Custom LEGO Han in Carbonite
I got this from a seller on Etsy.com. They don’t seem to sell this product anymore, but according to them it is a custom piece made of resin based on an existing LEGO minifig, with some custom decals. When I saw the pictures of the Han in Carbonite, that comes with the upcoming 2010 Slave I set, I thought maybe this was actually a knockoff of the Han in Carbonite that came with that, but if you look at that figure you can see that they are totally different.
Anyway, it’s miles better than the version that came with the Jabba’s Prize LEGO set (shown above). That was just a single LEGO brick with a picture of Han on it. I’m displaying it with my custom Jabba’s throne.
Upcoming: Hawthorne Village Jabba’s Palace
The Hawthorne Village line of Star Wars buildings and figures has gotten a fair amount of criticism (and rightly so) because they use heavily photoshopped images in their ads that look nothing like the final product. I posted some comparison photos that I found online in this thread at Rebelscum.com. That said, their Jabba’s palace looks relatively good. Sandtroopers.com has another scoop today with the first pictures I’ve seen of this set. I’d like to try to get this one, but as far as I know they don’t generally sell single pieces. You have to “subscribe” to the entire collection, which is silly.
Javva the Hutt T-Shirt
The in-house coffee shop at Industrial Light & Magic is called “Javva the Hutt.” Here’s a shot of it on Flickr. Naturally, they have a Jabba theme, even displaying a number of action figures and the Illusive Concepts Jabba macquette, altered to hold a cup of coffee. I’ve never had the opportunity to go there, but they sell “Javva the Hutt” merchandise at the Lucasfilm gift shop, including T-shirts and coffee mugs. As far as I know they don’t do any kind of mail order (I even wrote a letter to the owner of the coffee shop c/o ILM asking if there was any way to buy merchandise through the mail, but didn’t receive a response). I’ve been on the lookout for one of these for some time, and finally snagged a T-shirt from ebay.
This is the newer logo. At one time they made shirts with a different logo — a painting of Jabba holding a cup of coffee and sitting on a pile of coffee beans. You can see it on the sign in the Flickr photo above. I’d like to get one of those someday as well, and maybe a coffee cup while I’m at it…
It has the motto “Industrial Strength Caffeine” under the “Javva the Hutt” title, and on one sleeve it reads “Industrial Latte + Magic” which is of course a parody of the Industrial Light & Magic logo.
Toby Philpott (aka “Jabba’s Left-Hand Man”) was one of the original puppeteers of Jabba in Return of the Jedi, and controlled his left hand, part of his head, and his tongue. I had the opportunity to ask him a few questions.
For some time people have been talking about the Hasbro Jabba that is coming out later this year, but this photo from Sandtroopers.com is the first we’ve seen. This will be the first full throne that has been released for the smaller Star Wars figures since the original one in 1983, so this is a very big deal for Jabba fans. It’s also only the second Oola figure ever made. It’s too bad that you can’t actually see Jabba in the box (I’m guessing they wanted to save on store shelf space), but the box art looks cool, and you can see the Oola figure. I’ve really got my fingers crossed that this Jabba will have a good sculpt. The previous Jabba action figures have all been flawed in some way (and in some respects the vintage Jabba is actually the best, which is kind of pathetic when you consider how much technology has progressed since then).
It’s too bad that this is a Walmart exclusive, since they can occasionally be difficult to find. I’ll post more info as it comes in.
EDIT: We now have pictures of the back of the box, revealing the actual figure. Click here.
Hollywood Chewing Gum is a brand of gum put out by Cadbury France. When Attack of the Clones was released, they created 20 different boxes featuring pictures of different Star Wars characters on the back. Jabba is number 1 of 20 (and rightfully so ;)), although they did manage to spell his name wrong (“Jabba the Hut” with only one “t”). The box is fairly small — only a bit larger than a matchbox — and contains 12 Chicklet-sized pieces of chewing gum.
This piece was generously donated to my collection by Toby Philpott, aka “Jabba’s Left-Hand Man.” Toby was one of the puppeteers of Jabba from Return of the Jedi and controlled his left hand and tongue. He has kindly agreed to answer a few questions for me about his experiences, so I will be posting that sometime in the near future.
Like the Jabba and Rancor sets, this Action Fleet battle pack consists of one large piece (in this case the skiff) and several small humanoids that are in scale with other Micro Machines sets. This one was a little more problematic than the others, due to the nature of the vehicle. It has a plastic stand that is supposed to hold the skiff up as if it were flying, but it comes in two pieces and I couldn’t figure out how to get them to stay together. I finally just superglued it together and it works fine. Also, getting the little figures to stand up on the skiff was an exercise in frustration until I broke out the Glue Dots. One on the bottom of each character’s feet and they stood up just fine.
Aside from that, though, it’s a fairly nice set. It includes Boba Fett, Nikto, Chewbacca, Jedi Luke, and Han Solo figures in addition to the skiff, which has a retractable gangplank and movable steering vanes in the back.
Jabba the Hutt Stand-Up Valentine
This is one of 10 types of “stand-up” valentines released in 1997. They’re the kind of small, cheap valentines that kids would give to everyone in their class. Each card has a perforated part that you can punch out to make a stand (hence the “stand-up” part of the name). For Jabba, the message is “You’re the best… and you’re mine!” Somehow I think they could’ve come up with a better Jabba-themed message, but oh well. Unfortunately, it uses the horrible CGI Jabba from the Special Edition of Star Wars, and not the puppet from Return of the Jedi.
I don’t play the Star Wars Customizable Card Game (CCG) and don’t really plan to start, but I understand the basic concept behind it. You buy packs of randomly packed cards that you can use to make up your deck. When you play, each card (which can represent a character, weapon, location, or even a concept) has special rules that you must follow as you try to defeat your opponent.
Released in 1998, the complete expansion set consists of 180 cards (90 “light side” cards and 90 “dark side” cards), but you’re unlikely to have the whole set at your disposal unless you buy a complete set from someone, or do a lot of trading with people to fill the gaps in the cards that you found yourself. I bought a lot of 125 packs of unopened cards on ebay for what I thought was a pretty good price. There are 9 cards per pack, so I figured going through 1125 cards would give me a full set of 180 for sure, but no such luck. The problem is that the cards are divided into “common” (5 cards per pack), “uncommon” (3 cards per pack), and “rare” (1 card per pack). It’s the “rare” ones that get you, since there are 80 rares in the whole set, but only 50 common and uncommon cards. After opening all 125 packs, I was still 20 rare cards short of a full set (and of course I had mountains of the common and uncommon cards). It was kind of fun opening them up, though.
The set has most of the characters you would expect, but by no means all of them (there’s no Luke, Han or Chewbacca character cards, for example, although these characters are pictured on other cards). I don’t know enough about this game to be able to say, but this may be because those characters appeared in other sets and it wasn’t necessary to have them in the Jabba’s Palace set as well.
One of the interesting things about the set is that about every obscure character from Jabba’s Palace is here, including many that I had never heard of. Although there is no Sy Snootles for some reason, even though Max Rebo and Droopy McCool do make an appearance. But there multiple named jawas, for example, and several human characters that have no lines in the movie and very little screen time, but still manage to have complex backstories. So even if you don’t play the game, the pictures and short bits of trivia make them interesting to look through. There’s also a fair amount of humor. For example:
All in all, an interesting set. I also have a couple of large uncut sheets for the game that could be used as posters.
Link: Jabba On Facebook
That’s right. Our favorite Hutt gangster has his own Facebook page now. I don’t have anything to do with it, but apparently a Jabba fan has created a Facebook page just for Jabba where they are posting some interesting trivia, links, and photos (and he’s linked to me a few times, too :)). Definitely worth a look.
Mighty Jabba's Collection 
