New Star Wars toy to go galactic in time for Christmas
The daffodils have barely opened and toy retailers are already getting excited about Christmas.
Very excited, in fact. A U.S. manufacturer has unveiled the toy that many in the industry believe will be the knock-’em-dead hit with children across the world this year. It’s a cute-looking orange, white and grey robot with a giant ball of a body with a small bowl-shaped head on top.
Crucially, this is not just any old robot. It’s a new Star Wars robot.
Almost 40 years after R2-D2 and C-3PO first made their entrance, it’s time to meet BB-8, the mechanized star of the latest movie in the franchise, Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens.
The new ball droid has already appeared in the first teaser trailer. It is not created with CGI, as fans had originally thought, but is a fully operational prop. Unlike R2-D2, there’s no actor tucked inside; instead, its innards — a mix of gyroscopic technology, accelerometer and battery pack — are brought to life by a puppeteer, who manoeuvres it about before being “erased” digitally in the final edit.
Internet rumours say the toy version of the spinning droid with the cute bobbing head is believed to be assembled using magnets, and its speed and direction controlled by your smartphone. When it goes on sale, it is expected to cost somewhere around $150 (US).
Conveniently, the movie is due to open a week before Christmas.
Because even though Star Wars movies are big, Star Wars merchandising is bigger. It is estimated that the value of its merchandise sold around the world since the release of the first movie in 1977 is in excess of $7.5 billion. When Star Wars creator George Lucas sold his company Lucasfilm in 2012, Disney paid more than $4 billion for it.
Such amazing numbers demonstrate where Lucas’ extraordinary genius really lies: not in making the movies (Harrison Ford complained of the first Star Wars script that “You can type this (stuff), George, but you sure can’t say it”), but how to merchandise them.
In the late 1970s, before anyone else in Hollywood, Lucas realized the value of R2-D2 action figures, Luke Skywalker mugs and Darth Vader cruet sets (yes, really). Until that point, studios saw movie merchandise as a mere add-on, free advertising for a successful film. Lucas sensed it could be very much more important than that.
At a time when his market rate to direct a film commanded a fee in the region of $500,000, he took a mere $100,000 to write and direct the first Star Wars movie, with one proviso: he should be allowed the merchandising rights. It was a billion-dollar decision. “Nobody will admit to being the person at Fox who let this deal happen,” says Tom Pollock, the lawyer who negotiated the deal for Lucas. “From a studio standpoint, it was one of the major mistakes of all time.”
But why is the Star Wars saga — famously described as “cowboys and Indians in space” — so enduring? Why do so many kids (and former kids) keep returning to the movie theatre to see it, and to the toy shop to bring it home with them?
Matt Hills, professor of film and TV studies at Aberystwyth University, says: “You can see Star Wars as a type of contemporary mythology. It has a timeless clarity and structure.”
Hills is in his early 40s and still has all the toys — Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader — his parents bought him after the first movie was released.
“A lot of the affection and nostalgia audiences feel isn’t just for the films, it’s for the action figures they had when they were young,” Hills says.
It’s a mutually reinforcing arrangement: a pile of Star Wars toys at home encourages families to see the new Star Wars movie, and the movie encourages them to go home and buy more Star Wars toys. More than that, the books, toys and trinkets keep the franchise alive in between movies.