Vintage Sigma Ceramic Lando as Skiff Guard Figural Mug
Here’s another addition to my collection of Jabba-themed mugs. It’s a reasonably well done piece. I think the helmet and face guard help it look a bit better than the ones that were just disembodied heads. I believe this is the last of the vintage Sigma mugs that could fit into a Jabba focus, but I still have a few more from the Applause line that I could conceivably add to my collection, such as the Jedi Luke or Boba Fett mugs. And I suppose I could include C-3PO as well.
Below are all of my mugs, along with the Dram Tree stein on the right. In the front you have the vintage Sigma line with Lando, a Gamorrean Guard, and Klaatu. And in the back are two from the Applause line from the ’90s: another Gamorrean Guard and Bib Fortuna. Notice anything missing? Yeah, no Jabba. I still can’t get over how a character like Klaatu (Klaatu!) can get a mug, and the head honcho himself can’t get a mug in either the Simga or Applause lines. But I digress…
Follow Mighty Jabba’s Collection On Twitter!
Now that WordPress has added a feature that will automatically tweet updates to your blog, I figured I would try making a Twitter account for Mighty Jabba’s Collection. I’m not a big Twitter user in general, but hopefully this will help get the word out about my site. For the moment it’s mostly just going to be links to posts I make on the site, but we’ll see how things go.
(I’ve since deleted my account)
Vintage British Return of the Jedi School Bag By Frankel & Roth (Jabba the Hutt & Bib Fortuna)
I love finding stuff like this. I’ve been collecting Jabba items in earnest for a couple of years now, and sometimes it seems like I’ve seen everything there is to get. But I had no idea that this bag even existed. It was sold in Britain by Frankel & Roth as a part of a small line of bags and pencil cases (called “Bags of Character” which is a rather clever name if you think about it). As you can see, it has a large central picture of Jabba and Bib Fortuna, and three smaller pictures of C-3PO, Darth Vader, and R2-D2 with Wicket the Ewok.
It’s about 12″ tall and wide. It can fold nearly flat if there’s nothing in it, but can open up to about 5 inches deep. It’s got 2 handles made of silver vinyl and one shoulder strap, and zips closed on the top. The tag on mine refers to a “three-way super bag” on its back, but the illustrations seem to be of a different type of bag — one that can convert into a backpack. It’s also dated 1982, while the back itself has a 1983 date (as would be expected for something from Return of the Jedi). So either they used an old tag on this bag, or this isn’t the tag that originally came with the bag at all, and someone just put it on later.
In any case, I was excited to get it because it features Jabba so prominently, and I don’t have any other bags in my collection.
Jabba the Hutt Sketch Card by John Soukup (Topps Galaxy Series 5)
I have quite a few sketch cards in my collection, but up until now I have gotten all of them directly from the artists. That kind of sketch card is just a (relatively) inexpensive way to purchase original art. But there’s another kind of sketch card: ones that were part of an “official” set from a company like Topps. Basically, the card companies hire artists to make sketch cards that will be included at random inside packs of preprinted collectible cards — a nice little bonus you might get if you’re lucky. A lot of these end up on eBay, and they tend to sell for a LOT more than a sketch card commissioned directly from the same artist would cost, which makes absolutely no sense to me. That’s why I’ve never gotten any until now. Even when I’ve found some that I like, they always end up going higher than my budget.
But that wasn’t the case with this one, as I ended up winning it for just $15.50, which is actually a good price even for a non “official” card. I’m not sure what the deal was. The person selling it gave the wrong name for the artist, which might be part of it. Artistically, I think it’s great. He did it with paint, and possibly a brush pen. Jabba’s tongue is actually a piece of paper that was glued to the card, which I thought was kind of funny.
“Reading Is For Everyone!” Poster by Scholastic
This is a poster put out by Scholastic in 1997 — around the time that the remastered “Special Editions” of the Star Wars films came out. For those of you not familiar with Scholastic, they are a publisher that sells their books directly to kids in schools. They’ve published a number of Star Wars books and magazines, like Star Wars Kids Magazine, or “The Search for Grubba the Hutt.”
I’m not sure how it’s changed in the intervening years, but when I was a kid there used to be “book orders” every once in a while where the kids would get to pick out the books they wanted from a Scholastic catalog. Of course your parents had to actually pay for them, but it was undeniably exciting to submit the order for things you picked out yourself, and then have it arrive at school for you to take home. Now that I think about it as an adult, I wonder how a for-profit company like Scholastic got such a privileged position in American schools, but at least they’re promoting reading.
I’m not sure if this poster was sold or given away. And it certainly wouldn’t look out of place hanging in a school library. In any case, I love how they have Jabba reading a book (“Star Wars: A Storybook” by J.J. Gardner). The other characters around him almost look like they are figments of his imagination as he reads the book. It’s 17″ x 22″.
Snow Jabba by icruise
There seem to be a lot of Snow Jabbas being made, and I guess it makes sense. His natural shape is pretty much the same as a snow drift, after all. I’ve been wanting to make one for quite a while, but it always seems like I’m too busy shoveling snow to get creative with it. Thanks to the winter storms we’ve been having, though, I had more than enough snow to work with this week. I had intended to do something a bit more detailed than this, but the snow wasn’t cooperating very much. It was too loose and dry to make much out of it. Still, it’s recognizable at least. I used food coloring and water in a spray bottle to achieve the coloring.
Jabba Cutout Card, Mini Jabba Cross Stitch and Jabba-Green Scarf
My birthday was a few days ago, and my sister was nice enough to indulge my Jabba obsession with a few handmade items. The first was the birthday card above. The “Happy Birthday” message and Jabba’s face are paper cutouts. The Jabba face was done in a manner similar to a paper doll or snowflake, where you fold the paper in half and make cutouts that will then appear on both sides of the face. I think it came out really well.
Next was the mini cross stitch above. It’s 2″ x 3″ in size. I believe she’s just getting started with cross stitch, but it’s pretty cute.
She also knitted me a nice green scarf. 😀 Jabba kindly offered to model it for me.
You may recall that my sister also made me some great Hutt ornaments for Christmas.
Link: Ultimate Gamorrean (Rancor Slayer) Custom Figure
I stumbled upon this today. It’s a custom made from a “World War Hulk” figure’s body and the head from the Vintage Collection Gamorrean Guard, with quite a bit of additional sculpting work. Pretty darn cool. Makes me want to try something like this myself.
Slave Leia and Jabba Sketch Card by CS3Ink
This is a sketch card by CS3Ink featuring Slave Leia, Jabba, C-3PO and Salacious Crumb. It’s impressive how many characters he was able to get on such a small card. I like the colors, and particularly the fact that he got Jabba’s coloring right.
Star Wars Trilogy Posters by Tyler Stout (Mondo/Alamo Drafthouse)
These posters were the final entries in the Star Wars series by Mondo/Alamo Drafthouse. I’ve talked about a couple of their pieces before (Jabba’s Palace by Tom Whalen and Salacious Crumb by Rhys Cooper), so I’d like to touch on these as well. It might be a bit of a stretch to classify these as Jabba collectibles, but Jabba and his cronies are featured prominently on the Return of the Jedi poster, and I can’t really talk about that one with out talking about all of them.
These are the regular editions. They made 850 of each of these, and also made 250 variant editions using metallic inks for a more monochromatic look. If you haven’t seen these before, I suggest that you click on the thumbnails above for a closer look. Stout’s signature style is to cram as much detail as possible into each poster, and to some people that makes these look busy. But he does such a good job on the composition that I don’t think it’s an issue at all, especially when you see them at full size (24 x 36). On the contrary, I love all the little details, like Greedo peeking out between Tarkin and a Sandtrooper in the shot below. (The shots above and the detail shots below are from these pages on UGO.com.)
Unlike the previous entries in the series, there was a lot of publicity about these and the Olly Moss prints that preceded them, which meant that it was very difficult to actually buy these. I thought I had bought a set of the Moss prints only to find out the next day that they had oversold and that my order had been canceled. With these, I managed to get a set by vigilantly monitoring the Mondo site and their Twitter feed. Even though I was right there when they went up for sale, I only just managed to get them, as they sold out in two or three minutes. Immediately afterward, these sets were selling for over $1000 on ebay.
From what I understand, Stout uses a combination of “tracing” using Adobe Illustrator and freehand drawing. However he does it, the likenesses are amazing, and I love the line drawing style he uses. It looks to me like he did a lot of original design for Jabba, since this isn’t a perfect match for his look from the film. It’s a bit more of an animated style. In any case, it’s well done. In the body of the poster, you can see Jabba, Salacious Crumb, Bib Fortuna,a Gamorrean Guard, Slave Leia and the Sarlacc, as well as his sail barge and palace. There’s also Leia as Boushh and Lando in his skiff guard disguise in boxes at the top of the poster. The only thing missing that I really think should have been in there is the Rancor.
I have these displayed over the mantle in my office and I think they look great. I have them paired with my Sideshow Darth Vader and Obi-wan Kenobi PFs, partially because they are emblematic of the entire trilogy and go well with the posters, and partially because I don’t have any other good place to put them. 😀
Mighty Jabba's Collection 