Jabba’s Hutt Sign from Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Disney World (Star Wars Weekends)
This is a bit of an unusual piece. It was used to announce some people who would be signing autographs at Jabba’s Hutt (a store selling Star Wars merchandise at Disney World). It’s quite large, at 28″ tall by 22″ wide. It’s made of 1/8 inch acrylic and has the same design on both sides. I got it because it was cheap (the shipping was more than the cost of the item) and because it had a number of Jabba-themed aspects, like the tattoo design in the background behind “Jabba’s Hutt,” the silhouette of Jabba’s palace, and Jabba’s face, as you can see below.
I had hoped to win a different one that had been used to announce that Steve Sansweet was signing his book “1,000 Collectibles: Memorabilia and Stories from a Galaxy Far, Far Away,” which I like quite a bit. Steve is sort of my collecting hero, and that book was an inspiration in many ways for how I approach my own collection. But I was still jet-lagged from our trip to Japan and I slept through the auction’s end. Still, after this one arrived, I discovered that this sign had been used on the day that my daughter was born — June 12, 2011. So that’s kind of cool as well.
Link: Life Size Tauntaun Wall Hanging on eBay
Many people don’t realize that Jabba the Hutt had some other trophies hanging on his wall in addition to Han in Carbonite. One of these was the stuffed head of a tauntaun. You only got a glimpse of it, and the only time I can think that it has been featured in a toy or collectable was on Gentle Giant’s Jabba’s Palace Bookends. It seems likely that this was a case of the set decorators reusing a tauntaun head from Empire Strikes Back, but in any case I think it’s a great little detail that often gets missed.
Someone on ebay has created a custom tauntaun head aiming to recreate this, and it’s currently already up to $1,875 as of this writing (although I think it started at $1800). That’s is way too rich my by blood, but it is quite cool. You can see in the picture above how big it is compared to the life size Salacious Crumb and Gamorrean Guard bust from Sideshow.
I’ve had plans to do something similar in a smaller scales for my various Jabba’s palace setups for a while now, but I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get to them.
Jabba the Hutt & Slave Leia T-Shirt by Hot Topic
I’ll have to say, I really like this shirt by Hot Topic. Rather than just print the photo in a box on the chest, the iconic “Jabba and Leia” photo literally covers the entire front of the shirt, including the sleeves and neck. In some ways, it’s the ultimate Jabba shirt. It’s not without its flaws, however.
There are a couple of areas in the armpits without any design on them where there was apparently a wrinkle in the cloth when the design was applied. It wouldn’t be visible in normal use, however.
More worrying is the fact that the cloth is so thin that you can see the writing on the inside of the back of the shirt from the outside. For $24.50 or more (depending on the size) this seems kind of chintzy. Still, overall I love the shirt. I’m going to keep an eye on Hot Topic’s site for sales or clearances and may try to get an extra one of these before they go out of production.
Boba Fett Metal Model by Knight Models
Ever since Knight Models released their Jabba the Hutt model kit, I’ve been slowly collecting the other models in their line that might conceivably go with their Jabba. So far, this has included a Gamorrean Guard and Leia as Boushh. They stopped producing Star Wars models a while ago, which has made these difficult to find. Boba Fett in particular was a little tricky to get at a good price, but I finally found one a while ago. I just got around to putting it together today.
Unlike the Jabba or the Gamorrean kits (which were partially resin or plaster), Boba is all metal. He comes in 10 pieces, but several of them are very small. On the left in the picture above, you can see the antenna, wookie braid, and rifle strap. They could easily be mistaken for pieces of scrap metal or flash, and I’ve even seen some painted examples that don’t include them. Maybe that was intentional, but it’s possible they didn’t even realize what they were.
Obviously, with all of these small parts, it’s rather delicate, although not as bad as some of the parts on the Jabba model (like Salacious Crumb’s ears).
You can see the antenna, rifle strap and wookie braid in place here.
Here it is with the other pieces that I have yet to paint. I still think the Gamorrean is too big, and maybe Leia is too small, but they don’t look bad together.
This is the official example paint job. I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to paint mine up .
LEGO Sail Barges Galore!
Now that I’m back in the states and have reassembled the new LEGO sail barge that I got in Japan, I thought I’d take a few shots of it with the old sail barge and the BaronSat version that I built a few months ago.
The two official LEGO versions aren’t as different in size as I had thought, but the more sloping nose on the new one makes it seem quite a bit smaller somehow by reducing the amount of space on deck. Interestingly, the new sail barge is noticeably heavier than the old one. The BaronSat version is of course immensely bigger than either one of them, although it’s also much more fragile.
Above is the old sail barge, which came with a skiff and sarlacc. (Edit: I just realized that I have the wrong skiff in this picture. The actual one that came with this set is larger, and can be seen in the last shot below. )
And here’s the new sail barge, which doesn’t come with the skiff or sarlacc — you have to get those as a separate set.
Finally, here are all three of the skiffs that LEGO has made. The one in the front is the newest set, followed by the one that came with the old sail barge. The very first skiff, which came as a set on its own before either of the barges, is in back.
Here’s one more Star Wars Weekends item I forgot to post about. It’s a pin showing Pete as a Gamorrean Guard from a set of 7 pins showing other Disney/Star Wars mashups. It’s a called a “mini pin” although at around an inch tall, it’s only slightly smaller than the pivot pins I posted about earlier.
This may be the last of the Star Wars Weekends exclusives that I’ll be posting about. There certainly were a lot of Jabba-related items this year. which put a strain on my wallet, but I guess that’s not surprising given that it’s the 30th anniversary of Return of the Jedi. This figure was released later than the Jumbo Jabba the Hutt Vinylmation figure and the Series 3 Vinylmation figures, so I had to resort to eBay to get it.
He comes in two pieces — Han himself and the Carbonite block that he fits into. But at $32.95 retail, he costs close to triple what an ordinary Vinylmation figure would cost. I assume most of that is due to his exclusive nature. He was only available during Star Wars Weekends and was limited to 2000 pieces, which apparently sold out fairly quickly.
The block is quite substantial, but it’s still a lot of money for such a small figure (especially if you have to pay over retail to get it from eBay). Still, I couldn’t resist getting Jabba’s favorite decoration…
Disney Star Wars Weekends 2013 Jabba the Hutt/Slave Leia Completer Pivot Pin (From Death Star Set)
Disney has been releasing commemorative pins for decades, so Disney pin collecting is a full-fledged hobby. In fact, I think you could probably make a very respectable collection of just Disney’s Star Wars-themed pins. They have released a couple of Jabba pins in the past: one with Jabba and Leia for Star Wars Weekends 2006, and one “Slime Magazine” pin from a collection of magazine-themed pins from 2011.
This one was released for Star Wars Weekends 2013, but turned out to be rather more difficult to get than I had expected. The problem was that they decided to make it a “completer” pin that is only available in certain sets. This wasn’t clear before Star Wars Weekends started, so a number of people on eBay had them up for preorder. But my order ended up being cancelled and I had no choice but to get it in a set. Since my choices were either this Death Star set for $100 or a framed set that cost almost $400, I went with this one. The pin is limited to 700 pieces, 500 of which come in the Death Star set and 200 of which were available in the framed set.
The set comes in a fairly nice round box with a picture of the Death Star on the front. The 5 pins are arranged inside, with the Jabba/Leia one in the middle. The other four pins are available separately. (Click the pictures below for a closer view.)
These are “pivot” pins, which means that a different character will stick out of the side depending on which way you tilt it. They’re made entirely of metal, which gives them a nice high-end feel. You can see the construction below. They’re made of two metal plates that are joined at the bottom, with the moving character plate sandwiched in the middle.
I’m not too happy that this one ended up being so costly to acquire, but on the other hand it’s considerably more limited than the other pins, which makes it seem more special. I do wonder if anyone actually wears this kind of pin or if they’re entirely made for collecting and display (my hunch is the latter).
One thing I find fascinating about Star Wars collecting is how broad it is. There’s just so much stuff out there that you can have quite a large collection even if you choose a relatively specialized niche, such as holiday ornaments. I’ve heard of a number of people who have had to get separate trees just for their Hallmark Star Wars ornaments. Until now, the only Hallmark ornaments I had were the Rebo Band, which I like quite a bit.
Unfortunately, this piece is not in scale with the Rebo Band. C-3PO is roughly 2 inches tall, while the band members are closer to 1 inch. I suppose it depends on how big you think the band members should be (since we don’t really have a clear frame of reference for their size) but to me they seem clearly too small to fit in with this piece. One other difference is that the Rebo Band have excellent paint jobs despite their tiny size, while the paint on this looks pretty bad.
The sculpt is well done, but the paint job really lets it down. There’s lots of sloppy areas, and the stone parts of the throne aren’t painted at all, but rather cast in stone-colored plastic. This really makes it look plasticky and cheapens the overall feel.
But the worst part has to be C-3PO’s face. Sure, it’s tiny, but come on! I’ll admit that it doesn’t look this terrible in person due to the small size, but when I look back at how perfect the paint jobs on the smaller Rebo Band were, I can’t help but think that Hallmark is getting sloppy.
When you press the button on the throne, it plays a single audio clip from Return of the Jedi. It’s surprisingly long, at nearly 30 seconds, but it appears to be too high-pitched, since C-3PO’s voice is noticeably higher than it should be.
Overall, while I’m happy to get a Jabba ornament, I’ll have to say I’m disappointed with this piece. At $32.95, you should get more. Heck, the Walmart-exclusive Jabba & throne set was only a couple of dollars more than this, but was many times bigger and came with so much more.
I’ve been searching eBay for Jabba-related items for several years now, and it can get a little old seeing the same things over and over. But every once in a while something like this pops up to make it all worthwhile. This is one of the molds that would have been used to make the Jabba Glob figure. Many molds come in two parts — you put them together and pour in the plastic (or whatever) and then open the mold up after it is cool, giving you a three-dimensional object with seams where the two parts of the mold came together. This type of mold is completely different, however.
With a rotocast mold, you start with a sculpt in wax that is put in a bath of liquid with some metal particles. Somehow the particles are encouraged to stick to the wax sculpt and over a period of several days this forms a thick metal shell over it. Once it reaches the desired thickness, the metal is heated up to allow the wax inside to flow out, leaving a nice metal mold behind.
To use the mold, a small amount of liquid rubber is poured inside. The stopper is put in place and then the mold is spun around to allow the rubber to cling to all of the inner surfaces of the mold. After this, it’s apparently heated to cause the rubber to harden, after which a vacuum is used to suck the piece out of the mold. This produces a soft, hollow piece of rubber that is free of any mold lines. I imagine it would look something like the photo below at this point (but of course it would be unpainted, unlike this example).
I find this kind of mold fascinating for several reasons. It’s cool to have something that was actually used to make the toys (even though the Jabba Glob is far from my favorite Jabba action figure). It’s also pretty rare. I have heard from one other person who has a mold like this, so there were definitely a number of them made, but it’s still only one of a handful in existence.
It also looks pretty cool by itself. I really like how the process used for creating the mold leaves details on the outside as well as the inside. It could almost pass for a metal sculpture of Jabba. I’m very happy to have this piece in my collection, and I hope to be able to track down similar pieces for other figures as well.
Mighty Jabba's Collection 