By Jonathan Wojcik

AMANAMAN!

   My introduction to Star Wars as a child is a long, strange and entirely pointless story, but virtually all of it focused on one Jabba the Hutt. I owned (and cherished) a Jabba's Palace coloring book, the original Jabba action figure and the Rancor monster before I saw even a minute of the films themselves, which I ultimately watched in reverse order. To this day, it's Jedi's first act that interests me far more than the rest of the franchise, and I have an almost encylopedic knowledge of its many, many creatures - even those that were cut from the finished product. Poor Sic-Six...

...But of all the Hutt's horrific homies, two once stood out to me as the coolest of all: Amanaman, the gangly head-hunter, and Bubo, the snarling frog-dog. This, too, is a long, strange and entirely pointless story, but it is one that I am about to describe in detail and you are powerless to stop me.

Seen here is more or less Return of the Jedi's only full view of Amanaman, but the distraction of hideously frozen Han Solo allowed this alien to completely slip my notice for nearly a decade. My discovery of him wasn't even in the film itself, but as a production model on the cover of this Smithsonian magazine, October 1990:

I was seven years old when I was given this issue by my Grandmother, and actually didn't realize at the time that every one of these creatures were created as Star Wars concepts. The article itself failed to detail any of them, and I didn't even recognize the early Bubo on the left. I'm extremely fond of several other creatures here, especially the unused slimer-like bug, the fly-trap head and the slug guy in the metal drum, but it was that towering, banana-like freak that immediately grabbed my attention. With his collection of decaying, human heads, this oddly-shaped entity both horrified and fascinated me. I even had nightmares of him living in my Grandmother's basement, utterly oblivious to his connection with one of my favorite movies.

Meanwhile, the easy-to-spot Bubo enjoyed status as my clear-cut favorite creature in the entire Star Wars trilogy for no reason other than being an ugly, grumpy alien toad. I fell in love with this little guy the minute I laid my four-year-old eyes on him, and even drew a comic about him that very same day. Unfortunately, I didn't know his name, either. I also didn't know how many action figures were ever produced in the original Kenner toy line, but with figures like Squid Head and Snaggletooth in circulation, I simply assumed that a figure of Bubo might have existed at and would ask many older geeks if they had ever seen a toy of Jabba's pet frog.

One day, on a trip far from home with the family, I discovered an amazing little junk store called Star Wars Collectibles, which, as you may have guessed, specialized in the sale and trade of severed hands.

They also sold Star Wars collectibles, and I figured that if anybody knew the answer to my insipid question, it would have to be the guy behind the counter.

...I asked him if they ever made an action figure of the "little blue frog". These were my exact words, as the lighting in Jedi gave everything a bit of a blue tinge.

He answered, most enthusiastically: "...AMANAMAN!!!"

Now, perhaps I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that three of Amanaman's most obvious features are as follows:

-He is not little.

-He is not blue.

-He is not a frog.

...But alas, I had no reason to doubt the word of someone with his very own Star Wars Collectibles store, and would begin my frog-hunt anew with this completely inaccurate information as my lead until a whopping three years later, when I'd get my hands on an illustrated price guide to the entire Star Wars toy line...

The moment I opened up the page to "Amanaman" and saw one of my boogiemen, my little jaw damn near fell through the floor. I never did track down a complete vintage figure of my own - which can go for as much a hundred bucks or more - but within a year I wound up with at least a staff-less specimen for $75, still a very special piece of plastic to me.

I would eventually learn the name "Bubo" in "Tales From Jabba's Palace", a then-canonical fan-work that gave him his very own wild adventure. By now, I had fallen in love with even more obscure creatures, but Bubo would always be close to my geek-heart as my original favorite.

In 2004, Bubo was at long last cast in plastic, as part of a set including the ultra-obscure B'Omarr Monk and even more obscure slug-like Wol Cabbashite (another critter I'm fond of), and Amanaman, too, saw the release of a brand-new, highly detailed action figure - finally giving me access to one with the all-important corpse collection.

In 2004, Bubo was at long last cast in plastic, as part of a set including the ultra-obscure B'Omarr Monk and even more obscure slug-like Wol Cabbashite (another critter I'm fond of), and Amanaman, too, saw the release of a brand-new, highly detailed action figure - finally giving me access to one with the all-important corpse collection.