Jabba the Hutt and Oola Wooden Figures by John Soukup
About a year ago I wrote about the wooden figures that John Soukup (aka Kettleart) made for me featuring a variety of Jabba’s palace characters. I happened to see that he was auctioning off this pair of figures recently, and decided to get them as well.
I think I like this Jabba even better than the other one I have, so he’ll probably be replacing the old one in my main display of these figures. And it was also nice to get an Oola. I’ll have to see about getting some more characters. These are a fun and affordable way to get some nice original artwork. Here’s a link to John’s deviantart page.
Jabba the Hutt Sculpted Pendant Necklace by RedDingoDesigns
RedDingoDesigns on Etsy has several Star Wars themed sculpted necklaces, including this one. The design for the Jabba necklace they show has a lot of extra chains and some hearts on it, but I decided to ask for a simpler one with just a single chain. I have no intention of actually wearing this, and will mostly be just displaying as a small sculpture, but I like the idea of having a Jabba necklace. The sculpt is actually very impressive — lots of people seem to have trouble getting the likeness down, but this is well done, as is the paint job. His head is maybe a bit big for his body, but I get the impression that it was done for effect. In any case, I was impressed when I received it. It’s about 4 inches wide.
Link: Jabba the Hutt with Hair
Ever wonder what Jabba the Hutt would look like with the hairstyles of various celebrities? Me neither. But if you’d like to see a surprising number of Photoshopped photos depicting exactly that, visit the single-topic Tumblr blog “Jabba the Hutt with Hair.” (Above is Jabba with Kim Kardashian’s hair.) It’s apparently been around for more than two years.
“H is For Hutt” Watercolor by Jeffrey Johnson
I got this great watercolor from Jeffrey Johnson, an artist who has an Etsy shop along with his wife Amy. It shows Jabba chowing down on some of his favorite food (after froggies) — pizza! It’s about 5″ x 7″. Aside from the artwork itself, I have to give Jeffrey props for shipping his artwork pre-matted to fit a standard size frame, which really makes things easier. I have a large backlog of art that I haven’t gotten around to framing since it will require at least a custom cut mat, if not a complete custom framing job.
Upcoming: Jabba the Hutt Plush from Comic Images
Comic images released a Jabba the Hutt “Scruffy” back in 2010, and more recently has released a number of Star Wars creatures in plush form, including a Rancor. But this is their first full-fledged Jabba, and I think it looks very nice (even if he is all green). It’s due out in June of this year and should cost around $15, so it’s not going to be all that large.
Upcoming: Jabba the Hutt Latex Figure and Rancor & Keeper Vinylmation Figures for Disney Star Wars Weekends 2014
Last year at Disney Star Wars Weekends 2013, they had quite an impressive selection of exclusive merchandise, and this post from the Star Wars Blog indicates that there will be at least a couple of Jabba-related items this year as well.
The first is a “Jabba the Hutt latex character,” which I assume is similar in its construction to the latex Salacious Crumb they had last year. I was pretty impressed with that, especially for the price, so I’m excited about this, even if it does have his tail going behind him. That’s not really his iconic look, and brings to mind the CGI Jabba of the prequels, which is not my favorite design.
There’s also going to be a Rancor & Keeper Vinylmation set which is clearly a sort of companion piece to the Jabba the Hutt & Salacious Crumb set from last year. I still think the Jabba from that set was way too large. At least with the rancor he seems to be more or less in scale to the normal Vinylmation figures. I believe the same person who helped me get items last year is willing to do so again, so I won’t be at the mercy of eBay sellers to get these limited items.
Rancor T-Shirt (Unknown Maker)
This shirt doesn’t have any identifying information on the label — it’s just a normal Hanes t-shirt label. But it does have a 1996 copyright at the bottom, so I’m guessing that it’s actually fairly old. The artwork is taken from some of the Ralph McQuarrie concept art for Return of the Jedi.
Amigurumi Jabba the Hutt, Slave Leia & Salacious Crumb (Crocheted Plush Toys) by SunnyStitchBoutique
I swear I didn’t plan to start a collection of these Amigurumi dolls, but I now have some more crocheted pieces, after getting Max Rebo a few days ago. Lucy Ravenscar is the one who made the original pattern for these, and she sells the patterns on Etsy. I was interested when the patterns appeared a while back, but I can’t crochet and she doesn’t sell ready-made examples of these, so I couldn’t get them. However, SunnyStitchBoutique recently put up listings for completed versions of dolls based on her patterns, so I snapped them up.
Slave Leia seems to be about the same size as Max Rebo (around 4 inches), which is nice, since I can potentially display all of these together. Jabba is roughly to scale with her, so he’s much bigger than Leia — maybe 5 inches tall and 7.5 inches wide. He’s also wonderfully plump. This version uses slightly different colors than the examples shown with Lucy’s patterns, and I like this olive green better than the more forest green color she used.
I got an amigurimi Jabba the Hutt from joyalice (known on eBay as little_hippo) about 3 years ago, and now she’s put out a Max Rebo in a similar style. She sells the crochet pattern on Etsy, and also makes them to order. I think this is really well done. It’s the addition of the piano that really makes it, since without it Max Rebo is just a blue elephant.
They’re separate pieces, so Max can come out if necessary. Nice detailing on the piano, given the materials involved. Here he is with her Jabba:
Jabba seems a bit small in comparison, doesn’t he? Maybe I should see about getting a larger one made…
Vintage Jabba the Hutt Cloisonne Pin by New Hampshire Jaycees
I’ve commented a number of times about how I keep finding things that I’ve never seen before, and this item sure fits the bill. The United States Junior Chamber (abbreviated as “JCs” or more commonly “Jaycees) is a non-profit organization that seems to focus on promoting leadership and business-related skills. They made quite a number of pins in the 70s and 80s in particular, some with pop culture images like Star Wars or the Muppets (although the Star Wars ones don’t seem very numerous). According to the blog “Collecting Superman,” (which seems to be the Superman-themed equivalent of my blog!) the pins were “developed as an icebreaker so that regional organizations participating in conventions and annual meetings would swap their group’s pins with other attendees, and then network and become friends.”
It took me quite a while to find anything at all about this pin online, but thanks to a link on “Collecting Superman,” I was finally able to find a listing for it on Pinsource.info — it didn’t help that they had misspelled both parts of Jabba’s name, giving it as “Jaba the Hut.” They list it as a fundraiser pin, with the pin ID NH8515.
It reminds me a lot of the pin put out by Hollywood Pins in the 1990s, but there are several important differences. They are both based on the same artwork, which was used on a lot of merchandise in the 1980s in particular — everything from towels to wristwatches. But the Jaycees pin only shows a closeup of Jabba, and is a color that’s a lot closer to the vintage Jabba figure rather than being green, as the Hollywood Pins pin is. But the most interesting difference is that on the Jaycees pin, Jabba is holding a goblet. It’s actually kind of a pink or purple color. I can’t recall seeing this detail on any other piece that uses this same artwork. The position of his arm does make it look like he should be holding something, but in most cases his hand is empty. The only exception I can think of is the vintage baseball cap from Sales Corporation of America, where he’s holding the hose from his hooka). In any case, I was pretty excited to find one of these.
Mighty Jabba's Collection 