Jawas - Mini Busts

The Jawas are a scavenger species. They comb the deserts of Tatooine in search of discarded scrap and wayward mechanicals. Using their cobbled-together weaponry, they can incapacitate droids and drag them to their treaded fortress-homes, immense sand-scarred vehicles known as sandcrawlers.

Sometimes artistic license and creativity outweigh screen accuracy by a landslide. And this directly applies to the Jawas Mini Bust duo that was released by Gentle Giant Ltd. First off, you should know that the Jawas inn this two-pack aren’t completely perfect, but the concept of them is so engaging and exciting that you’ll probably overlook the few faults they do have. Without a doubt, our favorite Jawa is the larger one holding the head of R5-D4. How perfect is this Mini Bust? Obviously the sculpt is inspired from the moments that followed his bad motivator blowing up. So Gentle Giant Ltd. took this scene one step further to show a Jawa trying to repair the bad motivator before it got solicited to another local moisture farmer. Sometimes collectibles that finish off scenes from the Star Wars films are equally rewarding as those inspired directly from the films. Clearly not all “outside the box” concepts work and sometimes artistic license can handicap the intention of any given collectible. But when it works it typically works better than you might expect. And even if you’re not into any “off screen” collectible, they’ve included a smaller Jawa that is screen accurate to satisfy those that are looking for 100% screen accuracy in the Mini Bust line.

Both Jawas contain an electronic feature. Admittedly, the inclusion of this feature is definitely appreciated, but the eyes turned out much too perfectly rounded and look a little contrived than screen accurate. They do light-up nicely via a switch at the bottom of each Mini Bust. In the dark they cast a medium brightness of light, but we’re not sure if it would have been better to paint them in a bright yellow color than to add in the electronics. They managed to cost in the electronics, so we suppose that was ultimately the best route to take here. The smaller Jawa comes with two interchangeable weapons. Both are blaster rifles of various styles. They plug into the Mini Bust nicely, but be waned that they are fragile and there have been multiple reports of the guns breaking away from the hands because the pressure is too great to withstand breakage. Together, both Jawas look fantastic side by side. They represent the diversity and size differences that are so common in this species. Although painted modestly, we feel that the Jawas overall have wonderful paint jobs. Some have expressed that they don’t have enough Tatooine dirt or grime, but we think they look just fine.

It isn’t often that Gentle Giant Ltd. creates Mini Bust multipacks. In fact, the Jawas represent the very first Mini Bust two-pack ever produced by Gentle Giant Ltd. This might be the best direction for Mini Busts of smaller characters to head, but we imagine with time and production costs that this “two for the price of one” will not last forever. Gentle Giant Ltd. has really focused on the Original trilogy lately, especially characters from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. It’s very encouraging to see them beat out not only the main characters, but the background ones as well. And we couldn’t be more appreciative of the ever-so-slight Expanded Universe take made with the larger Jawa working on the underside of R5-D4’s head. We guess it would be correct from a certain point of view to state that collectors now have an R5-D4 Mini Bust as well, albeit a portion of the astromech only. And this makes us only hanker for Gentle Giant to release an astromech droid in the Mini Bust line officially. Until they do, be sure to enjoy R5-D4, oh, and the Jawas in Mini Bust format until they do. The Jawas look great. These aren’t to be missed.