Bootleg Baby Yoda Doll Is a Nightmare, and It’s on Sale for $600

Whether or not you’re celebrating Thanksgiving, it’s easy to assume that quite a lot of people are finding themselves thankful of Baby Yoda. The small and adorable Star Wars creature debuted earlier this month in The Mandalorian, the saga’s first live-action television series on Disney+. Baby Yoda has arguably swept the galaxy in the days since and led to quite a lot of discussion about merchandise around the creature. Some products – including t-shirts and phone cases adorned with concept art – have been released, but the nature of toys and action figures is a bit more nebulous. That hasn’t stopped people from making their own homemade dolls of Baby Yoda — including one that comes across as much more terrifying than adorable. A screenshot of an Etsy listing recently made the rounds online, which shows a Baby Yoda-inspired “reborning” doll. You can check it out below.

For the uninitiated, “reborning” is the practice of painting and decorating a baby doll, with the goal of eventually making it look as realistic as possible. The practice has grown in popularity for those grieving over a lost child, create a 3D portrait of their real child, or those who just want to collect them. While the practice has certainly helped a lot of people, there’s definitely something about the Baby Yoda version of the doll that takes it into the realm of uncanny valley.

When it comes to bringing Baby Yoda to life in The Mandalorian, the creative team utilized an intricately-made physical puppet, which quickly found fans among its costars.

“It’s heartbreakingly beautiful,” Werner Herzog, who portrays The Client on the series, said in an interview earlier this month. “And I saw two technicians operating it remotely. One was for the eyes and the mouth, the other was for other facial expressions, it’s a phenomenal technical achievement, and beyond the technological achievement it’s heartbreaking.”

“I don’t know…but on the set it looked absolutely convincing,” Herzog continued. “It made you cry when you saw it.”

“I have to thank Disney and Lucasfilm, because the way the cat usually gets out of the bag with that stuff is merchandising and toy catalogs and things like that,” series creator Jon Favreau recently explained. “So they really back us up. We really wanted to have it be that you had to watch it yourself, so that every time you watch the show, there are new twists and secrets that come out. That requires a lot of restraint from the people who are footing the bill, saying they’re gonna hold back on certain things so that the public doesn’t know ahead of time. Part of that was holding back on some of the merchandise and holding back on some of the characters.”

New episodes of The Mandalorian will debut on Fridays exclusively on Disney+. If you haven’t checked out Disney+ yet and you want to give it a go, you can do that here.

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