Well, this landed in my visa card account as US$666 all up, so I was a bit concerned.
Anyway, this is quite a piece - yet again, a Sideshow piece that I was sort of in the middle on in pics turned out to be a serious wow-piece in hand. The level of sculpt detail and quality of paint app is really pretty remarkable. This would be in the top five best 1/6 collectibles I've seen in-hand, maybe top two. I understand the "sheen" issues people mentioned but on mine it only has light sheen in a few areas and looks like some very light brushing with matte clear will take care of it.
I was surprised that the eye and mouth gaps weren't nearly the issue I had expected - while I definitely got a good one (I have looked at/saved pretty much every posted pic of this piece since it shipped and have watched every single Youtube video, so I've seen a LOT of these) in terms of piece fit and paint, all the swap pieces have a slight wiggle ability that means you can get the gaps down to something barely visible from normal viewing distance. The left side mouth seam is the only one I see from normal distance, and it's pretty much as snug as you could get it. The more square-on you view it, the less visible they are.
The Salacious was also a surprise - it somehow captures the puppet in a really precise way in both paint and sculpt. The one issue is the slightly muscular arms - I will likely use the arms from my old Salaciious. The fragility is a real issue (I had no breakages at all) on not just the ears but also the hair bits too. I will like cut that off and add real fur. It's a mystery why SSC did that the way they did.
Speaking of arms - the one problem with Jabba overall, the thing that hurts the piece in multiple ways quite a bit - is the arms. They are somewhat too large/thick overall, too extended out from the body (they had a human arm inside them - no way could a human arm fit in these) and the hands are at least 50% too big. His hands aren't a huge amount larger than a human hand - these make Gammy hands look dainty.
It messes up the overall body proportions (making him appear "squashed down" and overly wide in the upper torso) and there's really not much you can do with posing them to hide it because there's only two posed possibilities and both are pretty obvious.
The one thing I'll be doing paint-wise other than a light brushing of matte clear is to make everything that's yellow on the mouth ooze/dribble a milky-white color. I will also likely cast the tongue and use a shortened version for the other open mouth (like that extends maybe 1/2 the distance of the existing one.)
Haven't had time to get to the throne or other pieces yet.
I removed the arms from my old Jabba - I will cast those as well as the "shoulders" of the new arms and create a hybrid that's 3/4 old arms and 1/4 new. I held the arms up to the new body to very roughly show how they look (though obviously I couldn't get the arms all the way in.)
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