Gremlins star Zach Galligan just threw a major grenade in the room, by claiming that his co-star Gizmo is cuter than Star Wars: The Mandalorian‘s Bay Yoda (aka Grogu). Galligan (like so many ’80/90s cult film stars) has gotten something of a revival thanks to a new Mountain Dew Zero commercial inspired by Gremlins. During an interview about what it was like returning to the world of Gremlins after 37 years, Galligan was also asked about how the Gizmo puppet compares to The Mandalorian‘s Baby Yoda puppet. That’s when Galligan set fan threads on fire by suggesting that Gizmo takes the prize, on account of fuzziness.
Talking to EW, Zach Galligan had to side with his buddy GIzmo over Baby Yoda when it comes to cuteness: “I’m going to say my buddy is cuter. He’s fuzzier and, to me, fuzzy is cuter. Baby Grogu seems like he’s kind of been shaved, or maybe he’s hairless.”
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However, during the interview, Zach Galligan also made it clear that this is not his first rodeo with the Gizmo/Grogu debate – apparently, he deals with it all the time:
“Well, if you’ve looked at my social media, you’ll see that there are a couple of memes on there that sort of poke fun at the similarity between Gizmo and Grogu, as we now know his name is. People have been bombarding me on social media with comparatives, scale drawings, and everything, and coming up with all sorts of theories about whether or not there was any kind of conscious decision behind it. All I can say is this: in many ways, it’s really great because it’s always very helpful in media to have a foil. Which one do you like better? Which one was first? It just is another kind of narrative you can use to drive people’s engagement.”
Galligan may hit the nail on the head there: it is a growing trend that new media inspires nostalgia for old media, which then leads to franchise revivals. Look no further than Marvel’s WandaVision series, which is aping old TV sitcoms and in the process actually inspiring new interest in shows like Malcolm In The Middle, which could, in turn, lead to the series finally streaming on Disney+.
Gremlins is a property that fans have definitely wanted to see return for some time – so could now be the time? HBO Max is developing an animated limited series called Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, but so far, Gremlins 3 is still on the back-burner.
You can watch the Gremlins Mountain Dew Zero commercial above.
