” of the Star Wars films. I know Topps also made an Empire Strikes Back version, since the seller I bought these from originally sent me those by mistake, and they probably made one for A New Hope as well. Since these are billed as reusable stickers, I was hoping that these would be made of vinyl or something similar. But I opened the Empire ones and they’re just regular stickers with less adhesive than usual, allowing you to remove them from the paper after you stick them on.
There are a large number of Jabba-related characters here, including Jabba, Rancor, Salacious Crumb, Slave Leia, Slave Leia with Jedi Luke, Weequay, and Gamorrean Guard. They included a background image that you can put the stickers on, allowing you to create a scene similar to a Presto Magix set, but for some reason they went with an Endor setting, which only really makes sense with a handful of the stickers.
Attakus Bib Fortuna Statue
I’m on a bit of an Attakus kick recently. After a long search I was able to track down an Attakus Jabba last year, and a Salacious Crumb with Jabba’s Hooka Pipe a couple of weeks ago. And even though I wasn’t crazy about the piece, I couldn’t turn down a very good deal on an Attakus Slave Leia when I was in Tokyo earlier this year. I’m definitely glad I got it, because it works well with the other pieces even if it’s weak on its own.
The Jabba and Hooka are hard to find and are usually pretty expensive, but the Attakus Bib Fortuna is definitely an exception. It’s been available brand new on eBay and elsewhere for as long as I’ve been aware of it, and for prices that are a lot cheaper than the original retail (which I think was something ridiculous like $400). I actually got this brand new in the box for a little over $70, and for that price it’s a steal. Interestingly, I got edition #1498 out of 1500, which is exactly double the edition number of my Salacious Crumb with Jabba’s Hooka Pipe (#749 out of 750). I think Attakus just made too many of these. Very few people are going to want a standalone Bib Fortuna statue — they buy it as a companion piece for Jabba. With only made 750 Jabbas made, they were bound to have a bunch of Bibs left over.
It’s a 1/5 scale statue, which makes it closer in feel to one of Sideshow’s Premium Format figures (which are 1/4 scale). You can see in the picture to the left how it dwarfs the Sideshow 1/6 scale Bib Fortuna. It’s definitely the biggest full-body Bib Fortuna statue that’s been made. I’m actually not convinced that either the Attakus or Sideshow piece looks much like Michael Carter (who played Bib in Return of the Jedi), but they do both look enough like the character of Bib Fortuna to satisfy me. Even though the Attakus piece seems a little rough when you look at it close up, I think it looks really good from a normal viewing distance. The only problem is that I have no room to display him with Jabba. I’m going to have to figure something out that will allow me to display the whole Attakus Jabba’s Palace line. Next on my list is either the Gamorrean Guard or Oola.
Disney Jabba and Leia Pin (Star Wars Weekends 2006)
This limited edition pin was only sold at Disney World during Star Wars Weekends in 2006. At about 1.5″ tall and 1.75″ wide, this is a rather large pin (shown here on the cardboard backing on which it was sold). It’s made of thick metal and actually has two layers — one for Jabba and one for Leia in front of him. This appears to be one of the more sought-after pins, since it took me quite a while get one for a good price on eBay.
Repainted Hasbro Vintage Collection Jabba and Throne
This is my repainted and modified version of the 2010 Hasbro Vintage Collection Jabba and Throne. I completely repainted Jabba, the throne, Salacious Crumb, and the pillows. For Jabba, I stuffed his body with some synthetic batting (the stuff you might put in a stuffed animal) to give him more height and to make his body more firm. As I said in this earlier post, you can just strip off his lower body to reveal the inner workings. It may not be immediately obvious when you look at the VC Jabba, but his head and torso really sit too low on his body.
I do have one word of warning if you are thinking of repainting Jabba. I normally prime my figures with white spray paint before I repaint them so I have a clean canvas to work on, and so the paint will stick better. When I tried this on Jabba, I found that his lower body never got dry — the paint stayed tacky no matter how long I waited. I eventually had to use some lacquer thinner to remove the spray paint on his lower body and start over. I think it’s just because of the material that the lower body is made of, since his upper body was fine.
For Salacious Crumb, I used bits of the same kind of batting I stuffed Jabba with to create some “real” hair, in addition to repainting him.
The throne is a combination of the original vintage throne and the Vintage Collection throne. The railing and base from the new throne were fine, but the gargoyle heads were ridiculously undersized. So I used the vintage heads instead, with the metal rings from the new throne. I had to carve out their mouths, insert the rings, and then resculpt their teeth using epoxy putty before repainting them. I used the vintage pipe and bowl since they are made of a clearer plastic than the new one. I used the hose from the new Jabba, but the mouthpiece from the vintage Jabba. I also made a piece of “animal skin” for Jabba to lay on using some pleather.
Overall, I’m very pleased with how it turned out. The new Jabba is a great base to use for customs, but even in its stock form it’s pretty nice. My main complaint is with the gargoyle heads, which just look all wrong. I’m actually planning on using them to make a throne for my Galactic Heroes Jabba, so you can tell how undersized they are.
Design Documents and Concept Drawings for Hasbro Spitting Jabba and Two-Headed Announcer
This is an exciting addition. I recently acquired a large stack of documents used in the design and production of Hasbro’s Spitting Jabba the Hutt and Two-Headed Announcer figures in 1998. While this is far from my favorite Jabba figure, it is definitely a unique set and these documents, which I assume came from an ex-Hasbro employee, provide a valuable look into the process that went into designing it. The documents include concept drawings, tables that show all of the parts of the figures and their costs, correspondence with Lucasfilm, and various other things. Some of it is rather eye-opening (the cost to produce a single set was apparently around $3, and royalties to Lucasfilm were a similar amount).
Many of the documents are unfortunately just photocopies like the one above, or these drawings below (click any of the images in this post to view the full-size image):
But I do have a number of original drawings like one below, which shows the inner workings of one of the proposed versions of the figure.
One interesting thing I learned about the set is that they were considering four different versions. They apparently knew from the start that they wanted this to be a “spitting” Jabba toy based on the scene in The Phantom Menace where Jabba spits the head of a chuba at a gong to start the podrace. But they weren’t sure how they wanted to accomplish this. One idea was a projectile shooting version that used Jabba’s arm as the trigger (this is very similar to the final figure). Then there was another projectile shooting version that had a button on the back of Jabba’s head and used a different shooting mechanism. Another was a water shooting version (and in fact, this ended up being incorporated into the final product). And finally there was a “slime” shooting version. Presumably this would have been similar to the Jabba Glob figure.
Even aside from this, the toy went through a number of changes during the design process. One change that they made was the gong. I don’t know if they were basing the design of the gong off of early concepts from Lucasfilm or if they just sort of made something up on their own, but their first design was quite different from the one they eventually used (which is fairly similar to the one in the film). There’s even a note from Lucasfilm that reads “Gong is not accurate. Should wait for reference.” You can see a photocopy of the first design on the left and the hand-drawn design that they eventually went with on the right.
Of course the most well known change involves the two-headed announcer figure. He was originally called Hex & Rex, but this was later changed toFodesinbeed Annodue, and in the actual toy he isn’t even given a name — he’s just the “two-headed announcer.” He was originally to be played by two actors in makeup, whose heads would be digitally composited with a CGI body, but in the final film they went with a completely CGI alien (and one that was quite a bit different in design from the original that this figure was based on). One of the notes from Lucasfilm about the character reads, “Please note that this character has no further development and may be cut from film.” In the end, Hasbro decided to just release the figure as it was, despite the fact that it didn’t match what ended up in the movie.
Two of the best pieces in this collection of documents are these two original pencil drawings of the announcer showing the front and back of the figure, as well as some notes about which parts would be separately molded, etc. The final figure doesn’t look nearly as nice as you might think, considering this excellent artwork. But of course they did eliminate some things, such as the cape, which helped to change the overall look.
I’d love to get some more documents like these for the other Jabba figures, but of course they don’t crop up very often.
Mighty Jabba's Collection 
