Jabba’s Palace - TCW [B] - Battle Packs

Obi-Wan goes to Jabba's palace to finalize an important alliance for the Republic in return for rescuing the Hutt's kidnapped son. Kenobi believes the negotiations have been successful, but Count Dooku secretly arrives later and convinces Jabba that the Jedi are not rescuing Rotta but, instead, have kidnapped and killed the boy. Betrayal and lies fly thick and fast as the courteous protocol droid TC-70 translates Jabba's comments for the visitors.

Jabba the Hutt certainly has a face more than just a mother could love. He is for certain popular among kids, collectors, (as well as moms). When it comes to Jabba, gangster is undoubtedly very cool and no matter how bad he is, everyone seems to love him more as a result. Unfortunately, he has not been at the top of Hasbro’s collective mind for a while and it is a distinct pleasure to get him in animated form based on his appearance in The Clone Wars film. In fact, the Jabba’s Palace Battle Packs set was indeed one of the highlights of 2009 and Hasbro ensured that they got plenty of units of this set out to retail. Initially concerned it was going to be a shelf-warmer the set sold through briskly and became a favorite to many young and older collectors. Jabba’s Palace was supposed to come with one more figure, a Nikto Guard (more on this detail in a moment). Hasbro pulled this figure last minute due to costs and while this makes this package a little light for content, the detail expended on Jabba and TC-70 (and a portion of his dais) is nothing short of brilliant and we are content paying the price for the final product. You’ll be thrilled to know that Jabba the Hutt is a completely new sculpt and has more articulation than you may have expected. Because he is based off of the animated The Clone Wars movie, he clearly had to be designed from the ground up. Well, Hasbro made a stunning toy here and we love everything about it. He is composed of both rubbery and harder plastic and has a very well-hidden action feature (his mouth movement via twisting his arms). Hasbro did a good job making this action feature not to interfere with the aesthetic of the figure and the action looks very realistic. Jabba comes with his throne backing (hey, it’s not the dais, but we’ll take it) and bowl and pipe. It's a shame that his dais is once again omitted, but then this Battle Packs set would have clearly been a lot more money than the standard $19.99-$21.99 price tag.

Great efforts went into perfecting his coloring. Jabba is beautifully decorated in dark green and tan. But Hasbro went above and beyond and gave Jabba multiple final washes which breathe life into his rubbery skin. Coats of dark tan and light green have been used to stick in every crevice on Jabba’s body and show off every wrinkle in his extremely corpulent frame. There are even different levels of this final wash depending upon your sample. A running change was made to reduce the white paint significantly. Probably the most impressively painted part on his body is his eyes. He has cat-like eyes that have been boldly colored in orange with a mauve color in place of where the whites of our eyes would be. It looks phenomenal and you need to look at him more than once to verify that he truly isn’t looking at you. They are that well done. His mouth is open just enough and showing a little bit of tongue without looking dopey in the least. If you decide to activate his action feature, his tongue becomes more alarming, but it still looks great. Along with Jabba is another beautifully painted action figure. TC-70, apparently one of Jabba's earlier protocol droids, comes included with the crime lord and it’s a uniquely decorated droid. We rarely see beige and pink droids, but that is exactly what we get here. TC-70 has a very bizarre paint pattern and to be honest, it looks very cool, but it just takes a minute to get used to it. The droid shares a bright coloring scheme that is reminiscent of how flesh is colored. So the humanoid shape of the droid really looks human. There are awesome burgundy patterns, symbols and other details on the droid’s body and Hasbro did a faithful job recreating him from The Clone Wars film too. TC-70 is a rework of the 2008 TCW C-3PO (No. 16) figure. But we think TC-70 looks a little bit cooler.

When this Battle Packs set was first announced and shown, a Nikto Guard was originally intended to be included in the set. But with Hasbro's incessant cry of "tooling costs were too high," the figure was unfortunately omitted and temporarily canceled. Hasbro has promised us however that this omitted figure will indeed be entered into the line at some point, but only time will tell whether it shows up in another Battle Packs set or as a basic figure. (Editor’s Note: The figure has been released as a 2010 Toys R Us exclusive. We have added the Nikto Guard to our Research Droids Reviews database.) This was ab ig risk to omit. Being penny wise and pound foolish annoys us, and that's exactly what Hasbro did hear. We hope that you don’t see this set a weak value. Trust us when we tell you that there is so much more to this set that what it initially appears to be. Jabba in animated form is an awesome toy for your collection. And we don’t think that you will get a cooler looking protocol droid in your collections thanks to TC-70. It may seem like this set doesn't offer that much for the price, but as mentioned earlier, the Jabba the Hutt figure is amazingly striking – and really the reason and value in this set and he makes the purchase definitely worth it. We bet you will have regrets if you pass on this. As with so many things Hasbro creates, this Battle Packs set also has a variation, so variation hunters take note! You can find Jabba with an extreme white wash on his head (which we think is the error) or without the white wash (the corrected version as seen in the gallery in this review). You can read about this variation in detail here. The Jabba’s Palace Battle Packs set is part of a great wave of Battle Packs, including the TLC Scramble On Yavin set. Hasbro is really knocking out some great stuff. Make sure you become interactive with these Battle Packs. They are such incredible toys!