Link: Make Jabba the Hutt Napkin Rings
Just in time for Thanksgiving, Starwars.com has an article about how to make felt napkin rings with various characters, including Jabba.
In 1997, Taco Bell had a “Feel the Force” promotion to coincide with the re-released “Special Editions” of the original trilogy. They had game pieces that included a small heat-sensitive square, and players were told to hold them up against their foreheads to see if they win (your body heat would make a message appear). These two playing pieces featuring Salacious Crumb and the Rancor apparently won an order of regular nachos and an order of Cinnamon Twists, respectively. Thanks to Jediman1 over on the Rebelscum forums for donating these! Not the most impressive prizes, but at the high end they also gave away cash and a special Star Wars-themed Hummer. (The Hummer actually has its own website, starwarshummer.com, as whoever now owns it is trying to sell it.) They also gave out toys with the children’s meal, including this puzzle cube that I talked about earlier.
There’s a list of game pieces on this site, but it has blanks for numbers 12-19. I’m not sure if these just weren’t made, or if the list is incomplete. It seems strange to me that they would make game pieces for relatively minor characters like these and not for Jabba himself, but it’s possible.
Here’s one of the ads that Taco Bell ran for the promotion at the time:
Large Jabba the Hutt Plush by Figurinesbyingrid
Etsy seller Figurinesbyingrid made this great Jabba the Hutt plush for me. I wanted a very large Jabba plush that would be both cute and soft, and Ingrid made it to my specifications for a very reasonable price. It’s impressively large at about 18″ wide by 13″ tall, and made from a soft fleece material. Photos don’t really convey how large it is. I was surprised (in a good way) how big it was when I got it in hand.
I’ve never understood why there haven’t been more Jabba plushes made. In fact, until earlier this year there had only been a single Jabba plush ever sold commercially — the Jabba the Hutt Star Wars Buddy. It was quite small and made of a leathery material that you might not associate with plushes.
Earlier this year, Comic Images released their Jabba the Hutt Scruffy, which is a similar size but made of a nice soft material. To give you an idea of how much bigger my plush is, take a look at the picture to the left.
Ingrid’s Jabba is actually about the perfect size to go with the Salacious Crumb Star Wars Buddy. I think like the Salacious Crumb buddy a lot better when I see him next to the big Jabba than when he’s alone (and certainly more than with the Jabba buddy, since Crumb is way out of scale in comparison). Anyway, this Jabba will be leading a life of leisure on my couch from now on. 🙂
Link: Jabba the Hutt iPad/iPhone Dock on Etsy.com
If you’ve got $125 to blow, I suppose you could do worse than to buy this homemade Jabba the Hutt dock for an iPad or iPhone from etsy.com. I think they could’ve gone the extra mile and made the dock look like Jabba’s throne (plus the price is a bit exorbitant), so I won’t be picking one of these up. As it is, it’s really just a Hasbro Ultra Jabba figure attached to a wooden dock. But I do like how he holds up the iPad for you. 🙂
Jabba the Hutt LEGO Cube Dude by Joel Baker
I linked to this great Jabba’s palace scene by Joel Baker a few months ago. It’s made up of LEGO Cube Dudes, which are abstract LEGO figures pioneered by Angus MacLane. Joel was kind enough to sell me his Jabba, and even made a bigger throne than the one he originally had in the display.
The genius of these guys is that they’re all made using standard LEGO parts (more or less), but put together in a way in a way that is quite different than traditional LEGO design. To make one of these you need an intimate understanding of what pieces exist and how to best fit them together to represent a particular shape.
Jabba is bigger than I had imagined from the photos — about 4.5″ wide by 3.5″ tall. The best parts in my opinion are the chest/belly area, which suggests his corpulent figure, and the face, which is spot-on Jabba. I’m definitely tempted to get a few more, although it would be difficult to narrow down my choices to just a few.
Jedi Luke Premium Format Figure (Sideshow Exclusive Version)
I have a number of Sideshow’s PFs, and they’re all quite nice. Pricey but nice. I actually won this one during Sideshow’s recent Spooktacular promotion (a week of contests and giveaways leading up to Halloween), which was a nice surprise since this was a piece that I would have liked, but didn’t really want to pay the $300 price for.
At first this might not have an obvious connection to Jabba, since you may notice that he’s wearing the black glove that he only wore in the latter half of Return of the Jedi, after all of the Jabba scenes. But the Sideshow exclusive version of the piece comes with a swap-out hand that is gloveless and holding the blaster Luke took from one of Jabba’s guards just before he fell into the Rancor pit. It’s not a perfect fit for the statue, since he’s not wearing the cloak that he was wearing during that scene, but it’s close enough for me to include it here. It also reminds me that this is only the second PF statue that is related to Jabba or Jabba’s palace (the other being the Slave Leia PF, which I don’t have yet). I’d love to see a Gamorrean Guard or some of the other aliens from the palace.
The likeness to Mark Hamill is quite good, and while the pose has been a little controversial, I’d say it’s definitely a nice statue. I personally would have preferred something that included his cloak, since that’s a big part of the “Jedi Luke” look for me. Some people are even looking into having custom cloaks made for the statue.
There are rumblings that Sideshow may attempt a Jabba PF. My first instinct is that it would be unworkably big (and expensive) but I’m certainly interested to see what they could come up with.
Vintage Sigma Ceramic Gamorrean Guard Mug
A few months ago, I wrote about the Gamorrean Guard figural mug that Applause put out in the mid 90s. But that was actually the second Gamorrean Guard figural mug that had been produced, the first being this one that Sigma released in 1983. There’s something a little strange when they make two figural mugs of a character like this and none of Jabba himself, but I guess we’ll just have to overlook that for the moment.
I definitely prefer this one to the Applause version. The sculpt is better and while the paint on the backside is kind of rough with very obvious brush marks, overall I think it’s better than the Applause version as well. It does have a bit of a lazy eye thing going on, however. It’s a bit smaller than the Applause version as you can see below.
Vintage Kenner Jabba the Hutt Action Playset (Line-Art Version)
Front of the box
The Vintage Jabba Playset was the first item I cataloged here on the site, but there are actually two versions of it (at least when it comes to the box). The more common one is the one I wrote about initially, and uses nice, full-color photos of the toy posed with various other action figures (“sold separately” of course). The other one is a two-color line-art version that is much plainer. It’s just a white cardboard box (considerably sturdier than the full-color version) that features Jabba and the “Return of the Jedi” title in green, and the throne and the rest of the text in black. It appears to be just a drawn version of the photo that appeared on the full-color box, without the other figures. It’s interesting that they chose green for Jabba, since the actual figure really isn’t green at all, but then again the actual mustard yellow color wouldn’t have shown up very well on the box, or have been as esthetically pleasing. This one has never been opened, and I don’t intend to open it now, so refer to the other version of the playset for pictures of the actual toy.
Back of the box (or maybe it’s the other way around)
One thing that struck me when I got the box in-hand was that the green printing shifts in position by about 2mm or so between the front and the back. This gives you the illusion that Jabba’s eyes move back and forth. Jabba looks like he’s up to something…
There is apparently some controversy about the reason behind the two different boxes. I first heard the idea that the plain boxes were used by Sears for their catalog orders. Since they didn’t need pretty photos to attract kids’ eyes on store shelves, Sears decided to save some money and go with a plainer box (and it might also be that they wanted a more sturdy box that could hold better up to being sent in the mail). This sounds plausible, and they did produce a number of Sears-exclusive figure packs that came in white boxes with line art on them. But as far as I know, no one has offered proof that this version of the box was actually used by Sears, and strangely I’ve never heard of anyone who remembers getting the line art version as a kid.
Another idea is that because they over-produced this figure, Kenner printed up some cheap boxes to try and move some of the overstock cheaply toward the end of its life as a product. It’s true that they overproduced the Jabba playset, which is one reason why it’s not more valuable today. I’ve even heard that the novelty store Archie McPhee bought up boxes and boxes full of leftover Jabba parts in the early 90s that they eventually paired with plastic fruit pieces and tried to sell as “Jabba Jam,” with rather dismal results. (Details here and here — supposedly they really did this, although it sounds like a joke. If anyone knows where I can get some of this, please let me know.)
I don’t know what the real story is, but it does seem likely that the simpler box was a cost-saving measure of some kind. I certainly prefer the photo box overall, but there is something undeniably charming about this version.
Jabba the Hutt Water Pipe
This may very well be the least practical water pipe ever made. It’s about 20″ wide by 12″ tall and weighs over 20 pounds. But could there be a more perfect character to make a water pipe out of? Given how closely the character of Jabba is associated with his hooka, I think not.
Jabba’s head serves as the lid, which lifts off to reveal the mouth of the pipe. You would put the tobacco (or whatever you’re smoking) into the glass that Jabba is holding, which is actually the end of a glass tube that extends into the body. Then you’d smoke by putting your mouth on the mouth of the pipe.
At least that’s the idea. I have no intention of trying it, since I don’t smoke and the previous owner told me that it leaked even before the damage it sustained getting to me. I used epoxy glue to put the body and tail back together, and used epoxy putty to resculpt the tip of the tail and fill in a large chip in the back of the of the head. Then I touched up the paint, since it had a number of scuffs and scratches on the face and elsewhere. On the bright side, the damage allowed me to see where the glass tube goes down inside the body.
The person I got this from said it was a one-of-a-kind piece, and while I can’t be sure of that, I think it probably is. I don’t know who made it, but inside the lid there is the date 10/16/98 and what appear to be the initials IR. I think the sculpt is excellent. The face in particular really captures Jabba’s asymmetrical features.
I got this through a Los Angeles Craigslist listing that DarthZilla71 from the Rebelscum forums alerted me to. As I live in Illinois, this was a little tricky to get ahold of, but DarthZilla71 helped me out by picking it up from the seller and sending it to me. He did a stellar job of packing, so I think the blame for the damage that it suffered is either on the US postal service or the nature of the piece itself, which is extremely heavy and perhaps not the best design from the point of view of durability. Still, the damage isn’t too noticeable and I’m definitely happy to have it in my collection.
Vintage Makit & Bakit Gamorrean Guard Suncatcher Kit
This is from the same series as the Jabba the Hutt suncatcher kit that I wrote about a year ago. As I said then, I’m not quite sure why they chose Jabba, Vader, R2-D2, and a Gamorrean Guard as the four characters they were going to make suncatchers out of. A C-3PO might have been a better choice than the Gamorrean. I bought two of these, thinking that I would keep one in the package and make the other. As you can see above, the two packages are actually mirror images of each other–the metal frame comes on both the left and the right-hand side. Just from what I’ve seen, I think the version on the left was more common, but I’m not sure if the right-hand one was just a fluke or what.
As I explained earlier when talking about the Jabba suncatcher, you put the metal frame on a baking sheet covered in aluminum foil and then put the colored plastic pieces in the appropriate spaces. This is rather fiddly work, and I found that I had to do a lot of it with tweezers, but I’m a little fussy about making sure the colors get in the right place. Then you bake it in the oven for about 20 minutes at 375 degrees. The metal pellets will melt together, forming a “stained glass” effect that’s actually quite nice. I think it turned out pretty well, even though the instructions on the back made it pretty difficult to tell exactly which shade of brown was supposed to go where.
Mighty Jabba's Collection 
