In March 2020, Mythbusters star and The White Rabbit Project co-host the late Grant Imahara created an adorable animatronic Grogu – aka Baby Yoda – and the video of the impressive creation quickly went viral. Now, Mythbusters co-host Adam Savage has gotten to see Imahara’s Grogu in person and his reaction to the prop and his reaction is perfect. In a new video (via Nerdist), Savage reacts with absolute delight as he puts on the carrier and then puts the animatronic Grogu inside and marvels at how lifelike the creation is, almost to the point of distraction.
In the video, which you can check out for yourself below, Lauren Markland who co-created the animatronic Grogu, explains the various steps that she and Imahara took to create the adorable prop over the course of three months, a time frame Savage notes is very short when one considers just how detailed the doll is.
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When Imahara and Markland created the doll, Imahara had plans to take the Baby Yoda to children’s hospitals to cheer up young patients.
“Baby Yoda is universally cute, hands down,” Imahara told CNET at the time. “In the few public outings we’ve had, everyone melts. He’s a happiness maker.”
Imahara wasn’t wrong about the animatronic Baby Yoda being a happiness maker. Even Savage’s video, it’s clear the delight he feels getting to experience the creation as he talks about the detail and how realistic it is as compared to most props that would be made for movies and television. He even notes just how cute the puppet’s hands feel. Savage’s video closes with a clip of Imahara’s original video with the creator wearing the Baby Yoda earlier in its creation process with Imahara smiling as the in-progress animatronic moves its ears and eyes.
Imahara was a long-time Hollywood visual effects professional and electrical engineer with an extensive career outside of his work on MythBusters and, later, Netflix’s White Rabbit Project. He also worked at THX and Industrial Light and Magic, two subsidiaries of Lucasfilm where he worked as an animatronics model maker and worked on all three Star Wars prequels in addition to The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Galaxy Quest, Van Helsing, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. He passed away suddenly on July 13, 2020, of a brain aneurysm at the age of 49.
