Jabba The Hutt With 2-Headed Announcer - EI - Creatures

The annual Boonta Eve podrace at Mos Espa is perhaps the most exciting, action packed sporting event in the galaxy. Completing a time-honored race ritual, crime lord Jabba the Hutt bites the head off a chuba and spits it at the traditional gong. The podracers are off! While a two-headed announcer narrates the play-by-play, a young Podracer named Anakin Skywalker races towards his destiny.

Collectors question why Hasbro takes a certain direction with the toys they produce for us often. This pondering is especially true for the Jabba The Hutt With 2-Headed Announcer creature set. Jabba The Hutt is one of the most popular characters from the Original Trilogy, and seeing him revised for Episode I was something collectors were excited to see. We were more excited to see Jabba The Hutt produced for the Episode I toy line, complete with Episode I-specific gear and accessories. Hasbro met us halfway, unfortunately. We guess that the Jabba The Hutt With 2-Headed Announcer creature set was produced much too early. It fails to meet screen-accuracy standards (paint job issues and scale issues) and Hasbro plagued the set with action features that make it less appealing for the collecting community. We didn’t need the way the Boonta Eve Podrace started immortalized in a toy that features one of the greatest crime lords of all time. Ultimately, the Jabba The Hutt With 2-Headed Announcer set is a bittersweet release. It’s “neat” to see Jabba The Hutt as a toy through the rose-colored glasses of Episode I, but it has a few too many problems that collectors won’t be able to resolve in their minds. We won’t say it fails, but it needs a great deal of revising.

Jabba The Hutt is a relative mess. Firstly, he’s a little too big and long. Perhaps this approach translates accurately to the CGI model in the film, but Jabba’s shape and length look off to us. Then there is the paint job. Jabba The Hutt looks anemic at best. His face is too white, and the expression on his face is one of surprise instead of decidedness. What’s worse, however, is that the main part of the action feature embedded into the figure is his mouth. The other part of the action feature is pat if his left hand. Hasbro sculpted a permanent chuba into Jabba The Hutt’s left hand. The head is removable and placed on a projectile stem. The chuba projectile is then placed into Jabba’s mouth. When you pump his right arm up and down, it launched the chuba projectile which is supposed to hit the two-part “starting” gong (gong and stand) to officially start the Boonta Eve Classic Podrace. But things don’t line up properly and it's difficult to hit your target. What’s the point of a play feature if it doesn’t work the way it’s intended? We’re certain that collectors would have preferred a more aesthetically pleasing and accurate Jabba The Hutt figure with a better paint job and no action features implemented at all. So, it's disappointed that we have a fancy missile launcher instead. It’s a wasted opportunity.

Another interesting, but inaccurate detail here is the Fodesinbeed Annodue (better known as Fode And Beed) figure. It will be looked at as a “concept” figure. The version Hasbro added here it completely inaccurate to the onscreen character. But there is a valid reason for this, but we’ll need a completely new sculpt before we have a screen-accurate version of the character. Fode and Beed were portrayed by comedians Greg Proops and Scott Capurro respectively. During pre-production, George Lucas added prosthetics and makeup to their faces, and then the rest of their bodies covered in blue suits for compositing later. Unfortunately, the marriage real-life action and CGI was not realistic enough. George Lucas then decided the characters would work better as fully computer generated. Coincidentally, at that point, Proops and Capurro were playing Beed and Fode respectively and the reason for their switch is unknown. The first Fode and Beed action figure used the original actors' faces. The figure is decent and mimics the “behind the scenes” look at the character well, but it also needs more deco to look better. The figure comes with decent articulation, but it won’t hold up well over time. The Jabba The Hutt With 2-Headed Announcer is a needed release, but this wasn’t the way to do it.