April 2019
For years I have had a Jabba’s palace diorama on one of my shelves. Using the always fun, and let’s face it, awesome Power of the Force-era Hasbro Jabba’s Palace 3-D Display Diorama I’ve done what so many Star Wars collectors have done and crammed as many “Jabba-related” figures as possible into the diorama: whether they belong in his throne room, his barge, his droid torture room….
Now, granted the Haslab Sail Barge project solves a big part of this problem but I didn’t back the barge so I have to make do with what I have.
Although it’s a great way to display figures, there are a few short comings with Hasbro’s pop-up cardboard display. It’s much smaller than the dimensions of a standard bookcase shelf. The right side of the diorama doesn’t have a wall so the final display always looks unfinished. Also, the detailed graphic of the Rancor staring up from his pit through the floor grating is in technically in the wrong spot and is too close to Jabba’s dias. With these minor issues in mind, I decided to expand the display to make it fit better on my bookshelf. The “floor” of the Power of the Force diorama is also inaccurate to the movie so I covered it with heavy brown paper which also let me cover the existing Rancor bars (I scanned, then printed it out so I could ‘move’ it). I also decided to add two new displays to go along with the throne room: A Rancor pit which up until now I had never found space to do and a droid torture room. This room was actually my first idea before starting since I had always had a small cluster of droids from that scene stuck in a corner of Jabba’s palace and a dedicated room would help free up some real estate in the throne room.
I basically built boxes for these displays that I could easily slide in and out of the bookcases they would be housed in. I used strings of LED lights and different types of building material so I thought it would make more sense to house all of this in an enclosed, removable box. I built the boxes out of foam core board. (SIDENOTE: the gap that runs left to right in the middle of the floor isn’t noticeable once it has action figures standing over it.)
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