Dan Lacey (the self-proclaimed “Painter of Pancakes”) is an artist who has made a name for himself painting portraits of famous people with pancakes on their heads. It all started a few years ago with a series of photos of a rabbit named Oolong balancing various objects on its head. The rabbit’s Japanese owner posted them online and they were eventually discovered by the English-speaking online community, who latched onto them, turning them into a sort of meme, like this:
Something about this resonated with Dan, who decided to paint pancakes on the heads of all kinds of people, from President Obama to the “Dramatic Chipmunk.” You can see a lot of them on his site (although fair warning: he also does a lot of male nudes that you can also see if you look around his site).
I asked Dan if I could commission a pancake picture of Jabba the Hutt from him, and he kindly agreed to do an 8×10 painting for me. I had originally envisioned Jabba with a pancake on his head, but I think having him eating the pancake (in the kitchen, as you can see from the background) is even better. I’m really happy with how this turned out — especially the maple syrup dribbling down his chin. 
Dan is fantastic at capturing likenesses, and that obviously holds true with Jabba as well. I also love the colors he chose.
Jabba the Hutt Carving in Lemon Quartz
I recently got this tiny carving from Thailand. It’s made of lemon quartz, a semi-precious stone that is sometimes used for jewelry. I like the way they sculpted Jabba — he’s smiling good-naturedly — even if his tail is facing the opposite direction of what I’m used to. It’s about an inch and a half long. It’s surprisingly difficult to take pictures of a translucent carved item like this. It’s hard to see the details, and the ambient light can make a big difference in how the item looks, but I think you get the idea.
I don’t know if they made more than one of these or not. You wouldn’t think the potential audience for something like this would be all that big, but maybe they have a huge barrel of these sitting somewhere in Bangkok. I don’t know. But in any case, I decided that I couldn’t pass up a unique item like this.
“Bacco the Hutt” Painting by Stefano Gentile
I bought this painting from Italian artist Stefano Gentile’s Etsy shop (SteGentileNerdArt), where he has a fair number of Star Wars-themed paintings in the style of various artists. Some are better than others, but overall I think they’re quite creative. I think my other favorite is Chewbacca as the Mona Lisa… This particular piece is a satire of a 16th century painting titled “Bacchus” by the artist Caravaggio, which you can see below. (It’s called “Bacco” in Italian — hence the title “Bacco the Hutt.”) It’s quite large, at about two feet wide. I like the little details, like the various creatures on his plate, or the little froggy snack in the bowl.
As a painting, I think it’s very well done. I’ve been wanting a classically painted Jabba for quite some time, and I think the combination of the subject matter with the way it’s painted is enough to make it both funny and visually interesting. I don’t think it’s very successful as a parody, though, for a couple of reasons. First, only some of the elements of the original painting are present in this version (the plate of food, the draped cloth, and maybe the hooka pipe, which was a bottle of wine in the original). Second, I don’t think the original painting is well known enough (at least in the US) for people to make the connection (unlike, say, the Mona Lisa).
It’s fairly clear that the artist used this photo of the Sideshow Jabba figure as the inspiration for his pose, but unlike cases where people have lazily used the actual photo to make a collectible, it’s just an inspiration and not a direct copy, so I’m okay with it. In fact, something about the facial expression here gives Jabba a contemplative, almost noble look that I really like. I plan to get an ornate gold frame for this. 
It doesn’t happen as often these days, but there are still vintage items out there that I’ve never seen. This one is by HC Ford, the British company that also put out the Gamorrean Guard eraser and Gamorrean Guard and Bib Fortuna pencil toppers that I posted about earlier. It’s roughly 8 x 6 inches in size (I believe it’s probably what the British would refer to as A5 size) and is entirely blank inside, as one might expect a sketch pad to be. As you can see, three of the four images on the front are Jabba-related.
Unleashed Slave Leia Figure by Hasbro
Hasbro’s “Unleashed” line consisted of non-poseable figures, generally in exaggerated action poses of some kind. They’re basically plastic statues. This particular one came out in 2004 and seems to be one of the more sought-after ones if my experience looking on ebay is any indication. It took quite some time before I found one at a reasonable price.
As you can see, this one depicts Leia in her slave girl outfit on what appears to be the bow of Jabba’s sail barge. She’s holding a force pike in a pose that’s fairly similar to the one chosen by Sideshow for their Premium Format Figure. The force pike here is considerably longer, though. I have a feeling that’s actually more accurate. The outfit is quite well done, overall — the plastic of her skirt is translucent, and she has a real metal chain. She’s about 7″ tall on the base, or 10″ tall if you include the force pike.
The sculpt looks nothing like Carrie Fisher, but is very attractive nonetheless. It’s a sort of stylized anime-inspired look.
Interestingly, the artwork on the box features an amazingly good likeness of Fisher as Slave Leia.
I believe these figures cost around $20 when they were available, which isn’t too bad for a figure with this kind of detail. Unfortunately they seem to be commanding considerably more than that, even out of the package. Still, with a little patience you can still get her for a reasonable price.
John Karpinsky (aka “captainmagnificent” on Etsy) has created a number of prints of Star Wars characters with designs inspired by Dia de los Muertos (the Mexican “Day of the Dead”). I’ve known about them since last year when he did the Lando piece, but I finally decided to get some when I saw that he had added Jabba and several other characters from the palace. Click any of the images below for a closer look.
The main prints are 12×12 and he also has some 4×6 prints, but I wanted to make a combined display of just the Jabba’s palace characters, so I asked him for a 12×12 of Jabba, and had him print up 6×6 versions of the other characters to keep the square aspect ratio. The frame I got is 12×24, but ended up having a bit more overlap into the picture area than I expected, so I had to do a little rearranging of the prints to get the borders to look decent, but in the end I think it looks pretty darn cool. The prints themselves are extremely well done with crisp, vibrant colors. Even my wife commented on it. I may end up displaying this with my “Jabba skeleton” statue from Japan.
He’s come up with interesting names for each print in Spanish:
Jabba = Serpiente Hinchada (Bloated Snake)
Leia as Boushh = Viejo Amigo (Old Friend)
Gamorrean Guard = Verde Centinela (Green Sentinel)
Boba Fett = Muerte de un Cazador de Recompensas (Death of a Bounty Hunter)
Lando in Skiff Guard Disguise = Rebelde Disfrazada (Rebel Disguise)
Vintage Yak Face Figure by Kenner
I mentioned this guy in my post about the Yak Face mini-bust from Gentle Giant. The figure was originally going to be released in the US, but due to some production delays they scrapped those plans and in the end the figure was released mainly in Europe. In his book “1,000 Collectibles: Memorabilia and Stories From A Galaxy Far, Far Away,” Steve Sansweet told about buying clearance Yak Face figures in Europe for $2 apiece and selling them for $5. Nowadays a Yak Face figure in the package could go for a hundred times that or more.
While not truly “rare” in the sense that some figures are rare (you can pretty much always find multiple Yak Face figures on eBay), it has become known for its scarcity, which is one reason why it still commands high prices even out of the package. I put off getting one for a long time for this very reason, but I finally decided it was ridiculous to have a Jabba focus collection without a Yak Face, so I bit the bullet and bought a loose one from the UK. He’s got some paint rubs in a few places, but overall is in pretty decent shape. He’s a bit taller than most vintage figures and as you can probably tell looks a lot more like a camel than a yak. Still, there’s something kind of charming about him…
