There is no question that last year the character officially known as "The Child", but commonly refereed to as Baby Yoda by fans took the world by storm, when he first appeared in the Disney+ Mandalorian series.
Because Disney wanted to keep the character a complete surprise until the show aired, they did not allow any companies access to it's designs so they could start producing products to be ready on shelves when he first appeared on the show. This left a vacuum in the retail world and an opening for those trying to fill it with unlicensed merchandise sold on the internet.
This is not an uncommon practice in the world of toys, and one that often tends to go unnoticed by the corporate license holders. The general thinking being that its just not worth the hassle to go after every single person selling a limited number of unlicensed product on the various places found on the net that allow people to do this.
With Baby Yoda however, that does not seem to be the case. According to a report on
The Verge, Disney has begun taking steps to crack down on folks selling things like unlicensed Baby Yoda plushies on the website Etsy.
One seller, Tanya, who runs the stuffed animal storefront YourStuffedMemories, had been selling homemade Baby Yoda plushies for about a month when she received a message from Etsy. It had deactivated her sales listing after getting a complaint from Disney over her usage of the words “Star Wars,” “mandalorian,” and “Yoda” to sell the plushies.
Of course this really hasn't detered these sellers from selling their unlicensed products. In the case of Tanya, she simply just renamed her "Baby Yoda" plushies to now be referred to as "The Baby Child" plushies.
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