Vintage Gamorrean Guard Figure by Kenner
I’ve always liked the Gamorrean Guards, and while the vintage figure doesn’t quite capture the look perfectly, it’s a pretty good effort. The main issue I have with it are the eyes, which look altogether too large. You can see that the bubble on my carded figure above is very yellowed, which is unfortunately a very common problem with Gamorrean Guards in particular.
As I recall, the Gamorrean was one of the few figures that wouldn’t fit properly in carrying cases, due to his big stomach.
“Return of the Dogi” T-Shirt from Big Dog Sportswear
Here is a quick fun entry. It’s a kids’ “Return of the Dogi” shirt, showing all of the characters as dogs. There’s Luke Skywagger, Bark Vader, Yo-Dog, an E-Woof, and of course Jabba the Mutt and Poochess Leia. 😀
Vintage Return of the Jedi Punch-Out & Make-It Book
This book (which I won on ebay for all of $0.99) has punch-out paper models for an Imperial Shuttle, Jabba’s Sail barge, Jabba’s Skiff, Speeder Bike, and Ewok Hang Glider. It’s printed on moderately thick paper, with a few of the pages (the ones with the more important structural parts) on a thicker card stock. I found the models to be fairly easy to put together, as they are well perforated and have scored fold lines where you need to fold something.
The finished Sail Barge is about 13″ long, while the skiff is about 6″ long. There are even some little paper figures of the main characters that you can punch out and put on your vehicles (although there is no Jabba, and the scale is pretty off in comparison with the vehicles).
Vintage Sigma Ceramics Sy Snootles & The Rebo Band Music Box
From Sigma Ceramics in 1983, this music box depicts the Max Rebo Band. It’s in the same series as the Jabba bank and the other ceramic figures that Sigma put out, although its glossy finish is closer to the Jabba than the figures. It’s hand painted, but with a sort of messy, uneven finish.
You’d think a music box like this would obviously play “Lapti Nek” (the music that the band was playing in Return of the Jedi) or maybe the Star Wars theme, but no. It’s some generic music box tune (see the video below). I can only speculate that there were rights issues involved (either they couldn’t get the rights to the song or it would’ve been too expensive). Otherwise, it makes no sense to go with some totally unrelated music. As you can see in the video, the whole thing rotates while Max Rebo spins in the opposite direction, and at a faster speed.
EDIT: Don informed me in the comments that they are actually playing “Jabba’s Baroque Recital” from the scene below. I do think a different, more recognizable song would’ve been a better choice, but I have to give Sigma more credit than I did originally. Makes me like this piece more.
Hibernation Sickness Han Solo Kubrick (Series 3 Chase)
Here’s another figure that should really go with any collection of Jabba kubricks. It’s Han Solo just after being released from his carbonite prison. He was a chase figure from series 3.
Jabba the Hutt Tazos from Walker’s Crisps
Tazos are essentially the same as Pogs, although these are made of plastic rather than cardboard. The main difference is that Tazos have little cutouts on the edges that allow you to link them together if you so choose. These were part of a series of 50 Tazos that were given away with Walker’s Crisps in the UK when the “Special Editions” of the Star Wars films came out. (Apparently the one with the CGI Jabba was only given away with Doritos chips). Here is a list of all of the Tazos in the series.
EDIT: I later got a number of other Tazos. They come in a variety of shapes and designs. The ones that look a little blurry in the photos below are actually lenticular Tazos that have a sort of pseudo 3D effect.
News: “What Color Is Jabba the Hutt? (Part 2)” Added to Articles
I have added the second part in my series about Jabba’s coloration to my “Articles” page. This time, I address the character in his many CGI incarnations.
What Color Is Jabba the Hutt? (Part 2: Jabba in Other Films)
Link: “Jabba the Hutt: ‘Wonderful Human Being'”
I recently found an excellent article on the site The Secret History of Star Wars (which is now defunct but available on archive.org). It that talks about the deleted scene featuring Jabba the Hutt in A New Hope. (For those of you unfamiliar with this, there was originally a scene in A New Hope where Han Solo talks to Jabba at Mos Eisley Spaceport. It was actually shot using the actor Declan Mulholland as a human Jabba, but cut from the original release of the movie. Lucas has said that he had always wanted to replace Mulholland with a stop-motion alien creature, and when then proved too expensive and difficult, he cut the scene. He later put it back in for the “Special Edition” of movie, using a CGI Jabba superimposed over Mulholland. Here is a video comparing the different versions.)
The article goes into a great deal of detail, but comes to the same basic conclusion that I did in my entry about my Declan Mulholland autograph: the idea that Lucas had always intended for Mulholland to be replaced with a stop-motion alien doesn’t seem credible. Mulholland was proper actor, not just a stand-in. He was in full costume, which seems excessive for something that was never intended to be seen. And the scene was not shot in a way that would make the insertion of a stop-motion alien practical (Han and Jabba are close to one another and overlap with each other, etc.) Indeed, the talented people at Industrial Light & Magic had a lot of difficulty inserting a CGI Jabba into the scene even 20 years later. But beyond that, there were apparently no references to work done or even planned for this scene by the people in charge of the special effects.
It seems likely that Lucas had originally planned for Jabba to be an obese human gangster, but he decided to cut the scene due to technical problems during shooting, a somewhat disappointing performance by Mulholland (who isn’t really very intimidating as Jabba), and the fact that the scene wasn’t really necessary to advance the story. Later on, he probably considered the possibility of using a stop motion creature on top of Mulholland to salvage the scene, but quickly abandoned it as impractical given the technology available and his budget. But I have a lot of trouble believing that he had planned that from the begining.
In any case, I for one am very glad that they decided to delete the scene from the original release, as that paved the way for the unforgettable alien we met in Return of the Jedi.
I just finished the first part in a multi-part series about Jabba’s color scheme. In the first part, I talk about how he appeared in Return of the Jedi, and the differences between how the puppet appeared in person versus how it looked on screen.
Upcoming: Jabba the Hutt Altitude Hi Sneakers from Adidas
From Cool-O-Rama via Jabba the Hutt on Facebook.
I can’t believe these are actually real. Adidas has been making a number of Star Wars-themed shoes in the last year or two, and even made some Slave Leia-inspired sneakers, but I never thought they would actually make Jabba shoes. They will be mine! Of course, they’re not really my style (I’m usually a Chuck Taylor kind of guy), and they’re too green in my opinion. But how sweet is that picture of Jabba on the tongue? And they included his tattoo on the heel. It even looks like they tried to replicate Jabba’s skin texture somewhat. Very interesting. I don’t have any info on price or release date as of yet. I wonder how these would go with my New Era Jabba Hat…
Don’t forget to check out the r2-D2/C-3PO, Boba Fett, and Han in Carbonite versions here…
Mighty Jabba's Collection 