Star Wars has unveiled its brand new toy line for the forthcoming Rogue One: A Star Wars Story — the franchise’s latest film — with a little help from its superfans on YouTube. Through a fan-made animated short developed alongside crowdsourced creative studio Tongal, the toys made their debut yesterday in stop-motion form on the official Star Wars YouTube channel.
The clip (below) — and additional installments slated to roll out throughout the rest of the month — are “a tribute to the incredible content that the Star Wars community posts online every day,” said Disney’s chairman of consumer products and interactive media, Jimmy Pitaro, in a statement. (He cited a recent ZEFR study stating that fans have posted 2,296 pieces of Star Wars-related content on YouTube every day in the past year, generating a total of roughly 16.3 billion views). “We want them to be front and center in the run up to Rogue One.”
Fans can pre-order select Rogue One toys beginning tomorrow at mass retailers, though the full range bows on Sept. 30 — which is also when Disney will kick off its global ‘Go Rogue‘ contest. Fans are being invited to create two-minute Rogue One-related videos and submit them at StarWars.com/GoRogue. Winners will receive a trip to screen the movie in San Francisco — as well as watch their own films on the big screen.
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Rogue One is the first of three standalone Star Wars movies to be released outside of the episodic series. The film stars Felicity Jones and Diego Luna, and is slated to hit theaters this December. Check out a peek at some of the forthcoming Rogue One merch in the fan-created video below:
