What price secrecy? That question has been floating around the entertainment community for the past month or so since The Mandalorian debuted on Disney+, capped off by an unexpected big reveal – the character referred to by LucasFilm as The Child, but by everyone else as Baby Yoda.

Now the media is rife with articles and blog posts about “Why You’ll Have to Wait for Official Baby Yoda Toys.” To series creator Jon Favreau, it’s about storytelling trumping commerce, going to great lengths to keep a secret.

“The way the cat usually gets out of the bag with that stuff is merchandising and toy catalogs and things like that,” he said to Entertainment Tonight. “[Disney] really backed us up…. That requires a lot of restraint from the people who are footing the bill, saying they’re going to hold back on certain things so that the public doesn’t know [something] ahead of time. And part of that was holding back on some of the merchandising and holding back on some of the characters.”

It’s not the first time

Let’s remember that this isn’t the first time that something was held back from merchandisers to preserve a cinematic surprise. A decade ago, director James Cameron kept the visually striking world of Pandora and characters of Avatar away from the licensing community until the film was released so that moviegoers would be swept away by the experience (in many cases in 3D) in their theater seats.

The business that might have been realized at retail was hamstrung, but who’s to say the wrong business choice was made for the film itself? It did, after all, generate $2.7 billion at the global box office – far surpassing anything before, and only recently surpassed by Avengers: Endgame.

The right choice?

So, did Lucas and Disney make the right commercial choice? The sheer number of “unauthorized” offerings across the Internet testifies to the sales that Disney and its licensees could have made by now. (Some short-lead-time products such as shirts and mugs are now on Disney’s and other retailer’s sites.)

Some think not. “I understand the caution, but nevertheless that has to be outweighed by the millions that stand to be made from having a very cute, sweet, wonderful, cuddle-able Star Wars character in everybody’s Christmas stocking,” said the Los Angeles Times’ David Lazarus NPR. “The fact that they didn’t anticipate that this was going to be a commercial goldmine is insane, and that they let this opportunity slip away strikes me as sheer madness.”

Perhaps. But think of all the articles of the past few weeks that cast this decision as art triumphing over the business side of the ledger. It’s hard to put a price on that kind image builder.