Mandalorian Narrowly Avoided a Flop With Ugly Early Design of Baby Yoda
If the show had decided to go with what was originally planned for Baby Yoda, you probably wouldn't want to buy the merchandise.
Let's face it, no matter how great The Mandalorian 's story is, we wouldn't love it as much as we do if it weren't for Grogu, who for some reason we've decided to call Baby Yoda, even though he's not a baby version of the Star Wars Jedi.
Those giant eyes and ears quickly proved to be great merch material, but it turns out that some of the early designs of Grogu were not nearly as cute as the final version.
Unveiled in the fifth episode of Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, the early designs look like they were meant to inspire nightmares, not huge toy sales.
.png)
Not every early design was this creepy, but imagine if The Mandalorian actually featured a creature that looked like this alongside Din Djarin. Even showrunner Jon Favreau admitted that some of the designs were downright "ugly."
"We got lots and lots of drawings," Favreau explained. "Some of them were too cute, some of them were too ugly, some of them were the wrong proportions."
Eventually, the show went with the version that was just right. Baby Yoda captured the hearts of fans, and by season 2, toy companies like Hasbro were struggling to keep Baby Yoda merchandise in stock.
.png)
With The Mandalorian (and Baby Yoda) set to return to our screens on March 1, we can expect the excitement to only grow. Season 3 of The Mandalorian will be available to stream on Disney Plus.