There are some inevitabilities in life. Death. Taxes. Disney remaking its back catalogue. All are constants in an otherwise ceaselessly changing world. Another such inevitability is Hot Toys seeing a masked Star Wars character and going “Yes, we would like to make a toy of that, please and thank you.” An inevitability beyond that? That you’ll be waiting a while to get your hands on it.
[referenced url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2019/09/of-course-the-mandalorian-is-interested-in-what-the-expanded-universe-could-add-back-to-star-wars-canon/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/jmuhzn1zpzpqlksm6jfb.png” title=”Of Course The Mandalorian Is Interested In What The Expanded Universe Could Add Back To Star Wars Canon” excerpt=”Ever since Disney and Lucasfilm rehauled the Star Wars canon in the wake of the former’s acquisition of the latter, the Expanded Universe, a vault of Star Wars storytelling for decades, was reclassified as mythological “legend,” non-canonical tales of a bygone age. But that doesn’t mean it’s gone for good, and the people behind The Mandalorian are more than aware of that.”]
Coming in the wake of last week’s Triple Force Friday extravaganza, Hot Toys has revealed not one, but two new 12″-scaled figures based on The Mandalorian. They are, as previously explained, the obvious choices for the company: the titular masked bounty hunter and his droid companion, IG-11. Being an always-helmeted man of mystery and a robot with an angry coffee maker for a head, respectively, they are characters that Hot Toys doesn’t have to immediately start getting into contracts over actor likenesses for—which means the company can just start making figures instead of having to go through rounds of iteration on getting a head sculpt just right.
And it means it can just focus on making these things look gosh-darn lifelike. Not only do the press pictures Hot Toys released actually emulate a few shots we’ve seen of actual press pictures for The Mandalorian (and from the trailer), these gorgeous figures do a good job of temporarily tricking your brain into thinking you are actually seeing something from the show, and not a 12″-tall posable action figure!
Of course, beyond looking good, both the Mandalorian and IG-11 come with a host of bonus accessories. The Mandalorian has a little handheld communicator, as well as both his holdout blaster and his Amban Phase-Pulse rifle to pose with (and of course, the bonus hands to hold said weapons and communicator), and even alternate shoulder pieces to replicate the evolution of his battered armour over the course of the show. Oh, and for extra colour, his base features a broken Stormtrooper helmet to balance impaled on one of two included spears! How lovely. IG-11, meanwhile, is much more spartan, coming with just two different blaster rifles and a light up head. Don’t need extra hands when you have articulated clamps, I guess.
But as good as these look, it’s gonna be a long time before you get your hands on either of them. Hot Toys revealed these to tie into next month’s debut of the show on Disney+ and alongside all the other Force Friday news, so you might have anticipated being able to arrange your very own bounty hunting badasses on your desk in time for Christmas or something.
Nope. The projected date on these two? Any time between late 2020 and early 2021. Which means, standing to reason that Jon Favreau has already started on one of life’s other inevitabilities—a second season of The Mandalorian—a new batch of Mandalorian episodes could be ready to drop next autumn before you even have had these two figures shipped to you!
What if IG-11 gets scrapped? What if the Mandalorian gets a totally new look by the end of season one? Well… you’ll just have to buy other new toys that won’t be out for a few years, won’t you. Hooray! Good job you’ve got time to start saving up, though; it’ll be just shy of $US500 ($743) to grab both (on their own, the Mandalorian is $US243 ($361) and IG-11 $US251 ($373)). Maybe you’ll want to take out some bounties of your own in the mean time to get the credits.