Hasbro's Ultimate Grogu Animatronic: A $599 Lifelike Baby Yoda Toy

I have a baby to show you. You have to see the baby. Oh my gosh. Excuse you. This is Ultimate Grogu and I am getting an early peek at the prototype that Hasbro has made. This is the most advanced animatronic from Star Wars they have ever worked on. Oh, you want picky upuppies? Oh, he wants picky upies. Hasbro made a collectible Star Wars animatronic that's so realistic with over 250 animations that it feels like this fella just toddled right out of the big screen. Hasbro worked closely with Disney to make this premium life-sized reproduction of Grogu. It's of course

time to the release of the movie The Mandalorian and Grogu. But unlike what you see when you're watching Star Wars, there's no puppeteer for this character. The force that brings him to life is all robotics and programming. He's got four motors and 14 sensors along with some accessories. And how he acts all depends on what you do. The attention to detail here is wild. He's about 9 lb and 14.6 in tall. And in person, it's just shocking how cute he is. So, it was not shocking to learn that he comes with a price tag of $599. I traveled to Hasbro's headquarters at Pawtucket,

Rhode Island, and I will say security was pretty tight. All so I could meet the team involved in bringing the foundling to life. So, there's a ton in there, but it's it's not like we wanted to really uh call out this the tech is the star of the show here. This isn't a robotic facing item. This is a character item. So, uh the goal honestly was to make the tech feel invisible. A top engineering priority, I'm told, was perfecting his little toddle walk. But he's also packed with sensors. He's got a sensor in each cheek because who can resist touching his

cheeks? There's also a sensor in his back, and if you double tap his head, he will use the force. Grogu also reaches up high to let you know he wants to be picked up like all little kids do. His reactions change depending on how you move him around. And yes, he does have very detailed feet. I love to see his feet. We get asked about these so much. As you can see, his toes hang down a little bit. And he is really doing his toddles and taking his steps. Now, because he is a prototype, I was not permitted to pick him up or even touch him. Although, I really wanted to touch him. And I wanted to get close to

touching that incredibly fine wispy hair on his head. The hair. Do you see the hair? Oh. Oh, this precious little baby hairs. Oh, stop touching things. But I did get to touch the materials he was made of. His skin material is buttery soft with a little squish. And I was just impressed at all the coloring and paint because you can see the life in his skin on his face. His ears all how it's shaded. It feels alive. Even the mouth has this wild detail with all his teeth. And talking about the mouth, um tried to make it um as show accurate as possible. Um so yeah,

he does he you can definitely put your finger and get a little response if you do that. But his clothing also had a good material feel like it belonged in the universe. He even has his satchel on the side where he keeps his accessories that he plays with like a little blue cookie that he likes to hold. He also likes to eat the cookie of course. And if you take that cookie away from him, he might try to use the force to pick it back up. And yes, the cookie moves. I mean, it's just a little bit of movement. He likes to show off, but sorry to say, cookies are not going

to be flying around your home. He's also packing a grab charge detonator. It's fun to press, but he will back up because he knows it's going to go boom, and he will relax when you disable it. Uh, I think the accessories too were one that we worked really hard to get right to make sure that you have those additional storytelling moments and that there is a lot to discover there. So, if you feed him his cookie more, he could get the hiccups or could start to get sick. If he's using the force a lot on either of these, he starts to get sleepy. And so, you want to make

sure that those don't feel like they're one note. And it's challenging to make sure that you can incorporate a whole bunch of different interactions into something like that, but it's really rewarding as it's all come together. Playing with Grogu is not exactly how you might think of playing with other toys like a Furby, although some folks on this team did work on Furby. The play time with Ultimate Grogu is more about how he's programmed to keep giving different responses to his environment that still feels like it's real and natural.

It doesn't feel repetitive like more of a kid toy might be lifted limited to like 50 sounds or something. This has a ton of sounds and then um in addition to that has even just incredibly much more movement and parts of articulation. So again, the to Mel's point, it's like it makes it feel like it's alive. Ultimate Goku has directional audio sensing with two microphones that are just picking up when it hears noise. It's not recording anything. It's just hearing noise. So he's going to turn left, right, or center to where that noise is. So that way it makes you feel like he's part of the action at home. So go on and bring them to dinner and see what happens.

Play with your food. But there are different modes if you really do bring him to the dinner table. You see, he's battery powered to be portable. But if you're carrying him around on a cosplay at a convention, you're going to want to put him in a mode where he won't walk around. Or you can plug him in on a shelf at home and he'll just cycle through poses. I'm a stickler for how he uses the force and how that moment looks. As Grogu's evolved over time, I feel like he's become uh stronger with how he can kind of use this force and have different variety there. So, the fact that this product has such a nice

motion if he goes to do the single-handed force, then we're also able to have him come up and incorporate this two hand with a little wrist motion is just so magical. And we haven't been able to do that before. I've watched it in entertainment forever and wanted to do it forever. and being able to do it on this item made me very excited. What I think is so unique in this product is that Grogu is not a cartoon. You watch the show and you see a real character. So, there is more pressure for Hasbro to get this exactly right. And I think they accomplished that. And because it's for collectors,

it is rated 14 and up. It's not a toy. You are now seeing what's possible when a company does not hold back on hitting a price point for little kids. Hasbro said it has seen success with other high-end robotic collectibles. Take for example the line of Transformers that really transform from vehicles to walking Autobots. Hasbro licensed out Transformers characters to the company Robosen and they are not cheap. These robots cost over a grand and people are buying them. But Ultimate Grogu is Hasbro's most high-tech Star Wars animatronic, and it is a level of detail and programming on a character that I have never seen before from Hasbro.

The pre-orders for the first edition of Ultimate Grogu open up on April 30th, and the first shipment will be landing at the end of this year with another batch shipping early 2027. Yes, honey. Oh, okay. I got to say, when it comes to making a lifelike Grogu, this is the way you do it. So, let me know in the comments if you're interested in picking up Ultimate Grogu. If you want to see more things like this, what other characters can they make? Let me know in the comments. And thanks for watching.