Max Rebo Band, The (Jabba’s Palace Entertainers) - TAC - Exclusives

Jabba the Hutt has made a fortune through his criminal activivites, and he loves to spend it on entertainment for himself. The bloated gangster likes to sit in his palace and listen to the Max Rebo Band, surrounded by music, singing, and beautiful dancers. As the band plays on, Jabba deals out payments and punishments, depending on his mood at the moment. The Max Rebo Band is made up of true professionals whose music and singing never falter even when blaster fire erupts or the rancor is thrown another unwilling meal.

The 30 (77-07) line is absolutely one of the greatest collections Hasbro had produced, but by the time the line started fizzling out, exclusives like The Max Rebo Band multipack (from Walmart) were signs that the exclusive program was changing, and not for the better. One thing that the collecting community and Hasbro do not see eye to eye on is the issue of incessant repacks. Granted, Hasbro does try their best update paint jobs whenever possible, but to release The Max Rebo Band (Jabba’s Palace Entertainers) took collectors a big step backwards in our satisfaction levels. You see, Hasbro dusted off a whole bunch of figures from The Power Of The Force era, many of which could be scored for pennies on the dollar during the great 1998 purge. So it was a little disheartening to see them resurface with a 2007 price point without any updates made to their articulation or sculpts. Not all the figures in these two multipacks feel entirely outdated, but most of them do and we have to say it’s a direction we don’t like seeing Hasbro heading. We’re sure most of us would pay nearly double to see all-new super-articulated versions of Jabba’s entertainment than the rehashed garbage contained here instead. All of the figures have received refreshed paint operations and some look quite different from their original releases, in particular the dancers.

Interestingly, Walmart gets a second stab at selling us figure they did almost a decade ago. It might as well be a bridge they’re selling us in 2007, because it almost feels like a slap in the face to get these figures with only minor paint deco updates this far out from their original release. Joh Yowza, originally released as part of 1998 POTF2 [FF/TKC] Joh Yowza/Sy Snootles Max Rebo Band Pairs two-pack now comes without his other half. He is also joined by 2004's SW [S - P3] Rappertunie (Jabba's Palace) ('04 #08) figure as well as all of the figures from 1998's POTF2 [FF/TKC] Jabba The Hutt's Dancers Cinema Scenes set. Admittedly, the figures never looked better. Hasbro really tightened up the paint jobs. The figures are brighter than ever and the points of articulation are nice and tight, but again, do you really care? Hasbro couldn’t find it in their hearts to update just one lousy figure in this set? Apparently not many of you could support this set and it became shelf rot quicker than any other exclusive they’d release in 2007. In fact, in our area we were able to find them for months under $10 on clearance and they still had a hard time selling the stock. When asked during Q&A sessions why they wouldn’t update the entire Max Rebo Band character, would you believe Hasbro actually blamed the performance of this set on the reason why they wouldn’t probably attempt to update any of the figures?

The Max Rebo Band (Jabba’s Palace Entertainers) does look very nice packaged. There is something very modernly classic about the 30 (77-07) line look. It’s vintage-esque while still looking modernly edgy. So if you’re a fan of packaged stuff, we’d say it would be a heard set to pass up because it is so much more engaging than the original 1998 sets. Besides, Hasbro has mixed figures from multiple eras and admittedly they look pretty good together. In particular, Hasbro’s design and development team have constructed a cardboard replica of the stage that can be used as a display “base” should you decide to display it as such in your collection. It is nice that the packaging converts into a stage (if you're into such cardboard environments). So, there is some flexibility for all different collecting types here. We need one of everything, and since every figure has received a new paint job here, we consider all of these figures unique. We feel it would be unwise of Hasbro to judge the performance of this set to gauge whether they will tackle news versions of these characters down the road somewhere. All of the characters, save for maybe Rappertunie need desperate updates, so it would be a misstep to ignore these altogether. Imagine all of Jabba’s dancers with super-articulated sculpts where we can pose their arms in the fashion they’re already pre-posed with the 1998 sculpts. Maybe one day, but it looks rather bleak right now.