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When we were children we made our Star Wars purchases as the owners of toys rather than as collectors and as Kenner rightly postulated this meant our decisions were based to a great extent upon utilitarian play value. Once you had one copy of an action figure such as the Kenner Jawa, you might want more, but we were never going to buy more because, even if there were no figures on the store shelf that you didn't already own, that second Imperial Stormtrooper, Rebel Soldier e.t.c. had more intrinsic play value as an army builder than the Jawa.

Find Vintage Jawa action figure on eBay

This has contributed towards the Kenner Jawa figure being a fairly rare figure today, with the rarer vinyl cloak version of the Jawa figure practically becoming the stuff of (highly unaffordable) legend.

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The Kenner Jawa figure photographed here has a reproduction blaster as at the time of writing I haven't yet picked up an original copy.

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By the time of POTF2 the manufacturers seemed to have cottoned on that if its customers were ever going to have play value from their Jawas then they needed more than just the one; hence the first POTF2 Jawa double-pack.

As for the vintage Kenner Jawa action figure itself, the cloth robe (in my opinion) lends this action figure a mystique very fitting with the actual Jawas of A New Hope of whom we never learn much about. The only time we really see them out in the open is during the sale of the droids and they are always hooded. To say that they are essentially junk merchants who deal in dubiously acquired droids, they are a mysterious breed whose apparent personal secrecy seems to exceed that required by their profession.

If the Jawas had first been seen in The Attack of the Clones or The Phantom Menace without any background context we would have suspected the Jawas to be youngling Jedi with their cloaks and hoods and diminutive stature.

It is a universal law in the Star Wars galaxy (in the first six films at least) that anyone who deals in junk must be under the height of four foot six inches. This includes Ugnaughts, Watto, the young Anakin and our beloved Jawas. Not until The Force Awakens does this rule change, when the galaxy is in such a poor state of affairs that just about everyone on Jakku is making a living out of the junk industry.

The Jawas, of course, seem to specialise in selling droids that they pick up on the Jundland Wastes. They are an organised gang, well equipped for the terrain, and if your droid goes wandering they'll very quickly be off with it and have it sold to some unsuspecting farmer before you can say Ooteenie. Our sympathies with the Jawas are deeply aroused by their slaughter by the Imperial Stormtroopers. Hoisted by their own petard, they just so happen to pick up a droid in which the Empire have a keen interest. Which brings me to an interesting point; in all his encounters with the heroes of the Original Trilogy why does Vader not ever recognise R2-D2? He is, after all, chasing after a droid that used to be his very own astromech. Surely he gets a glimpse R2-D2 at some point; perhaps during the escape from the first Death Star (I shall have to check).

The Kenner Jawa action figure itself was part of the first 12 and came with either a cloth cloak or vinyl cape. I only ever owned the cloth cloak version of the Jawa. Being small, Jawas were easily lost, as were their weapons, and the vinyl capes were prone to ripping, all this along with its first 12 status means that complete Kenner Jawas command a high price these days and are highly desirable collectibles. The vinyl cape Jawa version is especially rare and I have it on fairly good authority that some fakers have taken to cutting down Obi-Wan Kenobi capes to make fake vinyl capes for Jawas which then sell for an awful lot of money.

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All Star Wars action figures, vehicles, collectibles and Star Wars toys shown on this website are the 3.75 inch scale and from my own private Star Wars collection unless otherwise stated. Where possible original vintage accessories have been used but in some instances I have placed Kenner Star Wars figures with either reproduction weapons and accessories or for Hasbro figures close approximations have been used. This is mostly the case for modern Star Wars lightsabers where the correct item can be very difficult to identify on some ocassions. Vintage Star Wars action figures are shown with their original weapon or accessory when I have them. When a vintage Kenner action figure is shown with an accessory which is not original I have tried to point this out where possible.

All of the Star Wars action figures shown were purchased second hand, usually incomplete, and in bulk. They have been reunited with their original weapons and accessories where we could get hold of them.

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