I actually saw this belt “in the wild” a couple of years ago (and on a female, if you can believe it), but at the time I didn’t notice that Jabba was on it. If I had to guess, I would say it was sold at Hot Topic stores, although you can still get these new from various places online.
I have a couple of different children’s belts. One belt has a killer brass buckle with a Jabba design, another is an elastic belt with a round Jabba buckle, and yet another one is a colorful Return of the Jedi belt. But this is the first belt for “grownups” that I’ve seen with Jabba on it. It’s not that hard to find just about any product with Vader or R2 on it, but Jabba is used more sparingly by most companies. I guess that’s part of the fun in collecting him, though.
In addition to Jabba, there’s also a rancor, which is another character that’s on the rare side merchandise-wise.
On the back is a giant “STAR WARS” logo.
POTF2 Jabba the Hutt (1996 Variant Box)
I wasn’t a collector at all in the 1990s (most of which I spent either in college or Japan) so at the time the Power of the Force 2 figures came out I didn’t even know they existed. But from what I understand, a lot of collectors at the time got pretty crazy trying to collect packaging and paint variations for various figures. There were apparently dozens of minute variations for Boba Fett alone! I don’t really see the appeal of that, but there are some packaging variations that are interesting.
From the front, you’re not likely to notice anything about this box that’s different from the more common version. As far as I know, they are identical. But the backs are a different story.
If you compare the box above to the more common version, you’ll see a number of differences. First and most significant is that a completely different picture of Han and Jabba has been used at the bottom left. In the original version, Jabba is on the left and Han is on the right, while in the other version they have been switched (see below).
If you look closer, you can also see the difference in copyright dates. The more common version has 1997 copyright dates, but the figure originally had a 1996 copyright. The 1996 version:
And the 1997 version:
The eagle-eyed among you will also see that the number at the lower left has changed from 541082.01 to 541082.02, indicating that the .02 version was a running change. I wonder why they made this change. I suppose Jabba looks marginally more attractive in the second version, and it’s also a photo used on a variety of other products, so perhaps Lucasfilm wanted them to use that version.
Custom Vintage Tauntaun Trophy for Jabba’s Palace Display
As I have mentioned in the past, Jabba had the head of a tauntaun hanging in his palace (as well as a jerba), similar to how someone might have a deer’s head mounted on display. I’ve always assumed that this was a leftover tauntuan from Empire Strikes Back rather than something they made specifically for this purpose, and indeed it was only seen fleetingly. Many people are not even aware of it being in the film, but here it is in the background behind Sy Snootles.
I decided to make a version of this for my vintage Kenner figures using the vintage Kenner tauntaun. I got a really beat-up tauntaun on ebay for cheap — one that I didn’t feel too bad about decapitating. I had originally hoped to just keep the factory paint job, but it turned out to be too difficult to get a good looking join to the base that way. Plus it was rather yellowed and ugly. So I repainted it completely, but resisted the urge to go full-on realistic and instead just kept it simple like the original figure.
It’s not clear whether the tauntaun in the film had any sort of backing board on it, but I think it looks better with something there rather than just having the head stick out of the wall. I scrounged around the basement and found a metal disc that was the base for a (rather terrible) Farscape figure. It was just about the right size to use as the backing board. I added a plaque at the bottom (actually a repurposed PADD from a Star Trek figure) and wrote “Tauntaun Hoth” in Nal-Huttese at the bottom. It just seemed to be missing a little something without the plaque at the bottom, and there was a hole in the base that I needed to cover as well.
Here it is unpainted. The green parts are epoxy putty that I used to both attach it to the base and to sculpt some additional fur around the sides to make it less of a harsh edge where I cut it off. I’m thinking of doing something similar for the 3 3/4″ figures and the 1/6 scale figures.
Jabba’s Palace Star Tots Background by Jason Peltz
Jason Peltz is the artist who designed the background art used on the Star Tots cardbacks. He also made a couple of prints that are in scale with the Star Tots and can be used as display backgrounds for them. Aside from this Jabba’s Palace print, he also made a Cantina version. At around 5″ by 20″, they’re kind of small and oddly sized, but the art is nice and colorful and they roll out flat without too much trouble — a plus if you want to use them as a background for your tots.
I don’t think I will be actually displaying the tots on the background since that would mean not being able to see the nice artwork on their cardbacks, and I’m also not sure how one would go about making a permanent display like that. Would you frame the tots along with the print?
Here’s the tots on top of the print. Be sure to click for a larger version. The print costs $40 shipped and can be purchased by contacting Jason directly via his website.
Star Tots! (Celebration VI/Celebration Europe Exclusives)
Star Tots were originally a line of preschool Star Wars toys that never got beyond the planning stage. They were resurrected, in a way, for Celebration VI in the form of small die-cast metal “figures” on cardbacks that mimicked those of the vintage Kenner figures. 20 different characters were made for Celebration V and then another 15 for Celebration Europe (and that is where most of these came from).
The extraordinary thing about these is that they were not sold. Instead, they were given away to attendees of the various collecting panels held at Celebration. Each character was sponsored by someone who paid to have it produced. I think that’s pretty cool. They’ve done similar things in the past with things like medallions and cereal boxes (e.g. “Grape Hutts.”)
The Celebration Europe versions are all based on the trilingual “Trilogo” cardbacks used when vintage Kenner figures were sold in Europe, and each has unique card art by Jason Peltz, who did the “Hop on Hutt” print I posted about a while back. Since they were never sold, you basically can only get them from someone who attended the panels (or from one of the sponsors) and this can make them a little pricey.
I was quite impressed with these when I got them in hand. The tots themselves are around 1.75″ tall and are made of thick metal around 1/8th of an inch thick. The details are enamel and very neatly done. I’ve collected the ones that could potentially be considered Jabba-related (although I guess the Jawa from the first wave could also fit). They’re packaged in a plastic clamshell that allows you to remove them without causing any damage to the package at all.
On the back of each tot is the name of that character’s sponsor and some other things like copyright info — apparently these are officially licensed collectibles. I don’t know if they plan to continue on with the series for future celebrations. I think a Jabba would be awesome, and I might even consider sponsoring one myself (although I have no idea what it costs). But of course Jabba usually gets short shrift in these kinds of cases because he didn’t come on a cardback like most figures. Some people don’t consider figures like the Rebo Band or Jabba to be “real” figures because of the way they were sold, which seems rather silly to me.
Huttese Translator Rings
Since I am a translator of Japanese and a fan of Jabba the Hutt, I found it very difficult to resist a product called a “Huttese Translator Ring” (although it’s more of a decoder ring than a “translator” ring.) I’m fascinated by writing systems in general, but I hadn’t given much thought to how Huttese was written down before. Here’s what I found after a little research. The alphabet used on these rings is called “Trade Huttese” and is supposedly a simplified version of the written language used when Hutts are dealing with outsiders.
In reality, it was created by Eric Larson for a game on a Pizza Hut box used during the 1997 release of the “Special Editions” of the Star Wars films. Called “Jabba’s Alphabet,” the alphabet was based on Hebrew and was really just a code-breaker activity for kids. The alphabet was apparently also used in the 2002 video game “Star Wars: Racer Revenge,” but that seems to be it. A completely separate Huttese alphabet (sometimes called Nal-Huttese) was created for The Phantom Menace, and can be seen on some of the podracer control screens and even on Anakin’s podracer itself. It’s a more curved and complex script:
My feeling is that the pizza box version of the script was retconned into “Trade Huttese” after they created the version used in Episode One. Why they chose to use this obscure version of the language for these rings rather than the one used in the movie is a bit of a mystery, but it may simply be due to the fact that a complete alphabet isn’t available in Nal-Huttese — at least not an official one. There are some Nal-Huttese fonts and character charts available on the net, but these all seem to be fan-made and are not necessarily canonical. At least the “Trade Huttese” alphabet appeared in an official product, albeit a pizza box.
It’s a little too bad they couldn’t have used Nal-Huttese, since it looks cool while Trade Huttese looks very similar to Aurebesh (they also made a translator ring for that, by the way). Then again, Nal-Huttese would be very difficult to write and decipher, so if you wanted to actually use the ring to write some secret messages, Trade Huttese would be the better choice.
The rings themselves are “spinner” rings, made from two concentric rings so that the outer ring can spin freely, allowing you to spin it around to see all sides of the ring easily. But even though I ordered the “Large” version, I found they were just slightly too small for me. I can get them on easily enough, but getting them off is another matter. The “spinner” feature makes things difficult since you can’t really twist the ring to get it off your finger.
I wasn’t really planning on wearing these anyway, so I’ll be putting them on my shelf along with some of my other rings. (I have silver rings from JAP Inc. of Jabba the Hutt, Bib Fortuna and the Rancor, plus unlicensed rings of Bib Fortuna and Gamorrean Guard.)
Ree-Yees Mini-Bust By Gentle Giant
It’s been over a year since we first saw the concept art for this bust, and now it’s finally starting to ship. It’s mostly because Kenner decided to make a figure of him, but Ree-Yees is another character that seems familiar to Star Wars fans, even though we don’t really have a good idea of who he was.
Wookieepedia has the full story, and it’s actually fairly interesting. Apparently the name Ree-Yees is a play on the phrase “three eyes” — you learn something new every day.
I think the bust came out quite well. It’s a “deluxe” mini-bust with a switch-out arm. You can either have him empty-handed, enjoying his glass of blue milk, or have him holding a blaster. The blaster looks a little out of place in my opinion, so I think I’m going to go with the empty hand.
Now the only Jabba-related bust that is still on its way from Gentle Giant is Max Rebo. They’ve got such a good selection of Jabba’s Palace characters now that I wish they’d do a Bib Fortuna and (dare I dream?) a Jabba. Yes, Jabba might look a little odd as a bust, but not any odder than an ewok, for example.
Custom Expanded LEGO Jabba’s Palace and Rancor Pit
As you can probably guess, the recent LEGO Jabba’s Palace playset (set # 9516) is probably my favorite LEGO set (that’s one reason I recently bought a store display for the set). I love the designs of the characters, and how they were able to recreate both the appearance of the outside of the palace and the most important features of the inside, and also have it link up with the rancor pit underneath. There are only a couple of complaints I might have about it. One is that it’s a little on the expensive side given the number of bricks. The other is that it’s pretty darned small when you really look at it. There’s barely enough room for the Rancor to even fit in the pit, and Jabba’s throne room is tiny! That’s why I decided fairly soon after it came out to try and make an expanded version that would give you plenty of room for play.
This will probably be obvious from looking at my photos, but I’m far from being an expert LEGO builder. I’ve put together a lot of sets, but when it comes to designing my own creations (MOCs), I’m still a novice. So building this wasn’t easy. I based a lot of the basic design on the official sets, but did a lot of improvising as well. I’m pretty happy with how the throne turned out.
I actually built the bottom Rancor pit section about 6 months ago, but ran into trouble with the top floor, since it kept falling apart and certainly wouldn’t have been good enough to support everything I wanted to build on top of it. The issue was simply I just didn’t have the right parts to do what I wanted. I got frustrated and shelved it for a while.
In the end, I think I ended up buying 3 Jabba’s Palace sets and 3 Rancor sets (although many of them didn’t include the minifigures, which allowed me to get the parts I needed cheaper). Even after that, I still needed to visit a LEGO Store and get a bucket of bricks from their “pick a brick” wall in order to finish properly.
This isn’t really the best way to go about it, but I find it very difficult to plan something out and then buy the individual parts I need — I really need to have a selection of parts in my hands so I can see how they fit together. After finishing, I still have quite a few parts left over that I can use for other sets.
I wanted to keep it as open as possible while still suggesting some of the architecture of the palace, so I used a lot of archways. I also added the rotisserie with meat that should be behind Jabba’s throne (below). It’s a detail that gets left out of most toys, although the official Jabba’s Palace set did include it in one form.
Of course, I had to use the Max Rebo figure from the recent Jabba’s Sail Barge (set #75020). Since the piano in that set was pretty small, I built one from scratch. It’s far from perfect, but size-wise I think it’s about right. I’ll probably revisit this at a later date, since the keys don’t quite do it for me.
One feature that really I like about the official set is that you can lift off the entire top floor to get at the Rancor pit below. I used the same idea for my version, including the triangular posts that stick up into holes in the bottom of the upper level to ensure that it can’t move around. The only thing that keeps it in place is gravity, but it works very well.
It’s much nicer to have room for the Rancor to run around. As you may have noticed, I don’t yet have a working trapdoor in place, although I do have a grating where it would be. I had so much trouble just getting a stable foundation for the upper floor that I decided I would forgo the trapdoor for the moment. I may come back and try to add one later on. For now, it’s just good to have it “finished” instead of lying in pieces in the corner of our bedroom…
Clay Jabba the Hutt Statue (High School Art Project)
I got this from somebody on eBay who said they did it as a high school art project in the 1990s. It’s about 10 inches long and fairly hefty, although it is hollow. I thought he did a pretty good job evoking Jabba with a minimum of detail.
At first glance, this looks identical to the normal “Spitting Jabba” set that Hasbro released along with its other Phantom Menace toys.
But turn it around and you’ll see a very conspicuous green “Kenner Standard” tag. These were used for quality control, perhaps to report an issue with the product that needed correcting before it would go into production, or maybe just giving final approval to a design. From it we can learn that this set was referred to as “Creature #204” and that the vendor who manufactured it was called “Sunshine.” It’s dated June 1999, which is more than a year after the dates on the preliminary drawings I have, and just before its release. (As a side note, it’s interesting to see that they were still using the name “Kenner” in places years after Hasbro took over the company.)
If you look at the right side of the box, you can see that a sticker has been placed over some of the text.
The retail version looks like what you see to the left (but the text is part of the box and not on a sticker). I just had to know what the sticker was covering up, so I carefully removed it to find the version you see to the right. (It actually came off with no damage and can be reapplied.) It turns out that they were correcting a missing apostrophe in the word “JABBA’S.” Not quite as exciting as I had hoped, but still kind of interesting. It’s possible that this box is the only one that has this mistake on it, since it never actually went into production this way.
Mighty Jabba's Collection 