This past weekend at San Diego Comic-Con 2023, I was invited to swing by the Enso Rings booth in the Lucasfilm pavilion on the Exhibit Hall floor to speak with Enso’s Creative Art Director Ian Wambold about the Star Wars rings the company had available at the convention, plus the Show Exclusive Salacious B. Crumb ring from Return of the Jedi.
Mike Celestino, Laughing Place: What can you tell me about what Enso has on display and for sale here at Comic-Con this year?
Ian Wambold: We have all of our collection: 38 different rings for our Star Wars collection. This year is the first year we’ve introduced our dual-tone rings, so there’s two colors of rings that we fuse together, and then we laser-engrave through those to really bring the characters to life. Here at the booth for San Diego Comic-Con, we have our Show Exclusive, which is Salacious B. Crumb. Last year we had Jar Jar Binks, people went wild and crazy over him, but Salacious B. is performing even better than Jar Jar did. It’s pretty exciting to see these little niche characters really perform at the show.
LP: That’s great. How was the character of Salacious Crumb chosen? Was it just because of the Return of the Jedi 40th anniversary celebration?
Wambold: The 40th definitely [factored in]– we wanted to showcase that. But we wanted to stick with those [offbeat] characters like Jar Jar. [He’s] loved or hated, or you love to hate him or hate to love him. We wanted to stick with those niche characters, so we chose Salacious B. because he’s there [in Return of the Jedi], there’s not a lot of product for him out there, and we’ve seen that if you can find that character that is just elusive in product, people gravitate towards him. He’s the same way [as Jar Jar]: you either love to hate him or hate to love him, so it was really cool.
LP: Outside of the Show Exclusive, what have been some of the more popular items flying off Enso’s shelves?
Wambold: For sure our ‘I love you, I know’ collection. We created ‘I love you, I know’ in Aurebesh, and we have one ring that says ‘I love you’ [and] one ring that says ‘I know.’ And two of them in ‘I know’ have already sold out at the show, which is really awesome. We have a beautiful collection box that they come in, and we do offer a discount when you buy the collection set. [And] everything’s available on the website. Those have just been flying off [the shelves here]. And our other ring that has been doing really well is our Darth Vader ring. He’s in our dual-tone black and red… absolutely stunning looking. And then we have a bunch of lightsaber rings, we have our Book of Boba Fett collection, Empire vs. Rebel, and another fan favorite has been ‘Hello there.’ It has Obi-Wan on one side and General Grievous on the other, so it’s a really, really fun ring.
LP: How long has Enso Rings been licensing Star Wars?
Wambold: It’s going on three years, so this is our second year being invited into the [Lucasfilm] pavilion, which has just been incredible. People love seeing us here, we’ve had people walk by from last year and they hold up their rings, and they’re like, ‘I love you guys! We have your ring!’ And I’m the designer so it’s been fun to sign the boxes– people will get a four-ring box and I’ll sign it for them. We’ve had people come back [from] last year and get another four-ring set, and they're like, ‘Will you sign the box for us?’ And they take pictures with us, so it’s really fun to be part of the fandom here in the [Lucasfilm] pavilion.
LP: What has your personal relationship been with Star Wars? Were you a fan growing up?
Wambold: I am a Star Wars nerd, for sure. I grew up on [Episodes] IV, V, and VI– loved those. It just has a special place in my heart– the magic and the mystery of the Star Wars universe. [It’s] been honestly so awesome to be able to design for this, and then working with our [Lucasfilm] team has been phenomenal. The stuff that we’ve come up with they’ve absolutely enjoyed. They push us to create more, and introduce us to new characters or new excitement out there that we may not think of, and it’s really helped push our brand.
Be sure to visit EnsoRings.com for additional information on Enso’s Star Wars rings and to purchase directly from the company. The audio version of this interview was included in this week’s episode of LP’s Star Wars podcast “Who’s the Bossk?”