How 'Baby Yoda' Was Able To Avoid The Inevitable Backlash
Baby Yoda never got his day of reckoning. Not that The Child needed or deserved one, but backlashes happen to everything that gets so big that it becomes as inescapable as he was. Hasbro's recently revealed Baby Yoda Bop It! toy would have been the perfect way to release Baby Yoda overexposure aggression.
That's the Bop It!. It has no classic Bop It! iconography, like twisty knobs and pully thingies and smashable buttons that are to be pulled when the Bop It! voice commands you to beat it senseless for its sexual gratification. It's just the baby we love from that show we love, and then you beat the shit out of it. Disney got you hooked on a drug then tried to sell you the antidote, and the antidote was unrestrained savagery delivered on common like the mindless robot you are. The voice ordering you to pummel the baby and twist its limbs is none other than The Mandalorian, Pedro Pascal, himself. This seems like a complete betrayal of established Star Wars canon. Why would Mando spend an entire season of TV growing to love Baby Yoda ...
... only to tell a complete stranger to destroy it the way an enraged ape will rip apart it's owner's face?
It's an odd toy to release. The backlash that comes for us all never came for Baby Yoda. It might have actually been diverted and absorbed by Baby Peanut. Do you remember the four hours we all were introduced to, decided we hated, and then rebelled against Planter's cheap attempt at jumping on the cute baby mascot bandwagon started by Baby Yoda and continued by the likes of Baby Sonic?
That adorable and cynical ad campaign that centered around the death and rebirth of a sentient aristocratic legume essentially jumped in front of the bullet we were all preparing to fire at Baby Yoda.
Baby Peanut sacrificed itself so that our Baby Yoda obsession could fade out in peace with our admiration still intact. But now Hasbro wants us to destroy him. I'm sorry, Hasbro, but Baby Yoda love remains strong. I and millions of others will protect him with our lives, and if we see anyone mistreating him, we may even do all the pulling, twisting, and passing to his human abusers that you ask us to do to the Baby Yoda Bop It!.
Luis can be found on Twitter and Facebook. Catch him on the "In Broad Daylight" podcast with Cracked alums Adam Tod Brown and Ian Fortey! Check out his regular contributions to Macaulay Culkin's BunnyEars.com and his "Meditation Minute" segments on the Bunny Ears podcast. Listen to the first episode on Youtube!
Top Image: Hasbro, Lucasfilm
