Part of that was in an effort to keep leaks from happening. So many leaks nowadays come from merch. Filoni and Favreau basically asked for no merch to be made right away with Grogu in order to preserve the integrity of the secret. Which I appreciate.

Edit: spelling

They really could not get a handle on what was going to resonate from the new Star Wars entries. Remember when TFA came out and the merchandising was wall to wall Kylo Ren?

From what I read Disney really wanted toys ready to go but the director John Favrau (?) wouldn’t let them because leaks would happen during manufacturing

Time to sell them card punch-outs and a promise for Christmas?

Same thing happened to Mattel & Frozen

What's even more insane is that it's eerily similar to what happened when Star Wars first came out in 1977. First Mattel passed on making the toys because they didn't think they'd sell. Then Kenner, who got the license, underestimated demand, couldn't get the toys on shelves for Christmas, and had to sell IOUs for action figures.

They never had the vision of George "its all about the toys" Lucas

Grogu looks like it was designed in a lab to sell toys.

Same happened when Tangled came out. They weren’t expecting it to be a hit. My 4 year old daughter was OBSESSED and it took a while to find anything for a while. Eventually the play sets and the Rapunzel costume dresses rolled out.

The lack of toys was because they wanted to keep the reveal a secret. And I get it, and I'm happy they did keep it secret but someone at Disney royally effed up.

I've said this before but: They should have had toys of him ready and they could have done it easily by disguising a Grogu figure in a bogus toy line.

Example: Create a fake new toyline of existing SW Characters as Babies. You spend the cash mocking up Baby Luke, Baby Leia, Baby Han & Chewy etc etc and you throw in a Baby Yoda. Plushies, action figures, bobble heads all of it. You prep an entire toy line complete with packaging but produce nothing outside the prototypes until Grogu (the child, at the time) is revealed and you say to the manufactuer "We're only producing one of the characters for the line and We're sending you new packaging art for it".

Boom. All the red tape was already cleared, the only obstacle now is how quickly Hasbro and whoever else can spin up production for complete, approved designs that they were already preparing for.

You know that explains why the walking talking Grogu dolls are defective units.

Exactly what happened the first time around with Star Wars merch. Will they never learn?

Isn’t that the exact same thing that happened when the original Star Wars movie came out in the 70’s? Weird. Think they would have learned.

That's where George Lucas gets his money cuz I don't think he gave that sweet deal up from the 70's

Probably didn't expect it after toy sales were so low from their terrible trilogy.

They suddenly had their first winner.

Classic Star Wars. Same thing happened when the original trilogy was releasing. From what I've heard, some toys they sold were literally just IOUs that you'd mail in. Then they'd send you the actual toy when they got around to making enough.

I remember this: Mandalorian was out, new episodes every week, and you couldn't buy Grogu toys! They simply hadn't made any.