When George Lucas made the original Star Wars, he offered to lower his salary in exchange for the sequel and merchandising rights. Since tie-in merchandising was a relatively minor part of the film industry back in the 1970s, he got his wish and then proceeded to make billions of dollars.
Star Wars has always been merchandized out the ying-yang. Heck, it is directly responsible for most of the merchandising you see tied into every other movie today. So it makes sense that the Walt Disney Corporation isn’t going to change that now. In fact, they are celebrating the merchandising of the new film Star Wars: The Force Awakens this weekend with “Force Friday,” when all stores across the country will sell products related to it.
Never mind the fact that nobody knows if they like this movie or not, and that nobody knows if the toys they will be buying are for the next Boba Fett (that’s good) or the next Jar Jar Binks (that’s bad). Instead, just come celebrate this new national holiday in which we all buy stuff under the assumption that we are going to be glad we did so a few months later. Heck, why not get a tattoo while you’re at it? It’s not like anyone regrets those either.
Related: What If ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Sucks?
But to the credit of those actually making these many tie-in products, some of them look pretty cool. Case in point: this BB-8 App-Enabled Droid, which allows you to control the character that everyone loves even though they have only seen it in two shots from the trailers, and have no knowledge of its personality or relevance to the story yet. If the advertising is to be believed (and of course it must be), it scoots around on its own or at your commands, and can even project holograms within the two-dimensional environment of your phone (which is kinda weird).
The BB-8 App-Enabled Droid retails for $149.99 and will be available at midnight tonight at any of these retailers. The website Engadget reports that functionality for BB-8 will be added over time, in conjunction with the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. And honestly, all of our cynicism aside, this looks like a fun toy. If we had $150 to spend on a remote control sphere, we would probably do so, and simply hope that we don’t discover that in December that BB-8, the character, totally sucks.
You can find out more about Go Sphero’s impressive little toy on their official website.
Image via Go Sphero
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
