Zero-Gravity Jabba the Hutt Resin Kit by Paul Komoda
This is a resin model kit sculpted by Paul Komoda in conjunction with Artist Proof Studio. The sample paint-up that they have showed for the piece uses an interesting bluish color scheme, apparently based on a painting by Paul. It’s attractive, but the combination of the coloring and the unusual “zero-g” concept makes it difficult to even recognize it as being Jabba, so I went with a more traditional orange and green color scheme. I also opted to have him standing more upright rather than floating forward.
It took me a while to figure out how to make a stand for this, since the “kit” consists only of the resin casting of Jabba himself and no stand or rod to support him. After some digging around the house, I managed to find a metal rod that seemed perfect and a base from a Star Trek action figure that seemed like it would work (is that blasphemy?). I repainted the base so that it just looked vaguely futuristic. The main thing I needed was something broad enough that he wouldn’t tip over, but the idea I had in the back of my mind was that maybe Jabba was trapped in some sort of stasis cell.
I had originally written “Jabba the Hutt” on the base in trade Huttese (using a font found here), but I decided to change it to Jabba’s tattoo symbol. I printed it out on photo paper, which works surprisingly well. I’ve tried painting symbols like these by hand and it takes ages and usually doesn’t turn out that well.
The sculpt is interesting. More detailed than many, with a lot of gross looking lumps. I’ve never seen a Jabba sculpt with teeth before, but somehow it works. Here’s what it looked like before painting. The green patches are where I had to use epoxy putty to fill in some air bubbles in the casting.
Store Display for LEGO Jabba’s Palace, Desert Skiff and Droid Escape Sets
If you spend any time in the LEGO sections of stores like Toys R Us or Target these days, you’re sure to see a few in-store displays. They’re encased in thick acrylic and usually have lights and some sort of action feature that encourages you to move something in the display. They’re sized so they fit perfectly on a shelf. They take up a fair amount of space that can’t then be used for product, so I guess they must be effective in getting people to buy or else the stores wouldn’t bother.
These are usually supposed to be destroyed after they are no longer needed in the store, and I understand the stores actually have industrial shredders in the back that they can use to destroy stuff like this. Sometimes employees manage to get ahold of them and sell or give them away, although I’ve heard that some stores are cracking down on this. Since these are usually destroyed and their size makes them difficult to ship, there aren’t too many of them around, but they’re not super expensive either since the demand isn’t really there. They’re hard to ship and it would be difficult to have too many of these in a collection due to the size. Also, some people don’t like the idea of having glued LEGO models. They’re kind of an obscure subset of LEGO collecting, but I quite like them.
I first saw this particular type of display at a Chicago area Toys R Us back in January and I snapped a picture of it at the time (see below). None of the TRU stores in our area got these, so they may have only gone to stores in larger cities. I already had the models from an old Jabba’s sail barge store display, so I knew I had to try and get my hands on this one of these as well. It is for the Jabba’s Palace (9516), Desert Skiff (9496) and Droid Escape (9490) sets. It’s a little odd for them to include the Droid Escape set, since that’s from A New Hope and the rest are from Return of the Jedi. Ideally, it would have had the Rancor Pit (75005) instead, but that set wasn’t released until later.
I had been watching eBay for one of these to come up for months, and finally one appeared. (This is actually the second one I had seen on eBay. One came up a few months ago, but the seller wanted at least $2,500 for it because they were convinced that the set had been “banned.” Needless to say, it did not sell and the sets are still on store shelves today.) As luck would have it, the seller of this display was located in a Chicago suburb a little over 2 hours away from us by car, so we were able to go and pick it up. I have major doubts about something this large surviving if you tried to send it by mail or UPS, and of course it would be very expensive.
The display has 3 sets of LED lights on the top powered by an AC adapter, and a disc you can spin that allows you to turn Jabba’s palace around to see it from all sides. All of the figures have been painstakingly arranged and glued into place (although in most places you can’t see any glue at all). In some cases they have added brackets or other means of support. The B’omarr monk figure has a clear acrylic post attaching it to the base, for example (see below). I was a little worried that something might come loose on the way home, since it bounced around a few times in the back of our car, but it survived without any damage at all.
It’s really quite impressive in person. It measures just under 4 feet wide by 1.5 feet tall — it only barely fit in the rear of our SUV. The floor and back of the display are made of thick card that has been custom made for this display. It features some Tatooine-themed artwork that ties in with the LEGOs in the display. For example, you can see R2 and C-3PO’s trails in the sand behind them (I love Threepio’s square footprints.)
And you can see the sandy sarlacc pit under the LEGO piece. It’s these extra touches that made me really want to get ahold of the set.
At the bottom of the display, they also show all of the minifigures from each of the sets. Here’s the Jabba’s Palace selection.
By the way, while we were in Chicago, we stopped by a LEGO store and I snapped a picture of their display for the LEGO Jabba set. LEGO stores are different from other stores in that they don’t use the self-contained displays and instead build and display their models by hand. So basically this is just a normal LEGO set inside one of the store’s display cases. I can’t figure out why they put the sarlacc up on top of that big riser with the skiff down below, however.
“C-3PO and R2-D2” Card by PopShots (Pop-up Greeting Card)
I posted about the “Jabba Birthday” card from PopShots a while ago. This one features the droids walking up to Jabba’s palace in the distance and has the message “We’ve Been Through A Lot Together!”
It’s a pop-up card and is really designed to be viewed straight on from the front, giving a 3D effect. It looks a little odd from the side as you can see.
Custom Power of the Force 2 Jabba the Hutt Figure
Pretty much all of the repaints and custom figures I’ve posted about here are my own, but I thought I’d make an exception in this case. I don’t know who made this, but I recently got it in a lot of Hasbro figures that also included the resin sculpture of Ephant Mon that I posted about recently. The maker of this figure presumably had feelings about the POTF2 Jabba the Hutt figure that were similar to my own. It’s too green and can’t turn its tail to the side, which is a problem if you want to put him on a throne. They’ve solved the first problem by repainting him in a color that I can only assume is meant to match the vintage Jabba figure. I’m not sure that going all green or all tan is really a good solution, but I like that it’s an homage to the original figure.
I’ve repainted the POTF2 Jabba figure myself, and also modified it so that it can turn its tail to the side, so I know that it’s not an easy task. You pretty much have to completely destroy the inner mechanism to allow the head to turn freely. The creator of this figure went one step further by resculpting the tail significantly. It’s a bit rough, but I think it’s a good effort. They even used epoxy putty to add a thinner tip to the tail, which was always much too stubby on this figure. It does look rather turd-like however…
You can get a better sense for what this entailed by looking at the bottom of the figure. It’s pretty rough under there, but you can see where they used plastic card to cover up some of the holes. Of course the sad thing is that even with these improvements, the vintage figure still looks much better, but there’s only so much you can do when you’re starting out with something like the POTF2 Jabba.
Ephant Mon Resin Sculpture
I got this piece in a small lot of Hasbro figures on eBay, and it was obviously the odd one of the bunch. The seller didn’t seem to know much about what they were selling, so I assume that this originally belonged to someone else. It’s fairly large at around 5 inches tall and 4 inches deep, and it’s made of resin. It’s hollow as you can see below, and must have been cast from a mold, so I’m guessing that someone made a small run of these at some point.
Whether it was a kit that people painted themselves or was provided completely painted I don’t know, but I’d say this one is painted fairly well (although it has a few minor chips now).
It’s obviously meant to be Ephant Mon and is roughly the same scale as Hasbro’s action figures, so I can only assume that it was created to allow someone to have the character in their Jabba display back before Hasbro had released their own version of the character (shown below). I’d be very interested to hear if anyone had seen this statue before. I think I’ll put it in my Power the Force 2-era Jabba display.
Prototype Oola Figure from Walmart-Exclusive Jabba’s Throne Set
I enjoy prototypes since they’re rare, give you a glimpse behind the scenes in what it takes to bring a toy to market, and often let you see the sculpts of the toys more clearly, since they’re usually not obscured by paint. Prototypes for Jabba himself have been exceedingly difficult to find, and for whatever reason I’ve seen very few Jabba’s palace characters in general, so I was happy to get this one.
With Oola in particular, seeing the raw unpainted sculpt really impressed me. Especially when you take into account its small size, this is really quite beautiful. The only marking on this prototype is a handwritten “A5” on the top of her head. What that meant I can only guess, but presumably they were testing something and needed to be able to tell various iterations from each other.
When you compare this prototype with the finished figure, the finished figure looks a lot more toy-like somehow. The mesh netting she’s wearing looks too big and bulky, and the paint on the face seems heavy handed. There’s not really a lot of paint even on the finished figure — it’s basically just her face, headgear and sandals — but it does make quite a difference in the figure’s appearance.
Jabba the Hutt Dog Toy from Petco
How cute is this? Petco recently announced a surprisingly large line of Star Wars-themed pet toys and costumes, and this is one of them, but strangely it has disappeared from their website. [Edit: Now it’s back.] I was pleased to see that they had included Jabba, since these kinds of products often just feature the most popular characters like Darth Vader or Yoda and leave it at that. This is a dog toy, although I wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t tell right away. It looks more like an oven mitt or something, and I think it could also work as a child’s toy. I guess safety standards are different for dog toys and kids’ toys, so you do have to be careful, but this particular one seems safe enough. It’s certainly soft. It’s made of a soft plush material and includes a truly prodigious number of squeakers — 18 in all, although one of mine doesn’t work. Most of them are sectioned off in his stomach area, but there are also two (one large and one small) in his head. Here’s a video to give you an idea.
I also couldn’t help picking up the cat toys they had in the shapes of Chewbacca, Yoda, Darth Vader and a stormtrooper. They’re very similar to the felt mice made by The House of Mouse on Etsy (where I got my Jabba the Hutt mouse), but sloppier in their construction. Still, they’re only $5 for a pair. I have my doubts about how long these would last in the paws (or jaws) of a determined cat, but they’re certainly cute. Did I mention that we have no pets? 😉
Rotta the Huttlet Keychains from Australia
I was more than a little skeptical when I first heard about the character of Rotta in the Clone Wars movie, but he’s grown on me a bit. In the prequels, Jabba the Hutt is a rather different character than the one from Return of the Jedi. He’s a bit nicer and less repulsive (and of course he looks rather different, too). I’m not sure I can accept the idea of the ROTJ Jabba being a protective father figure, but it sort of works with the Clone Wars version somehow.
I first heard about these keychains from my friend Dale in Australia about 3 years ago. He sent me a picture of a package of Clone Wars keychains with what appeared to be a golden Rotta in it. I was intrigued, but didn’t think it was worth buying a package of 10 or so keychains and having it sent to the US just to get the Rotta. It’s possible they were sold in the US as well, but I never saw them (and these appear to have “tpf.com.au” stamped on the bottom, giving further credence to the idea that they were originally intended for Australia). Luckily, these recently cropped up for sale loose on eBay by a seller in China who appears to be selling a bunch of surplus ones from the factory. I got both versions of Rotta, plus keychains of a bunch of other Clone Wars characters for $7.99 including shipping from China (!).
My hunch is that the gold version was used as a sort of “chase” keychain with an alternate design. I think these kinds of keychains are really intended as action figures, but have a keychain added to make it so they don’t infringe on the company with the license for unarticulated figures like these. The larger figures in particular are very impractical as keychains, but make reasonably good action figures or models.
Carded C-3PO and R2-D2 Kubrick Figures (Medicom Exhibition 2013)
Kubricks are often sold in blind boxes, so you can’t tell which figure you’re getting, but with the Jabba’s Palace wave, they used different boxes for each figure. They were still closed boxes, though, so you couldn’t actually see the figure (and there was a even chance that the figure inside was a rare chase figure rather than the one pictured on the box).
As a nod to the old-school Star Wars figures, Medicom periodically releases carded versions of some of their figures for special events. Most recently, they released carded versions of C-3PO (with Salacious Crumb) and drink serving R2-D2 for the Medicom Exhibition 2013 in Japan.
The attraction of these is entirely in the fact that they are on cards, so I don’t think many people would be opening them up (not when the regular versions of the figures are identical and cheaper). I think they should also do a Kubrick version of the box from the vintage Jabba toy, but maybe that’s just me.
Jabba’s Palace and Droids Snapback Cap by New Era
One of my favorite pieces in my collection is my New Era Jabba the Hutt fitted cap. That’s partially because it’s quirky and funny, but mostly because that particular model got cancelled, making it quite rare. I happened to be in Tokyo on business at just the right time to get one of the few that were released to retail, and that memory makes it seem more special somehow.
This cap is also from New Era, but in most other ways it’s very different from the Jabba cap. It’s a snapback hat with an adjustable plastic band in the back, rather than being a fitted cap that comes in a particular size, like the Jabba hat. While the Jabba hat came from Japan, this one was apparently sold in the US at Hot Topic stores. (I was not successful in finding any information about the hat online and had never seen it before it cropped up on eBay, so this is just a guess based on what I have heard. I’d be interested to know if anyone else has any info.)
The background is the famous concept art of Jabba’s Palace by Ralph McQuarrie that you can see above, but in black & white. I guess they did that to make the embroidered patches of R2 and C-3PO stand out more, but it just doesn’t look that great to me. The patches themselves are not fantastic, and it seems odd to have the droids there in the middle when you can also see them at the far left of the image of the palace. They also managed to mess up the palace itself a bit by having the seams not match exactly in the center.
There’s a rebel symbol patch on the right side and a New Era logo patch on the left. Overall I find the design of this one to be uninspired. Still, I thought it made an interesting companion to the Jabba hat (see below). Even though I never wear hats, I’ve managed to accumulate quite a number of Jabba-related ones over the years. They just keep cropping up.
Mighty Jabba's Collection 
