Comparing Jawas

bobabricks

When the new UCS Sandcrawler was unveiled I started to compare the new and old types of jawas. The comparison is actually of three minifigs since the new Sandcrawler comes with two different jawas where the old one only came with one type.

The old version of the the Lego jawa had less printing but it did come with a cape so exclusive the size is called "jawa size" on brick link. The torso is almost the same as the new jawas except for the straps are a little different and placed differently but the old jawas have no backprinting mainly because of the cape and Lego didn't do a lot of back printing back then. Next is the head which only has small bit of printing for the eyes. The old jawa is actually more accurate here. The eyes on the new jawa are HUGE, almost Clone Wars like which kind of surprised me when I first saw it. The old jawas have smaller dot eyes. When I saw the big difference in the eye size I had to check out the actual size from pictures of real jawas, so I looked it up. It turns out the smaller older eyes are more accurate.

I personally like the older jawas better for the exclusive cape and more accurate eyes, put down which one you like and why in the comments.

prof1515

I don't have the new Jawas but based merely on cursory observation, your comparison seems accurate and I'd have to concur with your conclusion that the older Jawas look more accurate. Thus, I'd probably equally agree that I prefer the older ones to the new version.

plasmodium

When I lived in Cameroon, we could always hear (from our house) the nearby bars blasting out music throughout the night on special occasions. One of the songs they used to play sounded something like "Jawa, Jawa, Jawa, hey!". Which has very little to do with the topic at hand, really...

Meanwhile, back on topic, I have to say, I like the look of the old ones (though, tbh, I own neither). With the new ones' eyes, because they are larger, they 'wrap' around the curve of the head more, meaning that they look somewhat distorted from a lot of angles except for straight on. Still, if you really wanted, you could just get the old-style heads and capes off Bricklink.

CCC

Although the eyes in the OT are quite small, a lot of the artwork and images online have quite large eyes.

For example ...



I wonder if lego have copied this.

As for the cloaks, they are roughly the same size as Hobbit / dwarf cloaks, aren't they? If you need them, just raid Middle Earth.

Bumblepants

plasmodium said:

When I lived in Cameroon, we could always hear (from our house) the nearby bars blasting out music throughout the night on special occasions. One of the songs they used to play sounded something like "Jawa, Jawa, Jawa, hey!". Which has very little to do with the topic at hand, really...

They still play that song here. Every night.

I really like the old Jawas just for the capes. The eyes do not make much difference to me because Lego minifigs are quite a departure from a human (or alien in this case) form and proportions. Eye size can be part of that stylized change within reason.

Shib

With regards to the cape, I can completely see why TLG didn't include capes with the new ones, the costume is more of a robe than a cape, but what they should have done at the same time is made a new hood piece. Looking at a still from the film next to a pic of the new figs the hood is the bit that looks wrong. Looking at the old fig next to the new fig the cape make the hood look better somehow - maybe thats just me.

Pitfall69

I have the old Sandcrawler set. I need to pull out the Jawas to compare.

bobabricks

CCC said:

Although the eyes in the OT are quite small, a lot of the artwork and images online have quite large eyes.

For example ...



I wonder if lego have copied this.

As for the cloaks, they are roughly the same size as Hobbit / dwarf cloaks, aren't they? If you need them, just raid Middle Earth.

The capes are actually a lot bigger and actually go down to there feet where the new ones only go to the bottom of the torso which frankly I don't know why Lego changed it to the smaller size the bigger ones look better.

y2josh

Shib said:

Looking at the old fig next to the new fig the cape make the hood look better somehow - maybe thats just me.

Not just you. The cape (to me) offsets the absurdity of the more enormous headpieces. I have a similar opinion of the Batman minifigures. Without the cape, he looks as bobble-headed as Iron Man. But as soon as you add the cape, he looks a lot less ridiculous.