Jabba the Hutt Word Cloud Art by Me
I used the Tagxedo word cloud generator to create this art piece. I started by drawing a silhouette of Jabba, then scanned it in and uploaded it to the site. I had to play with the settings quite a bit, and I also tweaked the colors a bit in Photoshop afterward to get it closer to what I had in mind. As you can see, it forms the shape of Jabba the Hutt using words associated with him. I think it looks pretty cool. If you click the image above, you can view a very high definition version that would be suitable for printing. You’re welcome to do that for your own private use.
This is my first attempt at this kind of piece, and I think there is definitely room for improvement — such as using words to actually made up some detail inside in addition to just using a silhouette — but I think it came out pretty well.
Digger’s Society “Mr. Loverman” Jabba the Hutt T-Shirt (Shabba Ranks Parody)
This is an interesting shirt that cropped up on eBay recently. It was originally sold by the Digger’s Society a few years ago, which was apparently a sort of “shirt of the month club” run by the site Digital Gravel. I don’t believe they’re still doing it, but the idea was that you’d pay a certain amount up front and then get a shirt each month. They tended to be from somewhat obscure urban designers. I guess it preceded the “cheap shirt for one day” concept that is so popular now.
I thought there was something familiar about this Jabba when I first saw it, but it didn’t hit me until I got the shirt in hand. The designer has simply traced an image of the Attakus Jabba the Hutt statue and added a few details, like the bottle of booze and the bucket of “body butter.” Take a look and compare for yourself:
The angle is slightly different on my shot, but it’s clearly identical. How lazy is that? It reminds me of the “Koopa the Hutt” shirt from TeeFury, which also borrowed its designs from some collectibles with pictures easily found online. But at least that one was a fully realized image and not something that looks like it could be knocked off in five minutes. It may be hard to see in the photos, but the lines are a sort of greenish brown, which seems appropriate for the subject matter.
The shirt is a reference to the Shabba Ranks song “Mr. Loverman,” in which a girl repeats the name “Shabba” a number of times, and in fact it does sound something like “Jabba” in the actual song. They carry the joke over to the back of the shirt, which has Salacious Crumb screaming “Jabba!”
It’s an interesting shirt, since it has a music reference similar to the “Big Jabba” shirt I have (a Notorious B.I.G. parody). And it’s kind of funny how it flagrantly copies the Attakus Jabba. In any case, it only cost a couple of dollars, so I’m happy to have it in the collection.
Parlor Tattoo Prints on etsy (aka Quyen Dinh) has quite a number of prints in a style similar to old-fashioned tattoo flash — the drawings that you might see posted on the walls of a tattoo parlor for people to browse through when choosing a tattoo. He’s done a number of Star Wars designs, including these two, with Jabba and Bib Fortuna. They’re 6″ x 7″ prints.
The Jabba one has the line “Han, mabooke” (“Han, my boy”) on it. I’m not sure about the spelling of the Huttese here, but in any case the line is from the scene added to the special edition of A New Hope, where Jabba and Han Solo talk by the Millennium Falcon at Mos Eisley Spaceport. I probably would’ve gone with “Soon you will learn to appreciate me” (maybe in Huttese, maybe not).
I like this style, although I think it may be more successful with some of the other characters.
Holographic Fighter Pods Jabba the Hutt by Hasbro
I posted about the Jabba the Hutt Fighter Pod earlier this year, and now some new Fighter Pods figures are appearing in stores. Among them are “hologram” versions of the figures they’ve made before, this time in a translucent material. The good guys are in blue and the bad guys in red, although I don’t recall any holograms being red in Star Wars.
I’m not a big fan of this kind of release. It seems lazy to me, since they don’t have to make a new sculpt or even paint it. I’m also not sure if “holographic” versions of the figures really adds much in terms of play value. This Jabba looks a LOT like a fruit snack, by the way.
In other Fighter Pods-related news, according to the Fighter Pods Facebook page, they are going to be releasing some Target-exclusive pods in the US on October 1st, and among them will be a Ziro the Hutt figure. There’s almost nothing in terms of Ziro-related merchandise, so this is kind of interesting. From what I can see, it looks to be just a simple repaint of the Jabba figure, though. In any case it does seem like they’re continuing to release these, so they must be having some success. I’ll be picking up the Jabba-related ones for a little display. I’ve already seen a Boushh.
Mug with Pewter Desert Skiff Emblem by Rawcliffe
Here’s another one of those products that I never knew existed until it appeared on eBay. I have a lot of the pewter figures that Rawcliffe made, including their Jabba the Hutt on Throne, Jabba the Hutt alone, various other figures such as the Max Rebo Band, and Jabba’s Sail Barge. I didn’t know that they also made mugs like these. Most of them seem to have logos of various kinds, but they also did some with ships and vehicles.
I probably would’ve gone with the Sail Barge before the skiff, but it’s kind of interesting.
Vintage Jabba the Hutt Pajamas by Wilker Bros. (And Mighty Jabba’s Collection Turns 3 Years Old!)
When you’re a collector, you tend to have a list of a few “grail” items that you’d love to have but just can’t get. It might be because they’re expensive or rare, or both. In my case, the item that frustrated me the most was the vintage Jabba the Hutt pajamas. You wouldn’t think they would be so hard to find, but I scoured eBay for the better part of 3 or 4 years and also posted want ads in collectors forums with zero luck. As I’ve mentioned in the past, vintage clothing items are often rather difficult to find. They don’t generally sell for a lot of money (certainly nothing compared to vintage toys), but they can actually be a lot harder to track down, probably because they tended to get worn out and thrown away, rather than saved as toys were. (Take my Jabba the Hutt tube socks, for example. The ones I bought are the only versions of these I’ve ever seen come up for auction, in or out of the package.)
Still, it’s not that hard to find mint-in-package examples of other vintage pajamas, and yet for some reason the Jabba pajamas (and the matching Rebo Band version) seem to be extremely rare. Maybe they just didn’t make as many of them. In any case, you can imagine my excitement when I saw this come up on eBay a while ago. (Something about saying I get excited about used kid’s pajamas doesn’t sound right, but you know what I mean…) Sure, it was only the top (it should come with bottoms that match the sleeves in color) and it was a bit worse for wear, but beggars can’t be choosers. I’m still going to watch out for an in-package version, and for the version with the yellow sleeves, but who knows how long it could take to find them? In the meantime, I finally have something to go with my vintage Jabba the Hutt robe (also by Wilker Bros.). A rather dapper ensemble, don’t you think?
There are several things I like about these. First of all, character pajamas really take me back to my childhood, and ultimately nostalgia is behind a lot of my affection for Star Wars. But also, the fact that they chose to put Jabba on these pajamas really amuses me. At first glance, it seems rather odd that a kid would want to wear pajamas with a hideous alien crime lord on them, but with Star Wars in particular, the villains have often been as popular as the heroes. There’s certainly no shortage of merchandise with Darth Vader’s image on it, and yet he was a terrifyingly evil character in a lot of ways (particularly before we learned about his redemption in Return of the Jedi, and especially before the prequels). For some reason, we fans have a lot of affection for the baddies, and I can’t help but think that these pajamas are related to that phenomenon.
In any case, I thought this was a fitting item to post on the 3rd anniversary of the creation of Mighty Jabba’s Collection (although technically it isn’t until tomorrow). It encapsulates a lot of what I find attractive about collecting Star Wars merchandise in general and Jabba merchandise in particular. Here’s hoping the site will continue long into the future.
Sideshow’s Lomrokk the Gamorrean Executioner statue is now up for preorder with an estimated ship date of March 2013. It costs a hefty $324.99, although one minor surprise is that there is no non-refundable deposit required unless you order two or more of them. The other statues in the Mythos line so far do have non-refundable deposits. Its dimensions with the base are 19″ H (482.6mm) x 11″ W (279.4mm) x 7″ L (177.8mm), so it’s similar in size to a 1/4 scale Premium Format figure, even though it’s 1/5 scale. Lomrokk is a big brute.
They also revealed that you will get a second switchable head with the statue, showing Lomrokk with an open mouth. I’m not sure how I feel about the open mouth. It looks like he’s either sneezing or yawning. On the other hand, this is the first time I can recall seeing a Gamorrean with an open mouth, so I guess that’s something.
Vintage Gamorrean Guard Latex Mask by Don Post
I posted about the vintage Ben Cooper Gamorrean Guard costume last year, but there was also a higher-end Gamorrean Guard mask made by Don Post Studios. It’s made of latex and is designed to fit completely over your head, unlike the mask in the Ben Cooper costume, which just went over your face. I think these latex masks were probably aimed more at adults than kids.
It would take quite a bit of work to come up with a convincing outfit to match this mask, though. I kind of wonder if people actually wore the masks or used them mostly for display. The sculpting and paint on this mask are actually quite good, and while the paint has some cracks in it, the latex has held up surprisingly well for something that’s nearly 30 years old. Latex is notorious for breaking down over time.
It’s presumably supposed to be a life size mask, but it’s much smaller than Sideshow’s life size Gamorrean Guard bust. I don’t have a good way of photographing the two of them side by side, but the bust seems like it’s about twice as big as the mask.
Don Post also released masks of Klaatu and Weequay. The seller I got this from had those masks as well, but unfortunately I got outbid. I’d like to get them someday, although they are rather rare.
“Loogie Leia” (Jabba the Hutt and Slave Leia) Garbage Pail Kids Print by Luis Diaz
I collected Garbage Pail Kids cards when I was a kid and loved them, although my parents were probably less than thrilled about the gross-out humor they often featured. They were a perfect fit for the sense of humor of a young boy like me. I recall having large stacks of them.
They’ve made a bit of a comeback recently, with new sets being released. Luis Diaz is one of the artists creating them, although this particular piece was a commission for someone and not an official card. The original painting was apparently 5 x 7 in size, but the print I got from Luis is 11 x 14, which really lets you see the details. Clearly, Jabba’s palace has seen better days, with all of the graffiti and trash around. And as you can see, Leia isn’t too happy about her new outfit for some reason…
Swag from the 501st Legion Imperial Bash at Celebration VI (“Party At The Palace”)
As I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t able to make it to Celebration VI, but Avfin from the Sideshow Freaks forums kindly picked up some exclusives for me, and even found me a variety of other Jabba-related stuff from the convention. I was particularly happy to see that he had picked up some swag from the 501st Legion’s Imperial Bash, which had a sort of Jabba theme this time. Drinks included the “Crime Lord” (which included the 501st exclusive mug above), Gamorrean Rot Gut, Jabba’tini, and Sarlacc Splash. I assume the little rubber frog was intended to be one of Jabba’s froggy snacks.
I particularly like the patch showing the rancor with a party hat and the coaster with Salacious Crumb’s face on it.
They also gave out this postcard-sized image of various Star Wars characters partying, including Slave Leia showing off her lightsaber limbo skills. 😀 I’ll have to try and make it to the Imperial Bash at the next Celebration. I’m not much of a partier, but it sounded fun.
Mighty Jabba's Collection 