Sideshow 1/6 Scale Gamorrean Guard Figure
I posted about this figure over a year ago when it was introduced, and at the time I had some reservations about it. Part of it was the paint scheme, which seemed overly dark. It had fairly limited articulation, and something about the outfit (particularly the fur loincloth) seemed a little off. Combine that with a $120 price tag and my waning interest in 1/6 scale figures in general, and I ended up putting off the purchase of this figure until now.
But I got a very good deal on it and am happy to say that it’s actually quite good in person. Pulling down the loincloth and the belt helped the look quite a bit, and the color actually looks pretty accurate in hand. The articulation is about as bad as I had feared, though. He is unable to bend his elbows or knees, making anything but a “standing there” pose difficult. Admittedly, that’s probably what you want for your Gamorrean Guards most of the time, and the ball-jointed neck, elbows and hips do give you a little freedom to alter the pose.
One other reason that I wasn’t in a huge hurry to get this figure was that I already had a repainted version of Hasbro’s old 1/6 scale Gamorrean Guard that I was pretty proud of. However, when you see the two of them together, the Hasbro version looks overly exaggerated in its proportions, and of course it has even less poseability than the Sideshow version. It’s a lot cheaper than the Sideshow version, but when you consider that you have to completely repaint it from head to toe to get it to look decent, the Sideshow version seems like the clear winner.
Sideshow has since released another Gamorrean called “Gartogg,” which is basically identical to this one except that it has a slightly different facial sculpt and one broken horn (as well as one more axe than the two that come with this figure). I won’t be buying it at full price, but I’m impressed enough with this one to pick up Gartogg if I can get a good deal on him. After all, Jabba’s palace needs more than one Gamorrean to guard it. 😉
LEGO Star Wars Kids’ T-Shirt with Jabba the Hutt
My son has a number of LEGO Star Wars shirts, but until now I’ve never seen one with Jabba on it. So I was excited to see a couple of different designs are available now. You can get these at Walmart, and probably elsewhere. Since it’s got the Millennium Falcon on it as well, I picked up on for my friend Rodders, too.
I won a couple of rolls of this wallpaper from 1983 in an auction. Until I saw it, I didn’t realize that they had made wallpaper with Jabba on it, so it was a nice surprise when it popped up on ebay. One of the rolls had the shrinkwrap coming off, which solved the dilemma of whether to open it or not. Luckily, it was the one that didn’t have Jabba showing on the outside, so I’ll be keeping the one above as a sealed example. I was a little afraid that the entire roll would be stuck together, since it’s pre-pasted, but it was fine.
The design has paintings of various characters from Return of the Jedi: Jabba the Hutt (of course), a Gamorrean Guard, Lando as a skiff guard, Luke, Leia, Chewbacca with C-3PO & R2-D2, Darth Vader and some imperial guards (in front of the imperial shuttle), some ewoks and a biker scout. They’re well done — especially the Jabba section looks really nice.
I don’t know if I want to actually put this on any of my walls, but I may be able to find a use for it somewhere. Do they still make character wallpaper like this for kids?
Jabba the Hutt Resin Model Kit (Maker Unknown)
This is another one of those items that I really know nothing about. I won it on ebay from someone who apparently bought it as part of a collection of models, but that was all he knew about it. If anyone knows anything about this piece, I’d be interested to know when it was made and by whom. It appears to be a garage kit similar to the one I posted about a while back, and in fact it’s very similar in size (this one is about 14″ long by 8″ tall, so it’s fairly large). They’re both made of resin, but the body of this one is hollow making it very light. It also has some fairly prominent mold lines along the top of his body that I tried to sand off. It comes in three pieces: the body and two arms.
The body has some nice detail and I think the sculpt is really nicely done, if somewhat stylized (reminding me a bit more of the Clone Wars Jabba than the traditional Return of the Jedi version). The arms on the other hand seem a bit rough in their sculpt. His right hand almost seems to be in a “Jedi mind trick” pose. I almost like it better without the arms, especially in this unpainted state — it looks kind of like a “Jabba de Milo” statue. 😉
Like the other garage kit, I think I’ll just be keeping this one unpainted because I have more than enough realistically painted Jabbas, and these have a unique look to them.
Vintage Sigma Ceramic Jedi Luke Figure
The more of Sigma’s ceramic lineup I get, the more I come to appreciate them. I believe this is the last of their ceramic figures that could conceivably go in a Jabba’s palace display, but of course they did make a number of other figures, as well as many other products like a snowspeeder toothbrush holder, a landspeeder soap dish, and even a Tauntaun-shaped teapot! These are particularly interesting to me, and I might end up collecting them even if they have nothing to do with Jabba. I just find them charming.
If you look at this figure of Luke, he’s obviously been sculpted to look like a child. This isn’t really that obvious with the other characters I have, but it’s hard to miss with Luke, down to his cute stubby little lightsaber.
You can see my entire Jabba’s Palace display below. It includes the Jabba the Hutt bank, the Sy Snootles and the Rebo Band music box, Bib Fortuna, Leia as Boushh, Gamorrean Guard, Klaatu, Boba Fett, Jedi Luke, and R2-D2 and C-3PO (I haven’t done an individual entry for them on the site, since they aren’t really specific to Jabba’s palace in any way, but maybe I should). I think they look really good together.
Power of the Force “Space Creatures Kit” Figure Maker by Kenner
It’s amazing how many Star Wars products there are out there. I’m still running across things that I had never seen before, like this “Figure Maker” kit from Kenner in 1996. It consists of a mold that lets you make three characters (Bib Fortuna, a Gamorrean Guard and a Tusken Raider), some “Air Hardening Compound” and three markers that you’re supposed to use to color your creations after they’ve dried. They also made a couple others with different characters. As I’ve said in the past, I find it odd to feature a character like Bib Fortuna so prominently and not include Jabba.
The “Air Hardening Compound” is basically air-drying clay, and in the 15 or so years since this was made it has turned hard as a rock. So at the moment I can’t test this out, although I’m considering getting some new clay, or maybe just using it with Play-Doh. The markers still work, more or less, but I’m pretty skeptical about how well using markers to color figures like this would work.
The mold is pretty nice — a lot of detail, and a decorative cardboard insert with a painting of Jabba and his court by Ralph McQuarrie.
Return of the Jedi Birthday Card by Portal
This card from 1992 features art by Frank Ordaz of a variety of characters from Return of the Jedi, including Jabba, Salacious Crumb, Slave Leia, a Gamorrean Guard and the rancor. But what I liked about it most was that it folds out to more than 2 feet wide. Click the image below for a bigger view. The message inside reads, “May the force be with you on your birthday!”
Clone Wars Jabba the Hutt Collector Coin by Topps
Topps certainly knows how to come up with a variety of collectible Star Wars items. This one is from a series they released in 2008. It featured 12 different Clone Wars characters, but from what I understand, there were actually three separate series of these coins, each of which was sold exclusively at a particular retailer. Wal-mart had the purple coins, like this one, while Toys R Us had yellow and Target had red. And it wasn’t just the color of the coins — the character graphics were different as well. What a pain it must have been if you wanted to try and find them all.
At the moment all I have is this one, but if I can get the red and yellow versions inexpensively I’ll be happy to add them to my collection as well. They seem a bit hard to find now, however.
Link: On Location in Buttercup Valley 1982 (Behind-the-scenes Shots from the Return of the Jedi Set)
Propstore.com just posted some very interesting photos that were taken by some people who basically just showed up at the ROTJ set in Southern California in 1982. Some of the shots of the Sail Barge and skiffs are very interesting indeed, like this shot of the back (they only finished the barge on one side, since that was all they needed to show). It’s definitely worth looking at the entire article (as well as Propstore’s large inventory of expensive movie props, even if most are not Star Wars related).
LEGO Desert Skiff (Set #7104)
After getting the Jabba’s Palace, Jabba’s Prize and  Jabba’s Message sets (all released in 2003) and the Jabba’s Sail Barge set (released in 2006), I thought that I had all of the Jabba-related LEGO sets. But I didn’t know about this Desert Skiff set, which was released in 2000 — several years before the others.
The set includes Han Solo and Jedi Luke minifigures, and is somewhat different from the skiff that was included with the Sail Barge set (it’s smaller for one thing). The box says that it’s recommended for ages 6-10, although my LEGO-obsessed 6-year-old put it together quite easily. Here are the two versions together:
As you can see, they’re pretty different, even though they share some parts. The gang plank on the one from the Sail Barge set swings in and out, while on this one it’s fixed in place. You can pretty easily use this one with your Sail Barge set, since Jabba had more than one skiff.
I wonder if I can really say that I have all the Jabba-related LEGOs now, or have I missed something?
Mighty Jabba's Collection 