“World Collectible Figures Vol. 5” Jabba’s Palace Crane Game Figures by Banpresto (Japan)
Crane games (aka UFO Catchers or claw machines) are a big business in Japan. They seem to make up the majority of the machines in Japanese arcades, and there is an entire industry that basically exists to make prizes for people to win in those machines. While most of the claw machines you see in the US have pretty crappy prizes, these prizes are generally very high quality. These figures are a good example of that. While you can sometimes buy them outright, as I did, on Yahoo Auctions Japan or maybe from a seller on Amazon Japan, generally speaking they aren’t available at retail. Instead you need to win them. As you might imagine, this makes them kind of expensive when you are able to find them for sale.
The figures themselves would probably fall under the “super deformed” category, since they have very large heads. They remind me a lot of the “Monstar Shop” garage kit I got last year, which was also from Japan. They are very well sculpted and painted. The humanoid figures are around 3″ tall and they’re made of plastic with no articulation. They each come with a black plastic base, but they don’t really need them to stand up, and the bases are so large that you can’t really display them very well together, so I’m not using them.
Although I bought this set, I was also able to win one of the Jabba figures in a crane machine on the site Toreba.net. It’s a site that lets you play crane games located in Japan over the internet. If you win something, they’ll send it to you. You have to pay for each try, and playing over the internet is definitely not easy, so it can get expensive. In the end it probably cost me more than it would have to buy the figure outright, but I thought it was fun and very cool to actually win one of these in the intended manner.
I made a video showing me unboxing these figures, and it even shows video footage of me winning the Jabba figure from Toreba, so check it out below if you’re interested.
Jabba the Hutt Change Purse by SEGA Prize (Japan)
I picked up a few items with this stylized Jabba on them when I was in Japan a couple of years ago, but I recently discovered that they also made this change purse/pouch. It was made by SEGA Prize, which also made the plush crane game prize I posted about earlier, so I imagine that this was actually some sort of arcade prize. It’s a bit of an odd choice since I have a little trouble imagining Japanese girls choosing this design, and it seems too young for older people. They made 5 different designs, and even as a Jabba fan I feel like the Jabba is the weakest of the lot.
It has a clasp on the back, along with the Star Wars logo.
It’s actually a mini-purse, complete with a strap that allows you to wear it over your shoulder. Not that I plan to do that anytime soon.
Vote for Jabba! Election 2016 Campaign Ads and Poster Design
I couldn’t help making a couple of mock campaign ads as if Jabba were running for president. I’m not sure I’ll make any more, but I might if the right idea strikes me. I’m kind of proud of the logo above, which I made from scratch in Photoshop.
Ad #1: The Hole
Ad #2: What Is Luke Skywalker Hiding?
Small Airblown Inflatable Jabba the Hutt Figure by Gemmy (Walmart Exclusive)
When I first saw this on Walmart.com, I thought they were selling a much cheaper version of the Canadian-exclusive inflatable figure that I posted about last year — just with the jack o’lantern removed. But on closer inspection it became obvious that this was also a significantly smaller item. Aside from the lack of the pumpkin, it is essentially identical to the Canadian version, but only about 3 feet tall instead of 5ish feet.
Here it is next to the Canadian version and the Morbid Enterprises version. It’s definitely not as impressive in terms of size, and it’s true that having a life size Jabba was one of the draws of the larger figures.
Still, it’s pretty nice and definitely more manageable in terms of both size and price — it’s only $28.88. It also seems to light up more brightly than the other versions (maybe because of its smaller size), which is nice at night.
It’s available on Walmart.com right now. Here’s a video review I made with a bit more detail.
Mighty Jabba’s Collection Turns 7!
It was seven years ago today that I made my first post on this site. While my collection itself started well beforehand, this marked my first attempt to really catalog and review things, and to have more of an online presence. (Fun fact: the scene in Return of the Jedi picture above was actually flipped horizontally in the film. This is made very obvious by Jabba’s asymmetrical facial features. I’ve flipped it back to its proper orientation here.)
There is still a little time if you want to buy a MJC t-shirt or register to win a Jabba the Hutt piggy bank. Thanks for reading!
Upcoming: Jabba the Hutt Coin Purse by Loungefly
In my recent post about an SDCC-exclusive button from Loungefly, I jokingly asked if Loungefly would be adding some Jabba items to its very impressive line of Star Wars merchandise. I don’t think I can take any credit for it, but I’m happy to report that they will be adding at least one item: the coin purse pictured above. I was tipped off by Jenmarie (@acrossthestars on Twitter) that this item will be appearing in October. I will seriously be buying at least a couple of these. I literally never use cash anymore, but when I travel to Japan it’s still necessary to carry coins around, so it’ll come in handy for sure. It’s probably too much to ask that they make an entire backpack, but I’ll put that idea out there just in case…
Mighty Jabba’s Collection T-Shirts Available Until September 18th!
I wanted some of these for myself, so I thought I would make them available for a limited time in case anyone else wanted one as well. These are available on TeeSpring.com for the next week or so, until September 18th. They’re around $15 plus shipping, and all of my proceeds after TeeSpring’s cut will be donated to the ASPCA.
Here’s a little video I made about them:
3D-Printed Jabba the Hutt Piggy Bank (and a Chance to Win One!)
A while back I 3D scanned one of my unlicensed Jabba the Hutt ceramic figures so I could 3D print it (you can learn more about that in this video on YouTube). It recently occurred to me that this would make a perfect piggy bank, so I set about trying to convert the 3D model to something that would work as a bank.
I’m still learning how to do things related to 3D modeling, so it took a little while, but I think I managed to get a design that works well. The design is available for free on Thingiverse, but if you don’t have a printer you still have a chance to get one. I am running a little contest on YouTube in honor of passing the 1,000 subscriber mark where I will be giving two of these away. You just have to go to this video on YouTube and leave a comment to be entered in the drawing (which will end at midnight on Friday the 16th of September). You don’t have to be a subscriber to win, but it would be nice if you could subscribe. Good luck!
At every Star Wars Celebration they tend to have groups of exclusive items that attendees can try to collect. For example, at Celebration V it was parody cereal boxes like “Grape Hutts,” and at Celebration VI they had “Star Tots” pins. This Jabba pin is part of a collection of emoji-style pins released for Star Wars Celebration Europe earlier this year. Some of them were just available for sale, but others could only be had by visiting a particular vendor’s booth. Apparently that was the case with this pin, which was available from the Think Geek booth. Unfortunately that meant that this was more expensive than many of the other pins on the secondary market. It’s a pretty nice pin, though, and I like the emoji concept.
As an aside, the word emoji comes from Japanese, and it’s very interesting to see how it has entered the English language recently. There’s a huge amount of borrowing from English into Japanese, but relatively little in the other direction — and most of the things we do borrow tend to be directly related to Japanese culture, so it’s cool to see something like this being adopted.
I got the silver-plated coin on the right nearly two years ago, but I kind of wrote off the gold-plated version since the only one I could find was quite expensive. I recently found a good deal, though, and got the gold version for just a tiny bit more than I originally paid for the silver one. It’s basically the same as the silver version, so feel free to check that review for details. The gold version apparently had an edition size of 25,000, which is still a LOT for something like this.
I discovered a couple of days ago that I exactly one year had passed since I started making videos on YouTube, so I made a YouTube video in commemoration of that where I also talked about these these coins.
I don’t really know how many people read this site regularly, but you may have noticed a bit of a drop in posting frequency here, and a rise in the number of YouTube videos. The fact of the matter is that I can get hundreds of views in a day or two when I post a video on YouTube, and just a handful (if that) when I post something here. I also get some pretty good comments and interaction on YouTube and very little here.
I have no intention of stopping what I do on this site. There are a lot of minor items that don’t really merit making a full video, and I want this site to act as a sort of permanent repository of information about Jabba merchandise. But at the same time, a lot of my time and attention is going to YouTube. So if you’re interested in the kind of thing that I cover on this site, I would recommend subscribing to my YouTube channel.
Mighty Jabba's Collection 