LucasArts “Jabba Claus” Christmas Card from 1996
It’s Christmas in July here at Mighty Jabba’s Collection! I’ve been wanting to pick one of these items up for quite some time, but they’re not all that easy to find. This is a Christmas card that LucasArts (the computer games publishing company) sent out to clients and friends in 1996. It features art by artist Paul Mica showing Jabba the Hutt as Santa Claus carrying a bag full of LucasArts games. It’s a fairly large card, at more than 6″ square. I plan to frame it.
Inside is the message “Koos wangki tu kochpa kee Lucasartsah,” which supposedly means “Happy Holidays from LucasArts” although I don’t know if Huttese is developed enough as a language to really express something like that, or if they just made up something that sounded appropriate.
A few related items in my collection are my “Jabba Claus” print by Daniel Falconer and the Santa outfit I made for my Ultra Jabba figure.
In 1997, Henderson Publishing released 12 of these Micro Fax books covering various characters and topics in the Star Wars universe. They are a little bigger than 3″ by 2″ in size and about 16 pages long. They sold them for 50p apiece and also had a little folder to hold them all. There’s not a lot of content here, to be honest, so I’m not really sure what you would do with it after leafing through it once or twice, although I did sort of enjoy the page of facts about Jabba. I’m not sure if this is canon or not, but I was interested to see them say that hutts have no skeletons. I agree with that idea, as I mentioned in my entry about my Jabba skeleton statue.
Here are a few of the pages. They also have pages for some of the Jabba’s palace aliens, although each only has a sentence or two written about them.
The Jabba-related news from San Diego Comic Con has been relatively slim, even with a lot of products being announced from places like Sideshow Collectibles. One new item is this animated maquette of Leia as Boushh. I imagine it’s kind of a companion piece to the Slave Leia maquette. Strange that they seem to have her holding her weapon upside-down though… If I can get one of these very cheaply as I did the Slave Leia version, I would probably pick one up. Still want an animated-style Jabba though.
(Picture is from Rebelscum.com’s coverage.)
“Jabba the Robber Baron” (aka “Kingpin”) Print Now Available from Acme Archives Direct
When I commissioned this piece from Greg Peltz last year, he mentioned that it might be possible for him to come to an agreement with Acme Archives to sell prints of his Star Wars pieces. He said that if this happened (and if I was okay with it) that he would refund my commission fee. I recently heard back from him that he has been able to come to an agreement with Acme, and that prints of my Jabba commission would be available for sale.
Part of me is a little bit sad that I’m not the only one to have the piece now, but the other part of me is glad for Greg and excited that a piece that I had a lot of creative input into is now available as an officially licensed print. The print is available here, as are Greg’s other Star Wars prints.
You may recognize this glass as one of the ones Burger King gave out in 1983 to coincide with the release of Return of the Jedi. However, this particular glass was actually given away at Hungry Jack’s restaurants in Australia. Hungry Jack’s is the Australian version of Burger King. Apparently when Burger King went to expand into Australia in the early 70s, they found that the name “Burger King” was already trademarked, so they had to come up with a different name.
The only real difference between the two versions of the glass is that one has the Burger King logo and the other has the Hungry Jack’s logo, although the Hungry Jack’s version does seem to have slightly darker paint and feels slightly heavier. I tried weighing them with my postal scale, and sure enough the Hungry Jacks glass was 8 grams heavier (178g compared to 170g for the Burger King version). I’m not sure if these are actual differences between the two versions of the glass, though, or whether it’s the kind of thing that varied even within the same product.
Thanks go to my friend Dale in Australia for donating this glass to my collection.
“Jabba the Snail” sticker
This somewhat bizarre image is another sticker from RedBubble.com. Like the others, it’s available as a T-shirt as well. The Jabba part of this image looked familiar to me, and after some searching I found the original image on this Deviantart page (and I left a comment about this for the original artist). It looks like the person who made the sticker really just added the snail shell and eyes on stalks to an image that someone else made. The more I think about it, the less I like the idea of taking someone’s work and tweaking it slightly to create a new design like this. It’s seems lazy, and borderline plagiaristic (I don’t think it really qualifies as parody since they aren’t parodying the art itself, but rather the subject that the art portrays, if that makes sense). Still, interesting.
“Princess Leia Organa & R2-D2 as Jabba’s Prisoners” (FAO Schwarz Exclusive 12″ Figure Set)
This set was an FAO Schwarz exclusive, and originally retailed for $69.99. Believe it or not, it’s the only 1/6 scale version of Slave Leia that has been made up to this point, and the same goes for the drink-serving R2-D2. It was released in 1998, back when Hasbro’s figures were the only game in town if you wanted larger scale figures. I wasn’t collecting back then, but I can only imagine that a lot of people look back in embarrassment on what they bought back then (and what they paid for it). Most of them don’t come close to what is available now from companies like Sideshow.
One of the best parts about this is the box. It opens up to reveal a sort of “pop-up” display with Jabba, Leia and C-3PO on the left. And Salacious Crumb is hanging from the ceiling on the far right.
Leia is essentially a Barbie doll. She has very little in the way of articulation, and the rooted hair and stylized head sculpt really make her seem like a doll rather than a high-end figure. (As a side note, they originally were going to use a different head sculpt, but I’m not sure it’s much of an improvement.) It’s too bad, since as I mentioned, this is your only choice if you want a 1/6 scale Slave Leia figure. I personally could never display this with my other 1/6 scale figures, as it would stick out like a sore thumb. Her outfit is not too bad, though. I used some of the cloth components (from another set) when I modified my Kotobukiya Slave Leia vinyl statue.
The R2-D2 figure, on the other hand, is actually quite nice. While it’s a bit toy-like, it wouldn’t look out of place amongst Sideshow figures, and in fact I use one of these in my 1/6 scale Jabba display. His middle leg can retract into his body, and his head can rotate. I imagine most of the demand for this set nowadays is for people who want the drink-serving R2.
I’m hoping that Sideshow will eventually come out with a Slave Leia figure that is both articulated and attractive, but that’s no small order. Putting a standard 1/6 scale action figure body into the metal bikini outfit just doesn’t look very good, and I’m sure that’s the main reason that they haven’t made one yet. But with new bodies that have more subtle joints (or even joints completely covered with rubber) it should be possible to finally make a good looking Slave Leia.
These temporary tattoos were included with Lyons Maid Ice Cream (a brand from the UK) in 1997. As you can see, they’ve yellowed a bit with age. They’re about an inch tall. I’m not sure how they went about selecting the characters that they used. You’d think they might have at least grouped Jabba and Bib Fortuna together.
“There Will Be No Bargain” Diorama (Luke/Gamorrean Guard vs. Rancor) by Sideshow Collectibles
I was excited when I first heard that Sideshow was going to be making a diorama featuring the rancor, but when the final product was revealed I couldn’t help but be disappointed. Pretty much every other entry in their line of Star Wars dioramas features a fully realized little scene, including scenery and two or more characters. When I imagined what a rancor diorama would be like, it didn’t even occur to me that we might not get the entire rancor. I was hoping to see the rancor pit as well. Instead, we got the upper part of the torso and one arm, on top of a strange metal base. This really stretches the limits of what can be considered a diorama. I would say it’s more like a bust on steroids.
It’s a bit bigger than I had expected (about 15″ tall), which makes it similar in scale to Gentle Giant Rancor, and a considerably larger scale than the AMT/ERTL model kit. However, I personally would have been okay with it being a smaller scale if it would have meant getting the entire rancor. I’m sure the fact that we only got part of the rancor, and the somewhat high price ($229 for the regular version and $249 for the exclusive) are the reasons the exclusive version still hasn’t sold out on Sideshow’s site after months, even though it’s only limited to 250 pieces. In fact, they recently put it on sale for 30% off, which is why I finally broke down and bought it. I knew I wanted to have it for my collection, but I had a hard time getting motivated to buy it.
This is sort of a companion piece to the Jabba vs Leia diorama that I posted about some time ago, this time showing Luke going up against the rancor instead of Leia facing Jabba, so it’s possible that they went with this size to keep them in scale with each other. I think Luke’s face is well sculpted — there’s definitely a lot of Mark Hamill in there — but the paint job makes it look a little strange. The prototype pictured on Sideshow’s website looks quite a bit better to me. The position of his body in the rancor’s claw seems a little awkward, but it was kind of awkward in the movie as well.
As for the rancor, both the sculpt and paint are well done. It’s more accurate to the original model than the AMT/ERTL model kit, and I think the paint is probably better than the Gentle Giant statue. The real sticking point is that you only get about 1/3 of the rancor. When you consider that this costs more than the Gentle Giant piece now goes for on the secondary market, I have to say that the GG Rancor is the better buy.
The Sideshow-exclusive version of the diorama (which is only available direct from Sideshow) has a swap-out hand, allowing you to substitute a Gamorrean Guard for Luke. I think I prefer this version, since you don’t get distracted by Luke’s pose or the issues with the likeness. However, it does become very similar to the AMT/ERTL kit when you put the Gamorrean in there, so I’m wondering if maybe I shouldn’t use Luke when I have it on display, just to add a little variety. It’s nice to have options in any case. Both Luke and the Gamorrean seem to make the rancor a little bit front-heavy, although luckily mine doesn’t have any issues with tipping over as some people have reported.
The Gamorrean is nicely done, and seems to be painted better than Sideshow’s 1/6 scale Gamorrean figures. I’m just not quite sure about the hands. They seem strangely cartoony (although it’s true that the hands on the actual costumes were kind of odd looking as well).
Some people have speculated about the possibility of a 1/6 scale rancor to go along with Sideshow’s 1/6 scale Jabba & throne setup. But that seems rather doubtful considering that they couldn’t even do the entire rancor in this scale, which is considerably smaller (I believe most of the dioramas are around 1/9th scale?). But if you can get past that aspect of it, this is definitely one of the nicer rancor-themed collectibles out there.
“Leia’s Luau” Print by Hartxart
This is a print from Etsy seller hartxart. It’s a clever re-imagining of Jabba’s throne room as a Hawaiian luau. You’ve got Leia in the foreground doing a hula dance (tempting Boba Fett nearby). Oola appears to be cooking a Gamorrean Guard on a spit, while Jabba (in a Hawaiian muumuu and lei) shares some tropical cocktails with Han in Carbonite. And of course, Max Rebo provides his signature “crazy Rebo beat.”
This 8.5″ by 11″ print is very inexpensive and comes on nice thick paper. The artist had the original art available for sale for quite a while, and I was tempted by it each time I visited Etsy, but it seems to have sold now.
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