“Jabba’s Angels” Sticker
This is another sticker from Redbubble.com. As with the other Redbubble stickers I’ve been posting about, this is also available on a T-shirt. As you can probably tell, it’s a parody of the logo from the opening sequence of Charlie’s Angels — a TV show from the late 70s about a team of female private investigators.
I think the artist, TedDastickJr, did a pretty good job of putting Jabba’s dancers in the place of the women from the original logo. From left to right, you have Rystáll Sant, Oola, and Greeata. I’m 99% sure that the silhouette of Oola is taken from the Attakus Oola statue. Not sure about the others.
Here’s yet another item from Chein Industries (aka Cheinco). They put out an entire line of metal items using variations on the same artwork, rearranged in various ways (see below). I have the Jabba and Rebo Band tins, as well as the tray. I still need to get the waste paper basket. Every time one has come up on ebay, they always seem to be damaged and/or too expensive.
Mark Mancini, the artist who did the original art for these, contacted me a while ago and we exchanged a few emails. According to him, the art was 50″ wide or more, and was done to fit the wastebasket first, with some additional characters painted in the margins. The characters were rearranged from there to fit on the various products.
On this tin, Jabba’s sail barge is in the center on both sides, with Jabba and Oola to the right. The Max Rebo Band is on one side of the tin, and an X-wing and Tie Fighter are on the other.
Front
This is a film cell from Return of the Jedi encased in a clear plastic block (which is also shaped like a film cell itself). The block fits into a black plastic stand for display purposes. They made a number of these with different cells and different photos in the plastic case. This one has Bib Fortuna on the front and Salacious Crumb assaulting C-3PO on the back. Click the images for a closer look.
Back
The actual film cell is supposed to be different for each one of these they produced (and since even a single reel of film would yield thousands of individual frames, I don’t doubt that this is true). Mine shows a Gamorrean Guard and the droids. It’s rather difficult to get a good picture of it, since you can’t really even see it in person without holding it up to a light source. You may notice that the scene is reversed here — in the movie, the Gamorrean is standing on the left. You can see both sides of the cell depending of whether you’re looking at the front or back of the product, so I can’t really say that this is wrong, but it might have been more natural to have the cell flipped so it looks normal when seen from the front.
Overall, I’d say it’s okay, but not really that impressive (especially since the original price tag on mine was for $49.99!). I got mine for about $5, which I guess isn’t too bad. As collectibles incorporating 70mm film cells go, I definitely prefer my Ralph McQuarrie Lithograph, but it was a lot more expensive (and the film cell isn’t the focus of the product by any means).
Vintage Gamorrean Guard Halloween Costume by Ben Cooper
I don’t think I’m going to surprise anybody by saying that I was a pretty big Star Wars fan as a kid. That’s me on the right in the photo below, dressed as a sandperson for Halloween in 1982. My costume consisted of a Ben Cooper mask, my Dad’s orange bathrobe, a belt of some kind, and a stick.
But actually, that costume was a lot more convincing than many Halloween costumes at the time. Here’s a picture of some other kids from my class in elementary school.
You’ve got a devil, two Darth Vaders, a skeleton, and a Superman. 4 out of 5 costumes are just plain vinyl suits with a picture of the character on the chest. Pretty uninspired stuff, in my opinion. This particular costume is from about the same time as the ones above, but luckily it actually attempts to recreate the Gamorrean Guard’s outfit rather than plastering his face on your chest.
The box has seen better days, but I only paid about $5 for it. I believe some versions were printed with “Revenge of the Jedi” on it before they made the change to “Return of the Jedi.”
My mask has apparently gotten smashed, because the one you can see here looks a lot better. But the vinyl jumpsuit part of the costume was actually still in the plastic.
I was considering leaving it that way, but I thought it would be nice to actually see it, and my son expressed some interest in trying it on. It’s a little big on him, but it fits better than I thought it would. I think it’s about as good as you can expect a vinyl jumpsuit-style costume to look. True, the real Gamorreans didn’t have “GAMORREAN GUARD” written on their chests, and I’m relatively sure their belt buckles didn’t read “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi,” but we’ll let that slide.
This is one of only two Jabba-related Halloween costumes that were available while the Star Wars movies were still in theaters, with the other being Klaatu for some reason. (There were also rubber masks of the Gamorrean and Klaatu available for a brief time, but they had to be withdrawn from the market because Ben Cooper didn’t have the license to make rubber masks.)
I know that actually having a Jabba costume might be difficult for logistical reasons (they didn’t really even solve this with the modern Jabba costume from Rubies). But Klaatu? How many little boys were clamoring to be Klaatu for Halloween? (Or a Gamorrean for that matter…?) Somehow I think there might have been better choices.
Burger King Han in Carbonite
This is a fast food premium given away by Burger King in 2005 to coincide with the release of Revenge of the Sith. Amazingly, they made 30 different toys for this series (including the Jabba the Hutt water squirter I wrote about a while back). The toys fell into one of five general types: windup toys, vehicles, water squirters, stuff animals, and picture viewers. This is actually a windup toy.
Open up the outer shell, and you see Han in the outfit he was wearing when he thawed out in Jabba’s Palace. The idea is that you turn the crank in his back to wind him up, then let him shake his way out of the carbonite shell. I found it was actually kind of difficult to get him to do that, unless you leave the shell partially open. Here it is, in all its glory:
Yeah, that’s pretty much it. And I had to do it multiple times to get it to work that well. Still, I think it’s pretty cool as a fast food giveaway. Here it is with the Jabba water squirter.
Australian artist Duncan Mattocks did a series of paintings for the recent launch of the latest Adidas Star Wars shoes collection at “Laced” — a shoe store in Brisbane. (I wrote about the Jabba shoes here.) All of them are brilliant, but of course my eye went immediately to Jabba the Hutt in an Adidas tracksuit. A great concept, perfectly executed. I contacted Duncan about the piece, but unfortunately it has already been sold. I might want to commission some art from him in the future though.
I’ve posted about my other two rings from JAP Inc. before (Jabba and the Rancor), so give those entries a look if you want some general info about them. I’ve been on the lookout for the other two Jabba’s Palace characters ever since getting those, but these things just don’t show up on eBay very often at all, and even Yahoo Auctions Japan doesn’t have very many. This is the first one of this character that I’ve seen, and I’ve been looking for over a year.
Patience paid off, though, as I was able to buy it for less than $30, which is a steal compared to the original asking price of close to $200. Of course getting these secondhand means that you can’t be too picky about the size. Like the others, this really only fits me as a pinky ring, but it’s not as if I was really going to be wearing it anyway. I would think the potential audience for a ring like this would be relatively small compared to the more major characters, but it’s cool that they made one.
Here are the JAP Inc silver rings that I have at the moment. I still need the Gamorrean Guard, but I have yet to see that come up for sale anywhere, even in Japan. I guess most of the people who bought these when they were originally available were hardcore enough that they’re unlikely to sell them later on. And of course they were only available in very limited numbers to begin with.
Link: Scratch-Built Jabba the Hutt Statue
I stumbled on this while searching for an unrelated Jabba item. Apparently a Japanese sculptor made this as a gift for a friend of his a couple of years ago. Lucky friend! He said it took about 19 days. Just incredible. He detailed the entire process on his blog. If you’re interested, start with this entry and click the 次の日> (“Next Page”) link at the bottom of each page to go to the next entry (there will be a few unrelated entries as well). Here are some highlights. I particularly like the shot of an early version of the sculpt with a package of Japanese “Jaba” detergent. 😀
Vintage British Gamorrean Guard Eraser by HC Ford
Lots of Gamorrean Guard stuff recently for some reason. I am a fan of the design, which somehow manages to be simultaneously comical and menacing.
This Gamorrean Guard eraser is about 2 inches tall and was released by H.C. Ford & Sons, a British company that also released some Gamorrean Guard and Bib Fortuna pencil toppers. Whoever had this before me really took care of it, as the package and eraser look brand new. I’ve also got the figural eraser put out by Butterfly Originals.
Link: 25 Homemade Jabba the Hutts
HolyTaco.com has a list of “25 Homemade Jabba the Hutts” (or should that be “Jabbas the Hutt”? :D) The list includes two of my own Jabbas: my Jabba birthday cake and my large Jabba plush. Give it a look.
[Via the Jabba the Hutt Facebook page]
Mighty Jabba's Collection 