Just added to my YouTube channel is the latest installment in my series about the slightly more obscure denizens of Jabba’s Palace, which I call “Jabba’s Palace Roll Call.” This time I focus on Yak Face and the merchandise that has been made for him.
I posted about the Dark Horse Jabba the Hutt one-off comics way back in 2009. They told stories about Jabba’s past as a crime lord, before the events of the Star Wars movies. They’re one of the few stories that have Jabba as the star, and while I’m not sure whether they would be considered canon now, I think they do a pretty good job of showing how cunning and ruthless Jabba might have been. I was very happy to be able to get some of the original artwork for these comics.
I got these from Monty Sheldon, who was the inker for the comics (and who is still selling some of the other pages on eBay if you’re interested). He didn’t have all of the pages, since some were apparently given to the penciller Art Wetherell, but even so it was difficult to choose. In the end I chose two pages from “The Gaar Suppoon Hit” because that’s probably my favorite of the comics, and these two pages are sequential. They tell a little story that you can probably understand even without reading the rest of the comic.
The third page below is from “Betrayal” and I got it because it showed Jabba and Bib Fortuna in his palace, with Jabba on his throne.
Below is a comparison of one of the pages of original artwork and how it appeared in the comics after being colored by computer. (I also have a colorist page for one of these comics that I’ve posted about before.)
These are on illustration boards that are roughly 19″ by 12″, which is why I had to take photos of them instead of scanning — they’re just too big for the scanner. One thing that I found very cool were the little imperfections, like where whiteout was used to correct something, or where the pencil lines had been left behind. On the two pages from “The Gaar Suppoon Hit” the speech bubbles have been pasted on separately on top of the art. Of course none of this shows up in the finished comic.
Since the comics came out in 1995 and early 1996, they weren’t influenced by George Lucas’s “improved” CGI version of Jabba that started with the “Special Edition” of “A New Hope” and that’s fantastic for me, since the Return of the Jedi design is what I vastly prefer. I think these are great just as pieces of art, but the connection to the comics makes them even more special. I plan to frame these and display them, hopefully with the two sequential pages side by side.
In this video, Gabe Pacheco makes a (very tongue-in-cheek) argument that we should rethink Jabba’s role as a villain. I have been #teamjabba since the start of course.
I’ve posted about all of these items at various times on the site, but here is a video outlining all of the Jabba plushes (aka stuffed animals) that have been made.
The site “Making Star Wars” has posted an article suggesting that no new merchandise or even artwork of the so-called Slave Leia character will be produced in the future. I’ve made a short YouTube video detailing my thoughts on the subject.
I know I’ve been posting mostly videos recently, but that’s partially because I’m catching up on everything from the past that I can make videos about. This time, I looked at the Black Series Jabba the Hutt figure, in both its regular and SDCC-exclusive versions.
Pictures of these prototype Funko POP! figures have recently surfaced, and they appear to be heading for another Walmart 3-pack, similar to the excellent Jabba’s Palace set I recently reviewed. At this point we have no idea when it will be released. I’ll definitely be picking this up to go with the Jabba set. Below are some better pictures of the rancor and Oola. The photos are marked “Toy Monster” but I’m not sure if that’s a site, a person, or what.
I showed this plush in my video about Jabba the Hutt plushes that I made a while ago, but I realized that I never posted about it on the site. This is a smaller version of the large Jabba plush from Underground Toys that I posted about last year. I originally got one of those from the UK, since it seemed like they were only available there. But just a couple of days ago I found one at my local Walmart, so they are finally starting to become available in the US. The version I got at Walmart is basically identical to the one from the UK (shown above) with the exception that it has a tag attached instead of using a cardboard tray.
As you can see, it’s quite a bit smaller than the original plush — the body in particular has been drastically reduced — but otherwise it’s very similar. The plush material is the same and the talking feature uses the same voice with lines from the Special Edition of A New Hope, interestingly enough.
When I first heard about the Morbid Enterprises inflatable Jabba, I hadn’t seen a picture of it. So when a picture of this Jabba showed up online, I naturally assumed that it was the Morbid Enterprises product. But no, in fact this is a completely separate product made by Gemmy Industries (who also put out the plush Halloween greeter I posted about a while back). Who would’ve thought that we’d have two completely separate inflatable Jabba products released in one year!
After some research, I discovered that it was only sold in Canada, which made it rather difficult to get. I did have someone in Canada who looked for me, but they were unable to track one down, so I had to resort to eBay. At least waiting until after Halloween allowed me to get it a bit cheaper. Interestingly, the listing that Canadian Tire had on its website used this photo, which I’m betting is a prototype version of the product. It uses the same “trick-or-treat” bag design as the plush greeter. The face is also somewhat different.
As you can see below, it’s a rather different product from the Morbid Enterprises version. It’s a bit smaller, more cartoony, has a different color scheme, and is also Halloween-specific due to the inclusion of a jack o’lantern.
I actually prefer this one overall, though. Maybe it’s the color scheme, or maybe the face, which seems to be a better representation of the character.
They did include his arm tattoo, which now seems to be on the list of required features for Jabba. Overall, I kind of wish the jack o’lantern wasn’t included, or was removable, so this could be used at times other than Halloween.
I made a YouTube review comparing these two figures, so take a look if you’re interested.
When you’ve been collecting Jabba the Hutt items as long as I have, finding something new can be difficult, but it’s always a bit of a thrill when it does happen. This shirt by Union Underwear showed up on eBay a while ago and while it was frankly overpriced, I bought it because I had never seen one before. This shirt and its artwork is completely new to me. I also asked around a bit among collectors and couldn’t seem to find anyone who was familiar with it (although it’s probably fair to say that most people don’t pay as much attention to this sort of thing as I do). Have any of you seen this shirt before, or any other products using this artwork? I’d be interested to hear it. It doesn’t even appear to be on the Star Wars Collector’s Archive.
Anyway, I was glad to be able to get it for my collection. Years ago I passed on a couple of items I thought were too pricey (although they weren’t actually all that much in hindsight) and I’ve regretted it ever since, as I’ve been unable to find them anywhere. So I guess I don’t mind paying a little extra when something like this comes along.
I also have a Gamorrean Guard t-shirt and an iron-on from Union Underwear in my collection, but neither of those is particularly rare.
For the holidays this year, I’ve decided to create a video advent calendar featuring some items from my collection. I’ll be posting one video per day up until Christmas, and each video will focus on one item from my collection that might not otherwise merit a video all to itself. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may recognize some, but not necessarily all of these items. I’m not going to be posting about these on the blog other than this entry, so if you’re interested in seeing all of them I suggest you subscribe to my channel on YouTube. Here is the first day’s entry:
Here’s a video I made summarizing all of the Jabba’s Palace-related Christmas ornaments that I know of.
Stance recently released an entire collection of Star Wars-themed socks, including 12 different designs and 15 different characters (a few of the designs include pairs made up of two different characters’ socks, such as one Jabba and one Slave Leia sock, and the trooper set actually includes 3 socks of different trooper designs).
These retail for $20 apiece, which I’ll have to say is WAY more than I normally pay for socks. But they do come in a nice cardboard hanger and seem to be of good quality. On the back of each hanger is a portion of a Star Wars poster, which you can assemble to make the entire thing if that’s the kind of thing you’re into.
These are definitely nicer than the other Jabba socks I posted about recently. I like the design better and they are better constructed for sure. They even have Jabba’s tattoo symbol on their bottoms. When you’re wearing them, it looks kind of like Jabba is lying back on his tail.
Stance was also selling a boxed set called the “Stance Force Box Set” that included all of 12 pairs of socks, plus a 13th pair that I can’t seem to find any info about. Anybody know what it was? The set is no longer listed on their site, either, but here are a couple of photos. It cost $260, which may well be more than I’ve spent on socks in my entire life.
These nesting dolls are made of plastic and feature Jabba, a Gamorrean Guard and the Max Rebo Band. They’re a part of a larger line that you see on the back of the package below.
Overall I think they’re pretty good, even if the artwork is a little sparse (nothing at all on the back, for example). They retail for $16.99 and can be purchased from this link.
These are actually not the first nesting dolls in my collection. I posted about a set of wooden dolls from Russia a number of years ago, but those used primarily characters from The Phantom Menace. And I also have a set of “Chubbies” from Hot Toys that are very similar in concept.
Back in November, I posted photos of the prototypes for this set, but here they are in more or less finished form. While I had originally thought they were going to be a Walmart exclusive, it seems that they are going to be a previews-exclusive set, meaning that they will be available through comic book retailers. The photo comes from a listing at Midtown Comics, who already have it up for preorder. Interestingly they claim the retail price is $39.99, which seems high compared to the $29.97 price of the Walmart-exclusive set with Jabba. We’ll see if that is actually the price, or if Midtown is just saying that so they can give their 20% discount. In any case, I think they look good. They give a release date of 5/25/2016.
[Hat tip to Dis Kingdom]
Gentle Giant’s line of jumbo vintage Kenner figures has been way more successful than I originally expected. As you can see by looking at the back of the package above, they have 50+ figures in the line, and while none have been announced recently (leading many to wonder about the line’s future), Gentle Giant claims that more are on the way. In particular, the jumbo Jabba the Hutt figure that they previewed at SDCC in July should be on its way sometime next year, although they have yet to open up preorders or even say for sure how much it will cost, or what it will include. We do know that it’s supposed to include a jumbo Salacious Crumb, however, and that’s what you get in this Holiday version available to Premier Guild members.
Salacious has a sack wrapped around him in the package, and in the sack are various goodies. He’s got a hat and scarf that he can wear, but also a nice chrome gold C-3PO head.
There are two empty boxes that recreate the packaging for Gentle Giant’s Gamorrean Guard and Han Solo busts.
And finally, the star of the show (for me anyway!) is a tiny vintage Jabba the Hutt Action Playset box, complete with a teeny tiny Jabba figure.
At the usual $80 price for these jumbo figures, Salacious Crumb seems a little underwhelming. He’s small and not articulated, so these extras do go a little ways to make up for that.
The figure itself is pretty nice. It feels very solid and heavy, which is kind of unusual for these jumbo figures. Most of them seem unnaturally light due to their hollow nature. It’s not a perfect match for the vintage Salacious by any means (for one thing, the vintage figure is made of a rubbery material and this one is hard plastic or vinyl), but it’s pretty close. I did notice that there are large seams along the edges of the jumbo figure that aren’t found on the vintage one.
This really makes me want to get the jumbo Jabba figure. I don’t think I can quite wrap my head around how gigantic that one is going to be… I also made a YouTube review of this figure, which you can see below.
I realize I haven’t been posting much recently, and in fact I have a backlog of items that I need to put up on the site. I mostly blame the holidays and Fallout 4 — I’m only just starting to get back to my regular routine after beating the game twice. I’m hoping to be posting more regularly from now on.
First I want to put up one seasonal item that I didn’t get a chance to post about before Christmas: this Christmas card. This is actually the only commercially available Christmas card that I know of that features Jabba. I bought a box of 12 of these cards on eBay, so I’m not positive where they were sold, but my hunch is that it was at Walmart stores.
On the front, it says “The Jabba Claus Experiment: The First and Final Year” and inside the card it reads, “Squeeze in all the holiday fun you can!”
This card also made an appearance in a Youtube video I made about my LucasArts/Lucas Licensing Christmas cards featuring Jabba, which you can see below.
Tsum Tsums are small “stackable” plushes that resemble a wide variety of Disney-related characters. They started out in Japan, and thanks largely to my sister I’ve known about them since the very beginning. So it’s kind of interesting now that you can find them at places like Target. With Disney buying Star Wars it seemed inevitable that there would eventually be Star Wars versions, and sure enough it looks like they are on their way.
Above you can see a (not very good) photo of the Jabba Tsum, and below are a few of the other characters they will be making. If the past is any indication, these will probably be made available on the Disney Store website at some point in the next month or two. I’ll try and give some advance warning here (assuming I get any) since these sell out quickly. I’m curious if these will be available in other sizes, since the Avengers ones were.
Some more info here: http://mytsumtsum.com/preview-star-wars-tsum-tsum-collection/
(Thanks for the heads-up Harrison!)
I just realize that I neglected to post about the last few Jabba-related reviews I posted to YouTube, so here is the first: a quick look back at the vintage Jabba the Hutt Play-Doh set!
Here’s another review I did recently. I finally got a cheap one of the Jabba’s Rancor Pit sets, so I decided I would go ahead and open one completely for a full review.
