2020 Year of The Child - Baby Yoda!

Here's the story of "Baby Yoda" in case you didn't know. The new Disney+ service was launching with a brand-new Star Wars show, The Mandalorian. Not much was know about this show before it aired, and they shocked everybody in the first episode with the reveal of a small baby that resembled the mysterious ancient Jedi Master Yoda. Boom! The internet blows up with adoration for The Child, who is quickly nicknamed "Baby Yoda." In order to pull off the surprise for the show, they kept the secret of The Child from EVERYBODY. Including the merchandise group. So nobody could let slip from a t-shirt, mug, action figure, whatever... any sort of knowledge of this adorable character would leak out and spoil that one glorious moment. It totally worked! The moment was epic. But, now the merchandise had to catch up to the popularity. And we were really looking forward to seeing some Baby Yoda stuff at the 2020 New York Toy Fair.

Since the marketing for the show now includes The Child, we feel it's okay to talk about it without spoiler tags. If you already missed the epic big reveal moment of the show, it now falls into the realm shared by "I see dead people", "Don't talk about Fight Club", and even a more relevant "...I... am your Father!" pop culture spoilers generally know about. At this point, you really can't be surprised because you've probably already seen or heard about Baby Yoda. It's still a great show and I almost DARE you not to fall in love with the little guy.

Here's the first display of stuff we saw for The Child. Yoda was over 900 years old and according to the show, this baby is about 50. What a very clever way to make him about the same age as the average old-school Star Wars fan. Those fans are kids-at-heart. Did I just blow my mind?

Close-up on the funny tags. We see the baby eat up a frog in an episode and a few episodes later it tries to eat another in front of some kids who all go "eeeeeewwwwww!" in a cute moment.

The Funko POP! Figure doesn't look that far off from the normal source, like most of them. The Child already has big dark eyes and a big head. Did Funko know about this many years ago?

Funko also had a giant-sized POP! Figure. The big ones are cool, but honestly who has shelves for the big ones?

The toy art photography section had a piece with The Mandalorian playing with The Child. I've seen that Mando figure before, but where did they get The Child? That's the mystery of this photo.

We expected to be more overwhelmed with The Child, Baby Yoda, merchandise, but there was only a fair amount. This display was showing a lot of backpacks and stuff, but if you look closer, it's all just mock-ups thrown together.

See? This is just a cardboard cut-out stuck onto a lunch bag. It's still cool to see this sort of effort. And it's almost just as effective a selling tool as having a real one. You get the idea of how awesome it's going to be.

I wonder if they are going to also sell frogs to eat with the lunch boxes. Because that's what Baby Yoda eats. And also soup. You'll probably do better with the cup of soup.

Gentle Giant Studios had the best-looking statue. They said it used scans of the actual puppet. They are so pro, they are even using the advanced aurebesh font that uses the "Th" an "Ch" letters to spell "The Child" on the display stand.

Another display of mock-ups. Hopefully when the new season starts to air later, there will then be stuff to show your support with. It wasn't that long ago, but remember when Frozen came out and blew up in popularity, how there was not much merchandise to be had right away?

Later that night we spotted some available shirts in the Disney Store. So you know you can start looking for it now if you want.

Once you wear this hat, you can never take it off in front of anybody. That is the way. You're free to take it off though, but if you do, you can never wear it again.

One last Baby Yoda shirt available in the Disney Store. Go get yourself a tracking fob and bounty hunt him down yourself. Much like the characters on the show, everybody wants this adorable guy!