Rancor Monster Plush by Comic Images
When I first posted about this plush a few months ago, I didn’t have very high hopes for it, because the face looked… Off. See for yourself below. The eyes were in the wrong place, as was the nose (the rancor’s nostrils are actually above its eyes). Thankfully, somebody caught this and changed the design before the toy went into production. Not only is the final design more rancor-like, it’s also got a lot more detail. I’m quite happy with it.
I’m not sure what to think about the difference in color. In-hand, the actual plush is a bit browner and less red that what you see here, but nowhere near as brown as in the initial photo above. But in any case, the color they went with is an attractive one that seems appropriate.
They’ve also done a pretty good job with the body. It looks just about perfect to me. They got all the major details, but did leave out his earring and shackle. He’s about 9″ tall and retails for around $15. This is the first plush rancor that has been produced, to my knowledge.
Comic images has made a number of Star Wars plushes, including the Jabba the Hutt Scruffy, the Rotta the Hutt plush with backpack, and the upcoming talking Jabba the Hutt plush.
I hadn’t heard about Alex Pardee’s Bunnywith series before finding out about these figures, but I think they’re brilliant. Pardee is an artist who (among other things) has a comic series called Bunnywith, upon which a number of toys have been created, including these SDCC exclusives. Bunnywith is supposedly an acronym for “Based Upon Nearly Nothing, You Will Indulge in These Hares.” This and the “flesh” color they’ve used makes them very reminiscent of the M.U.S.C.L.E figures I had as a kid, and a look at the other figures in the series seems to bear that impression out. The figures themselves are sculpted by George Gaspar, based on this artwork of Pardee’s. How awesome is the puff ball at the end of his tail?
The figures came in “flesh” and white colors, and are around 4 inches wide. This may not sound very big, but in-hand they’re quite a bit larger than I had expected. They’re made of a semi-hard plastic and cost $12 apiece at SDCC. Naturally, I had to pay more to get them on eBay, although with only 100 of each figure made, I feel kind of lucky to have gotten them at all.
I don’t really mind products that are exclusive to conventions or other events if they are standalone pieces or obscure variants. But when you have a company like Hallmark or Hasbro releasing things that are part of their main product line but can only be purchased at a convention, it makes things difficult. People who want to collect Hallmark’s entire line of Star Wars ornaments, for example, have no choice but to pay inflated prices on eBay if they can’t make it to the show (and let’s face it, going to something like San Diego Comic Con is going to be prohibitively expensive for a lot of people, not to mention the time it takes to wait in line for all of these products at the show).
I’m mentioning this now because this particular ornament is exclusive to SDCC and NYCC, meaning that you can only get it at those cons or through the secondary market. It costs $34.99 at the convention, but prices on eBay are nearly triple that (and sometimes more, although I don’t think those particular auctions are actually selling). That sucks, but there’s little you can do about it except wait a while and hope that prices cool off after the excitement of the show has died down (they usually do). But, being the rabid Jabba (and rancor) fan that I am, I couldn’t wait.
The ornament itself isn’t really bad, but the paint job is a bit basic — mostly just brown with a dark wash over the top. One thing I don’t understand is why they chose to make his tail a brownish-green color. That’s something I’ve never seen on any other rancor statue or figure. They did add a real metal chain to his shackle, which is a nice touch.
The entire ornament is around 4 inches tall, so Luke is quite small — maybe an inch tall. But even for being so small, he’s very simplistic indeed, with little detail in the sculpt and only broad swathes of color. Granted, it might actually have looked worse if they tried to fill in details like the eyes, but still I can’t help but feel that he looks unfinished.
I was hoping that this ornament might actually be in scale with the Jabba the Hutt ornament I posted about earlier, but that didn’t work out. Luke ends up being a head or two shorter than C-3PO, making the rancor smaller than he should be relative to Jabba.
All in all, it’s not a bad piece, but when you consider what you have to do to get it (either attend one of the shows or pay through the nose on eBay) it’s hard to recommend.
Sy Snootles Mini-Bust by Gentle Giant (Max Rebo Band)
The first thing I said when I opened Sy Snootles’ box was, “Wow!” There’s a lot of detail here and the paint is also detailed and skillfully applied. It’s also a fairly large bust due to the pose and the inclusion of a (partial) microphone.
I have no earthly idea why George Lucas thought it was necessary to replace the original puppet with a CGI abomination in his “Special Edition” of Return of the Jedi, but thankfully we have the original version here. Pretty, isn’t she?
One thing that made me laugh out loud was the gun in her waistband. I never noticed that before, and I’m not sure if it’s a detail that was actually in the movie or not. It appears to be the same long-barreled pistol that Princess Leia used in A New Hope — I guess it’s the “ladies’ model?” The funny thing is that since the prop was based on a real pistol, it uses what is essentially an unmodified pistol grip, and since the long barrel is mostly hidden by her dress, it looks like she has a 20th century firearm. She’s packin’ heat!
Here’s a shot of her with Droopy McCool. I think once Max Rebo comes out, it’ll be a pretty impressive display. Below you can see them in my display case with the rest of my Jabba-related busts. I’m running out of room!
Droopy McCool Mini-Bust by Gentle Giant (Max Rebo Band)
It’s been a little over a year since I first posted about these busts, and now they’re finally available. (For some reason Max Rebo himself will not be coming out for another month or so.) Somehow BBTS got their orders in even before Gentle Giant itself, so I think I’m one of the first to get them in-hand. I actually opened Sy Snootles first, and compared to her, Droopy here is a little plain. Of course that’s mostly due to the nature of the character itself.
He’s basically all one color (although I was surprised to see that the head is a pinker color than the body) and he doesn’t have much in the way of facial features, either. I had forgotten that he had little pointy ears. His only accessory is his instrument, although mine appears to be a little bit bent. I don’t think it’s enough to try and get a replacement though.
All in all, he’s not a bad bust, but he’s definitely the kind of character you buy because you want the whole Rebo Band, rather than because you like him in particular. I actually think I prefer the way Gentle Giant sculpted and painted him for their Rebo Band statue, although it’s not a huge difference. Here he is with Sy.
My family and I stopped by Toys R Us yesterday, mostly to do a little scouting around for my son’s upcoming birthday. But when I was there, I found that they had these “Anti-Gravity Balls” on clearance. I don’t recall ever seeing them in person before. I looked through the characters, thinking it would be nice if they had a Jabba, but I vaguely remembered my friend Rodders writing about these last year and didn’t recall there being a Jabba, so I didn’t really expect there to be one. But after looking through stacks of these in three different sections of the store, I was surprised and happy to find that they did indeed have a Jabba and Slave Leia, plus some other related characters like Boushh and Han in Carbonite.
Each pack has one large and one small ball, with 12 different pairs to choose from. They’re sold under Uncle Milton’s “Star Wars Science” line, but to call these educational toys is a bit laughable. They’re just “super balls.” There’s a little clear plastic insert in the package that you can use to as a stand for your balls, so you can display them without them rolling all over the place. I thought that was a nice touch. These were originally $4.99 at TRU, but on clearance they ended up being a bit over $2 a pack, which isn’t too bad.
Here are some of the others that I picked up. By the way, Rodders, I got the pack with the Millennium Falcon in it if you want it. 🙂
“Boushh” 2013 Holiday Keepsake Ornament by Hallmark
I posted about Hallmark’s recently released Jabba the Hutt ornament not long ago, and mentioned that I was kind of disappointed with the paint job. Boushh is another character from Jabba’s palace, but she’s not in the same scale as Jabba — she’s a lot bigger, at around 4″ tall. Like Jabba, the sculpt is fine, but the paint is mediocre. There’s a fair amount of slop and in general they seem to have just put down the basic colors and then done a dark wash over the whole thing. I’ve seen better paint jobs on action figures, which is a bit disappointing since this is supposed to be a “artist crafted” ornament and costs more than most figures, at $14.95. Still, I guess it’s not too terrible.
Speaking of action figures, this ornament is roughly the size of an action figure — so close in fact that I had to get out the Saga Legends Boushh figure to check if they weren’t the same size. It turns out that since Carrie Fisher is rather short and Hasbro has made Boushh to scale with their other figures (as they should), their Boushh figure is smaller than the average figure. Still, it’s hard to get past the feeling that you’re essentially hanging an action figure on your tree when you look at an ornament like this.
Jabba the Hutt Pipe
I got this pipe form a seller on eBay who said that it was handmade in Peru, although it’s certainly not one-of-a-kind, as they have others of this same model for sale. They also have a number of other pipes with Star Wars characters on them. It’s about 5″ tall and appears to be made of some kind of resin.
I’m pretty impressed by the sculpt and paint job, especially for the price ($17.99 including shipping). This is actually the third Jabba pipe in my collection. The first was my Jabba the Hutt-shaped water pipe, and the second was a smaller pipe made of clay.
Looks like this bad boy is coming to us in November. I’ve always said that it was surprising that they didn’t have a proper Jabba plush, considering that you can get plushes of just about everything these days. Sure, they’ve had a couple of very small ones (the “Star Wars Buddies” Jabba and the “Scruffies” Jabba), but not a proper sized plush, so this is exciting. It’s apparently 12″ long, which isn’t huge but is at least respectable. It even talks! It should retail for about $30.
EDIT: It seems that the version above was just a prototype and that the actual product will look like the image below. I like the new version better for the most part, although it loses the good-natured smile from the first one.
Shirt Punch (another of those sites that sells a T-shirt design for a single day) had this design available a couple of months ago. When I buy shirts for my collection I generally try to get them in my size. I don’t usually wear them, but at least I have the option that way and it feels a little less wasteful. In this case, though, I got their smallest size thinking that my daughter might be able to wear it in a couple of years. She has a lot of Hello Kitty things, so this seemed like a no-brainer.
Mighty Jabba's Collection 