Jabba the Hutt Painting by Chris Cargill
I picked up this painting on eBay after losing an auction for a nearly identical painting by the same artist a little while before. From looking at the paintings being offered up for auction, it seems that Mr. Cargill specializes in doing paintings based on pop culture figures. He’s remarkably prolific, selling dozens of paintings at once, but most of them appear to be recreations of existing photos.
This particular painting is an impressive 18″x24″ in size and is on stretched canvas. It could either be based on the photo on the left from Return of the Jedi, or on the painting used for the cover of “The Art of the Deal” (which was itself clearly based on the photo). But the composition is such a perfect match for the cover of “The Art of the Deal” (note the hand in the lower right and the band of light or something in the upper right) that my hunch is it was a direct copy of that painting — perhaps even using it directly as a printed guide that was then painted over. The style is quite different, though. The cover art above is quite detailed and exceedingly well done (click here for a better shot of that artwork on its own). By contrast, this painting is more of a pop art piece that uses lines of different colors to create an overall effect, as you can see below.
I’ve got to say, this piece looks surprisingly good from a reasonable viewing distance. I won it for around $60, which seems pretty reasonable considering you’d probably pay more just to print out a photo on canvas at the same size. And since it’s on stretched canvas I don’t even have to worry about finding a frame for it (which is good, since it would likely cost more than the painting itself).
Yak Face Kubrick (Chase) by Medicom Toy
The original Yak Face figure from Kenner was never released in the US and remains one of the rarer vintage Star Wars figures. Whoever is in charge of the Star Wars line of Kubricks at Medicom Toy seems to be quite a fan of the vintage figures, since they’ve made a number of nods to it in their figure selections over the years. This figure came out in Series 7, but was not one of the standard figures. Instead he was a “chase” figure that would only be found in certain boxes at (semi) random. Naturally, this makes him considerably more rare and valuable, which seems fitting considering the history of the Kenner figure.
He comes with a vibro-axe and a nice cloak that is painted in an attractive gradient. You can see him in my Jabba’s palace display below. It’s pretty much complete. I don’t have the chase versions of Boba Fett (ROTJ version) or Bib Fortuna (Red Cloak) but since they’re so similar to the normal versions, I don’t think I’ll be picking them up unless I can find a really good deal.
(Click for a bigger view, or check the individual pages: Jabba and display background, Bib Fortuna, Slave Leia, Max Rebo Band, Skiff Guard Lando, Leia as Boushh, Chewbacca, drink-serving R2-D2, C-3PO and Salacious Crumb, Amanaman, Jedi Luke, Gamorrean Guard, Boba Fett and Han in Carbonite.)
Star Wars POGs by Canada Games
POGs were a short-lived fad in 1990s. Each player would have a pile of cardboard disks called POGs that they would hit with a heavier disk called a slammer, with the goal of turning as many of the POGs face-up as possible. I never had any myself as I was too old when they became popular, but I know that kids at the time went crazy for them, collecting and trading them to the point that many schools banned them because they were becoming a distraction. But like most fads it burned brightly for a while and then faded away.
When I recently posted about a package of POGs with Jabba’s picture on them, I realized that while I had a couple of Jabba the Hutt “slammers,” I didn’t actually have any loose POGs. Since POGs aren’t exactly a hot property at the moment, they’re not all that expensive so I decided to just get a full box (above). This kind of box would’ve been placed in stores for kids to buy a pack or two at a time. It contains 24 packs, and each pack had 4 pogs and 1 slammer, plus a checklist/rule sheet. Interestingly, my son and I played a few times and each time we managed to turn the entire stack of POGs over, which surprised me. Perhaps we are POG prodigies. Alas, we were born too late (or early, in my case) to take advantage of our skill.
As you can see if you click the checklist above, there are 70 different POGs and 8 slammers, although that doesn’t take into account the color variations in the slammers. I believe each slammer could be one of 4 colors, for a total of 32 unique ones. Since there were 24 packs, I knew I would be getting 24 slammers and 96 POGs, but which particular ones I would get was a mystery. I’ve had bad luck in the past trying to assemble complete sets of things by buying boxes (see Deciper’s Collectible Card Game for example), but I figured it would be fun to open up the packs, and hoped that I might get a Jabba Slammer in a color I didn’t have. Below are all of the unique POGs and slammers I got. I gave the duplicates to my son.
I don’t know if they did this on purpose or if I got lucky, but I ended up getting a full set of POGs. For a while it looked like I would be one POG short, but then I found the one I was missing under some packaging debris. The Jabba-related ones are below. Several of them just scream “90s” with their hot pink designs, etc. I think it’s interesting that they had two Salacious Crumb POGs that are essentially identical. The one on the left has a cool sparkly metallic red background.
I didn’t get as lucky with the slammers, though. The first half dozen packages I opened only had movie logo slammers (“Star Wars” “Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi”) so I started thinking that maybe this was a different series than the one that included character slammers. But I did eventually get some characters: Han Solo, Darth Vader, Luke and Leia. Still, only 10 unique ones out of 24 is pretty bad. Also, I didn’t get a single Jabba slammer — he’s the only character I didn’t get! Interestingly, all of the ones I got were either green or blue, but I know they also had orange and red. Maybe these cases included either red/orange or blue/green slammers. I like the slammers — they have a nice weight to them and feel almost like real coins even though they’re plastic.
I guess I’ll just have to keep an eye out for the green and blue Jabba slammers.
Australian Jabba the Hutt Pin (Courier-Mail/Sunday Mail)
About 3 years ago I posted about a similar pin that was released in Canada, but this one is from Australia. Like the other pin, this was released in conjunction with the Revenge of the Sith. I believe they released the first one of these in the newspaper and then sold the rest for $2 apiece in stores (or at least that’s my guess — I haven’t found much info about these online). One unique aspect of it is that it’s lenticular — the image changes depending on the viewing angle. At one angle it’s Jabba from The Phantom Menace and at another it’s Jabba from Return of the Jedi.
After the recent hubbub about the LEGO Jabba’s Palace set (#9516) supposedly being discontinued (or even “banned”) due to complaints from a small Muslim group, availability of the set took a big hit, with it going out of stock at places like Amazon.com, Target.com, BN.com (Barnes and Noble’s website), and others. It never sold out from LEGO Shop at Home, but did go on backorder for a while. However, all of this was not because the set had been pulled from store shelves — rather, people thought the set would no longer be available and bought out the available stock, either in the hopes of selling it for a profit or because they had been meaning to get the set but needed a little push to actually pull the trigger.
LEGO has emphatically denied the idea that the set had been discontinued, and that certainly seems to be the case. It’s already available again at many online retailers, albeit at full retail price. Amazon now has more than 200 available, and it’s also available at places like Target.com, LEGO Shop at Home, and Toys R Us (but be advised that TRU charges considerably more than other places). It’s still not available at BN.com or Walmart.com (although my local Walmart stores do have it for around $95, which may be the best you can find at the moment).
So it seems that the net effect of all of the publicity about this set has been to get rid of the discounts that most retailers had been offering. I imagine the price will creep back down once the LEGO “speculators” have bought all the sets they want and retailers realize they this isn’t as hot a seller as it appeared.
This vintage child’s shirt is emblazoned with a Gammorean Guard. It came to be wrapped in plastic on a piece of cardboard and I didn’t realize until I opened it up that the decal is clearly off to one side. I guess they made this one on a Friday afternoon or something… This shirt was also available in blue.
I’m still amused by the number of items dedicated just to the Gamorrean Guard, who is, let’s face it, basically just a green pig-man. After washing up with some Gamorrean Guard soap, fashion-conscious youngsters could accessorize this with a Gamorrean Guard hat, necklace, or even a pin with flashing lights to name a few.
“Jabba the Shirt” by Amorphia Apparel
I found this shirt at Amorphia Apparel, which is a site that will print shirts on demand with a variety of designs and colors. I liked the idea of Jabba’s face peering out of the shirt as if you were “wearing” him, but I’m not really that happy with the final product I received. The image displayed on their site shows the Jabba face graphic filling most of the front of the shirt, but on mine it’s much smaller. I believe that’s because the decal remains the same size regardless of what size shirt you get. I contacted them about it and they did offer to let me return it, but I’d have to pay return shipping and I wasn’t sure it was worth it. It’s not terrible, but kind of disappointing.
It’s also kind of hard to see due to the color of the shirt. The graphic itself is nice enough, although I get the feeling that it’s taken from something else. Possibly traced from the Sideshow Jabba? In any case, I can’t really recommend this one, since it’s a little pricey and not quite what I was expecting.
I first posted about these a couple of weeks ago. I’m not really a big fan of the little stickers that many people put in their cars’ rear windows to indicate each member of their family (often including pets). But I’ll have to admit that the Star Wars versions from Think Geek are pretty cute. The first pack includes quite a few Star Wars characters, including some “kid” versions so you could have (for example) Darth Vader be the father, Padme be the mother and Luke and Leia be the kids. Or you could even have your kids be stormtroopers.
When they released a “Scum and Villainy Booster Pack” with most of my favorite characters (including a very respectable selection of Jabba’s Palace characters), I couldn’t resist picking up both sets. The booster pack includes a lot of monsters like the bantha, wampa, tauntaun, and rancor, plus a lot of cool aliens. Obviously, these are less suited to the “represent your family with stickers” concept, but that’s fine with me. They’re great for making a little scene on your car window or even on a window in a kid’s room.
One thing I should mention is that Think Geek originally said there would be two of each decal in the Scum and Villainy pack, just as there was in the original pack. However, I discovered after ordering that this is not the case. I wrote to their customer service department and explained how the email I received about the set and the website itself originally indicated that you would get two of each decal, so they sent me an extra set. (I’ve always had good experiences with their customer service.) But if you’re thinking of making an order, do be aware that you only get one of each. This is a little disappointing since the price is the same for both packs, but of course many of the decals in the booster pack are much bigger than the ones in the original pack.
Here they are on my car. It has a rear windshield wiper so I thought it would be best to put the decals on either side of it. I put the Salacious Crumb decal partially on top of the Jabba one, since that seemed to work best in terms of composition.
On the other side are the rancor and his victims. 🙂
When I ordered these I wasn’t even sure that I was going to actually use them, but I think they look really cute and they’re a unique way to broadcast my Star Wars (and Jabba) fanboy status to others who are in the know.
(If you don’t feel like reading this entire article, feel free to skip to the bottom for the conclusion.)
By now, it’s likely that you’ve read about the “controversy” supposedly surrounding the new LEGO Jabba’s Palace set (#9516). If not, here it is in a nutshell: according to a story that surfaced in late January of this year, the “Turkish Cultural Community of Austria” (which has no English website, but here is an English version via Google Translate) complained that the LEGO set looked too much like the Hagia Sophia building in Istanbul. Apparently based on little more than this and the fact that Jabba smokes a hookah (water pipe) they jumped to the conclusion that Jabba and his retinue depicted Asians and Orientals as people with “deceitful and criminal personalities” and that Jabba himself was a terrorist who “likes to smoke a hookah and have his victims killed.” I’m not sure where the first instance of this story was, but here’s a link to it on the Telegraph’s website.
I don’t know about you, but the first thing I thought of when I read this was The Onion. It really reads like satire or an over-the-top prank. It just smelled funny somehow, and that was one reason that I didn’t write about it at the time. Also, it seemed to be popping up everywhere, always followed by a lot of reflexive muslim-bashing by commenters. That’s not what I really want for my site, so I let it go. After researching the matter a bit more closely, I think it’s probably not a prank, but it is very misguided. The accusations are ludicrous on their face. Hagia Sophia was originally built as a church, and while it was later used as a mosque it is today used as a museum. And it’s certainly a stretch to say that Jabba and his crew represent any particular race or ethnicity. In any case, it’s not as if LEGO made up the building just for their set — they’re just recreating the movie, just as other toys have (like the Micro Machines “Planet Tatooine” set, for example). The LEGO Group said as much in a statement, and for a while it seemed that was that.
But yesterday there was another flurry of news stories about this issue, this time saying that “muslims” were “declaring victory” and that the set was going to be “pulled” from store shelves. (Again, it’s hard to tell which site had the story first, but here it is on the Daily Mail.) Lots of mainstream news organizations have written about this as if it were actually true. But if you look at what is actually said in the story, all it mentions is that the Jabba’s Palace set is going to be discontinued starting in 2014. If you know anything about LEGO (or toys in general), you know that most products don’t have very long shelf lives. I fully expected the set to get the axe sometime this year and would’ve been surprised if it didn’t. Furthermore, the LEGO Group themselves are strenuously denying the idea that they are discontinuing the set due to these accusations, taking to Twitter to respond individually to people asking about it, and posting a page on their official website denying it. I can only assume that there was some sort of miscommunication somewhere, but the point needs to be made that this set is NOT being pulled from store shelves or being discontinued in any meaningful way. They are just going to follow the plan that they had from the beginning, which was to phase it out by the end of 2013.
This is not news and to report it as some sort of “muslim” victory is irresponsible. It encourages backlash against muslims, but the vast majority of muslims are not even aware of this so-called “controversy” and wouldn’t care about it if they knew. There are no membership numbers on the “Turkish Cultural Community of Austria” website, but it’s worth pointing out that the Turkish community in Austria is relatively small (a little over 100,000 as of 2007) and I am positive that the great majority of these are not up in arms about this toy. So it makes no sense to go on a rant about muslims in general in conjunction with this issue.
This kind of press can also have negative effects on the marketplace. Amazon.com has had the set at nice discount for many weeks, but the day the story appeared they completely sold out. I’ve heard that the sets are disappearing from many store shelves as well, no doubt to people betting that the set would become hard to find and possibly skyrocket in value. (It’s still available on LEGO.com, so obviously the product hasn’t been “pulled.”) Anyway, I just felt like I had to post something about this, because I’ve seen a lot of misinformed comments in the last day or two.
(Here’s the condensed version: While a small organization claiming to represent a very small percentage of muslims has made a complaint about the Jabba’s Palace LEGO set, it is meritless and the LEGO Group has done absolutely nothing about it except to politely explain the issue. The product is NOT being discontinued due to the complaint and it is not being pulled from store shelves.)
This dressing gown (or “robe” in US parlance) was made by Penshiel Ltd. in the UK in 1983 (although the label appears to read “Sandman” — perhaps that was the clothing line?) Interestingly, it has both the “Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi” logos on it, which is really rather unusual now that I think about it. On one side it has the Millennium Falcon and some X-wings and tie fighters. On the other is Vader, Luke, Wicket the ewok, Han Solo and Jabba. I guess it’s supposed to represent a space scene, which makes the choice of the light blue color pretty interesting. They also made pajamas based on the same artwork, which I don’t have yet, but here is their entry on the Star Wars Collector’s Archive. Many licensed items just used the standard artwork that appeared on almost everything, so it’s nice to see a company going the extra mile to make something nice.
The colors are still amazingly vibrant. This may be partially due to the material that it’s made of, which is a thin synthetic that’s a little bit rough to the touch. The label has a “keep away from fire” warning on it, which is a bit worrying. In the US at least there are regulations about the flammability of children’s sleepwear. 30 years ago, they probably required that pajamas and robes be treated with some sort of flame retardant (although that was problematic as well, as they were later found to be carcinogenic). Nowadays they either require that it be made of a flame retardant material or that it be tight-fitting (to make it less likely to catch fire near a candle, fireplace, etc.) The combination of a loose fitting garment like this with flammable materials doesn’t sound too good.
I’ve said this several times before, but vintage clothing can often be much harder to find than vintage toys. I suppose there’s a variety of reasons of this — they wore out with use, children grew out of them or grew tired of them, and in general people didn’t think to save them in the same way that they did with the toys. Whatever the reason, it can be rather difficult to find many of them now. It took me years just to find an incomplete set of Jabba pajamas by Wilker Bros. I also have a Jabba robe by the same company, and interestingly neither that robe nor this dressing gown appear to be listed on the Star Wars Collector’s Archive, which makes me think they’re especially rare.
Mighty Jabba's Collection 
