Baby Yoda toys won't be ready for a while, but Disney still has plenty of regular Yoda toys
Despite what you may have heard… right here… not even a week ago, it now sounds like Disney won’t be able to have any officially licensed Baby Yoda merch available in time for the holidays. Supposedly, multiple retail outlets were ready to have some kind of Baby Yoda stuff available as soon as possible, but a new Vanity Fair piece on the Baby Yoda phenomenon says that Mandalorian showrunner Jon Favreau’s desire to keep the character a secret for as long as possible meant that Disney merchandise machine didn’t get a chance to start putting together plans until recently. Vanity Fair even reached out to Hasbro, which has a partnership with Disney to make Star Wars toys, and it confirmed that it won’t have anything with the little guy’s green mug on it until 2020. At this point, the only option is a fairly lazy t-shirt with a piece of Mandalorian concept art on it.
That being said, there is plenty of merch featuring regular Yoda (or “Busted Yoda”), and Vanity Fair says that Star Wars fans at Disney’s Galaxy’s Edge theme parks are so desperate for Baby Yoda stuff that they’re “clamoring for plush dolls of actual Yoda” because the cute design of the toys makes him look like a precious little angel instead of an old swamp hermit.
Of course, that Yoda’s ears are all crooked—like some kind of old swamp hermit—so it’s not like anyone’s really going to believe that it’s a true Baby Yoda. You might as well tear the beak off of a stuffed puffin and tell people it’s a Porg.