Lenticular Star Wars Playing Cards by Cartamundi
I stumbled on these lenticular playing cards at Target and thought they looked cool enough to buy even though I don’t play cards. The package uses the word “3D” but in reality, none of the images even tries to be 3D. Instead they use the lenticular effect to display two different images of the same character. That’s fine, but I think it’s a little misleading to say that they’re some sort of 3D.
There are 54 cards in the deck (as it includes two Joker cards), but they actually only use 27 different characters. They divided up the suits into “light side” (hearts and diamonds) and “dark side” (spades and clubs) and only used characters that would be appropriate for a particular side. It’s not as if there’s any shortage of Star Wars characters, so it’s a little disappointing that they chose to just repeat them twice. I would’ve preferred that they do one “light” and one “dark” set from the prequels and the original trilogy, rather than repeating the same characters.
Still, they’re attractively done. The lenticular effect seems slightly harder to see than I’m used to (by which I mean that you have to hold them at just the right angle if you only want to see one image and not two images blending together), but my guess is that it’s a side effect of their thinness.
Indeed, I was impressed by how thin these cards are. I usually think of lenticular things as being on stiff board-like materials, but these are even thinner than most normal playing cards. But they’re made of plastic so I think they should be pretty durable (if slippery). They come in a metal case which is kind of nice, but also fairly flimsy and easily dented.
Jabba is on the dark side Jack card, which seems appropriate enough (“J is for Jabba”). The pictures below are of the same card, just taken from different angles. It’s a little too bad that one of them was the CGI Jabba, but at least it’s not this one…)
While I was in the store, I tried searching on my iPhone quickly to see if I could find a list of the characters, but didn’t have any luck so I’m going to post one here:
Spades & Clubs A Darth Sidious 2 Battle Droid 3 Tusken Raider 4 Jango Fett 5 Darth Maul 6 General Grievous 7 Count Dooku 8 Clone Trooper 9 Greedo 10 Boba Fett J Jabba Q Stormtrooper K Darth Vader Hearts & Diamonds A Yoda 2 R2-D2 & C-3PO 3 Chewbacca 4 Lando Calrissian 5 Han Solo 6 Princess Leia Organa 7 Luke Skywalker 8 Clone Trooper 9 Mace Windu 10 Qui-Gon Jinn J Obi-Wan Kenobi (Young) Q Padme Amidala K Anakin Skywalker Joker x2: Jar-Jar Binks
Mighty Jabba’s Collection Turns 2 Years Old!
Well that was quick. It was two years ago today that I first started cataloging my Jabba collection on this site, sending me further off the deep end of my Jabba obsession. 😀
I’ll have to admit that I occasionally wonder how long it will keep my interest. Will I be writing a “Mighty Jabba’s Collection turns 10!” post in another 8 years? It’s hard to say, but so far I’m really enjoying myself, much like Jabba seems to be in the image to the left. 😀
(The image is based on the famous Twitter “fail whale” that is displayed when Twitter is over capacity. It seems to have been made by the owner of cinismoilustrado.blogspot.com, but they didn’t respond to my requests for a high res version so I could make a print. I just love this image.)
Link: Unproduced Micro Collection Gamorrean Guard Figure Wax Prototype on Ebay Starting at $15,000
In one of my many searches of eBay for Jabba-related items, I hit upon this auction for a wax “4-up” figure (meaning that it was sculpted in wax at four times the size of the intended figure). It would have been used for a Jabba-themed Micro Collection playset, but unfortunately they cancelled the line before it was produced. More information about this prototype can be found here.
Now, let me say first off that I think $15,000 is an insane amount of money for something like this. But that’s not to say that the person selling this (who is a respected member of the Star Wars collecting community) is necessarily being unreasonable with this auction. Things connected to the vintage toy lines — particularly pre-production items like this — often sell for sky-high prices. But to be honest, I’m not sure I understand why people are willing to pay thousands for this kind of thing.
Many collectors seem really focused on the vintage toys to the exclusion of anything else. Spend a little time on the Rebelscum forums, and you’ll see a lot of people who have spent years (and a fortune) to collect every variation of a particular character on every vintage card, or pre-production versions of different figures that at first glance are almost indistinguishable from the regular versions. I have a lot of respect for the collections they’ve built, but it’s just not for me.
To me, the vintage toys are cool and a nostalgic part of my childhood, but I like Star Wars collecting as a whole, including some of the amazing stuff that’s being produced today. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t love to get some preproduction items, but they’ll have to be a LOT cheaper than this for me to consider them.
I already had one kind of Jabba the Hutt eraser from Crystal Craft, so I was surprised to learn that they actually made two different designs. The one I had before is a rectangular eraser with a green Jabba on it, while this one is shaped like Jabba on his throne and features a mustard yellow Jabba. The Gamorrean Guard looks a lot like the eraser I got from England made by H.C. Ford & Sons, but upon closer inspection, that one is actually a bit bigger, has completely different colors, and is missing the “LFL 1983” copyright notice, as you can see below:
Crystal Craft released 10 Return of the Jedi-themed erasers in Australia, as shown on the back of the package:
Jabba the Hutt Dog Tag (Movie Version) by Topps
I got a Clone Wars version of Jabba on a dog tag last December, but Topps recently released a similar series of tags using photos from the live-action movies. There are 24 tags to collect, and I believe there are also chase rainbow foil versions of all of the characters, just as there were with the Clone Wars series. Here’s the checklist that comes with each tag:
Each tag also comes with a trading card:
I like these photographic versions a lot better than the Clone Wars ones (but then again I’m not a big Clone Wars fan). I’m not sure who would actually want to wear these as necklaces though. Someone suggested that they would work better as keychains, and I agree.
Link: Keroppi Jabba and Hello Kitty Slave Leia at Dragon Con
I was interested to see this shot of someone at Dragon Con dressed up as Keroppi/Jabba accompanied by a Hello Kitty/Slave Leia. (The bottom half of the Jabba costume is actually just the Rubies Jabba the Hutt costume.) The photo comes from Epbot.com — the personal blog of Jen, who is one half of the couple responsible for Cakewrecks.com (the blog that catalogs disastrous mistakes made by professional bakers). She has posted some impressive galleries of the costumes at Dragon Con, so be sure to give them a look.
This is an artist’s sketch card that was included with the Topps Star Wars Galaxy 6 series. The eyelashes make me think that it might be intended to be a “female” hutt like Gardulla rather than Jabba, but I guess it could go either way (so to speak).
Vintage British Return of the Jedi School Bag By Frankel & Roth (Jedi Luke in Jabba’s Palace)
I posted about another Frankel & Roth bag a few months ago. That one had Jabba and Bib Fortuna on it, as well as some other characters. This one just features Jedi Luke in Jabba’s palace, just as he draws one of the guards’ guns on Jabba. We’ve seen this image on a number of things, like this puzzle or the vintage ROTJ lunchbox.
They’re both the same style of bag (from the “Bags of Character” line) with a shoulder strap and two carrying handles on the top. This one has seen better days, as there is a rip by one of the handles on the front, and one of the handles on the back has come completely off on one side. Still, I got it for just £0.99, so I can’t complain. Like so many of the non-toy collectibles from this era, these are fairly hard to find but they also don’t command very high prices in most cases (usually more than I paid, though).
Jabba the Hutt Drawing by Leighton Noyes
At around 3.5″ by 4″ this is slightly bigger than the average sketch card, but it’s essentially the same idea. Mr. Noyes sells these on eBay, drawing each one up from scratch, but following the same basic design. I quite like some of his other work as well. Thanks to Rodders for getting this and other items from the UK for me.
Jabba the Hutt Baby Bib (With Repurposed Vintage Material) by Choppa
I got this baby bib from an eBay seller in the UK. While it looks quite well made, complete with a tag and washing instructions on the back, it’s not really a commercial product. It’s been made from some vintage material (probably from a set of children’s bed sheets). I don’t have a set of those sheets yet, but I do really like the Jabba portion of it. He looks rather kindly, don’t you think?
We have a baby at our house, and I might use this along with my Jabba baby booties for a quick photo, but I don’t think it be in daily use by any means.
By the way, I think not including Bib Fortuna on here was a bit of a missed opportunity. 😉
Mighty Jabba's Collection 
