You’ve seen the show, you’ve seen the memes, and now, The Mandalorian is finally going all out with the merchandise, which includes four new Funko shirt designs for the character commonly known as Baby Yoda.
When the first episode of the live-action Star Wars series premiered back in November, “The Child” became an immediate pop culture sensation, and yet, due to concerns about spoilers leaking in advance, Disney was surprisingly underprepared with the tie-in products. The first wave of merch was the subject of much derision online for its bootleg-style designs, not to mention the lack of an official doll.
More recently, however, an assortment of more professional-looking products have become available for pre-order. The Baby Yoda Funko Pop figure, for instance, already looks set to become the biggest selling Funko Pop of all time, and you can imagine the company’s line of shirts will attract quite a few buyers as well.
The four new designs (available here) feature such cute captions as “Small But Mighty” and “Work Hard. Sleep Harder,” along with some Aurebesh text that translates to “Too Cute” and “The Child / Reward Beskar Steel / Wanted Alive.”
Though some fans are probably wishing these products were available in time for the holiday season, Baby Yoda didn’t need any merch to become the new face of Star Wars in 2019.
It’s likely no coincidence that the marketing for the Sonic the Hedgehog movie made a pretty big deal of its own baby mascot towards the end of the year, and even Mr. Peanut seemingly tried to repeat The Child’s success with Baby Nut.
Of course, any character who gets this big so quickly inevitably runs the risk of becoming overexposed, so here’s hoping the Baby Yoda hype can ease up for at least a few months before the second season of The Mandalorian premieres this October. After all, let’s be honest, it’s a little harder to get excited for his return if he never really goes away.
