So Where Is Fortnite’s Baby Yoda Back Bling To Drown Epic And Disney In Money?

Bling Yoda

Paul Tassi

Disney has a problem. They have created the most marketable Star Wars character of all time in The Mandalorian’s Baby Yoda (“The Child” as they always insist on officially calling it), yet they have not entered toy production in time for the holiday gift rush. They agreed to let Baby Yoda be a secret for the premiere of The Mandalorian, and that meant delaying toy production to avoid leaks. But now that means official Baby Yoda toys won’t be arriving until spring or summer, and we’re stuck with at best, shirts or posters or things like that.

Enter Fortnite.

Fortnite is currently in the process of cementing its marriage to Disney with yet another big event for one of its properties. Before this we had two significant Avengers events for the final two movies, and now we have a very big Star Wars event happening as we speak, after the debut of a movie clip in the game, hosted live by a JJ Abrams avatar, which happened yesterday.

The solution here seems pretty obvious. While this current campaign is focused on Rise of Skywalker, which comes out in a few days, and the game is selling Rey, Finn, Stormtrooper and Kylo skins with TIE gliders and staff/electro-baton pickaxes, there’s one obvious thing they could be selling too.

A Baby Yoda back bling pet.

Fortnite back bling has been a staple of the game pretty much since launch, and a few seasons ago they introduce pets, where you can have a little dog or cat or lizard or what have you riding in your backpack as play, moving around, reacting to the game in various ways.

Baby Yoda

Disney

It seems incredibly apparently that a Baby Yoda pet would be perfect for this concept, and unlike Disney’s problem with manufacturing physical toys for the holiday, you could give the gift of a virtual Baby Yoda to accompany you as you play. He could be animated, he could be doing cute things like blinking and looking around and drinking soup. When you go down, he could close his little eyes and extend his hand to try and heal you. It’s really just a perfect concept.

I would frankly be a little amazed if A) this was not already in production behind the scenes and B) Disney hadn’t already agreed to greenlight it because whatever revenue split they have with Fortnite for these skins, I guarantee that a Baby Yoda back bling would outsell everything else being offered for this event tenfold.

Yes, I did just give a whole lecture in an earlier piece about how this whole Star Wars event was a bit of crass marketing that I didn’t particularly appreciate or enjoy, so I’m being a little hypocritical here. But I want that damn Baby Yoda for my backpack, and as a pure business decision, this is a no-brainer for Disney to let Epic build this and get it into the game as soon as possible.

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Pre-order my new sci-fi novel Herokiller, and read my first series, The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also on audiobook.

Tweet