Jawa (SW 1978-79)

Can’t trust a Jawa. Those beady eyes. Always after your ipod. The gun that looks like part of a muffler. Actually, did you ever see that scene in John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” where Kurt Russell uses the hot end of that flamethrower testing people’s blood? Yeah, the gun looks like that, only without a backpack. But that is neither here nor there.

The Jawa came with a “blaster pistol,” which was really more of a portable ion gun to neutralize machinery. It’s the same one used on R2 to take him down in the first movie. The gun looks like it has been warn down, but it is really lacking any good detail. Most Jawa figures also came with a cloth cape, but the earliest release had a vinyl cape, making it pretty rare. Underneath the cape on the figure itself is printed bandoliers (which were actually over the cape in the movies). The Jawa came on a SW, ESB, ROTJ, and POTF card. It was one of the original “12-back” figures. I have two left to do from the 12 – can you figure out which ones?

I have said this before and I’ll say it again, I was always miffed by the short figures when I was a kid. They seemed like such a rip off. At least when they came out with Jawas in the 1990’s line they made it a two-pack. No cloth cape though. The Jawas afforded a special place of honor as both the Remote-Controlled Sandcrawler and the Land of the Jawas Playset was made with them in mind.

Why should you own this figure? Five reasons:

1. Finally figure out what’s underneath that hood. Ah-hah … wait … damnit!

2. Line up three and turn on your recording of the Lollipop Guild song from The Wizard of Oz.

3. Cloth cape = Jawa strip tease.

4. Get a heap of them and re-enact that little Jawa bonfire C-3PO and Obi-Wan got going.

5. Addendum to number 4: re-enact the missing scene where the Stormtroopers fight the Jawas. Sure, they can take out a sandcrawler full of Jawas, but they can’t take out some frickin’ Ewoks? The Empire deserved to die.

Backstory:

Jawas are native to Tatooine, and are very passive compared to other natives such as Tusken Raiders. They are descendants of race that once lived on the very habitable Tatooine, but was mercilessly bombed by a rival race, turning the planet into a desert. The climate change eventually created a divergence in the species: Jawas and Sandpeople.

Jawas live in tribes, scouring the desert for discarded junk and debris from colonists and space. The sandcrawlers they travel in are abandoned ore haulers; left behind when it was realized the ores of Tatooine weren’t worth the cost.

The Jawas were most prominent in capturing the two droids and selling them to Luke and his Uncle Owen. That tribe was killed because of that, but there are many more on the Tatooine landscape.
Their appearance is a mystery, since they wear special cloth strips over their faces to keep in moisture. That, and no one likes their smell.

Want more? Wookieepedia article

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