Porgs Sell Out in Under 6 Parsecs and Why It Matters
Surprising absolutely no one, it turns out cute furries and Star Wars are a recipe for record-breaking sales. The receipts are in, and Force Friday II has broken the previous sales record held by the original Force Friday. Analysts credit the increase to overwhelming interest in porgs, the guinea pig-looking creatures who dominate the first act of the upcoming Star Wars sequel, The Last Jedi.
“Porgs are the breakout stars of the new Star Wars. Definitely the IT toys of the holiday season. We nearly had a riot on our hands for the giant ones we raffled off,” said Chet Desmonds, Target district store manager for the Northeast region.
According to verified sales data, porgs sold out in under 6 parsecs. To give you some perspective, that’s 12 times faster than the speed of preorders for the Snes Mini, Nintendo’s sequel to the infamously-hard-to-obtain NES mini, are flying off virtual store shelves.
“We always get your standard Star Wars fans who will buy pretty much any useless crap up at midnight. Same with the scalpers. But the porgs brought in a whole new crowd. We saw fairly normal-looking casual fans elbow-to-elbow with 40-year-old virgins, cat lovers, and weirdos in costume play,” said Belinda Michaels, a Toys “R” Us sales associate in Silver Lake, Michigan.
While the porgs would seem to be a runaway success for Disney, insiders report the sales fell a bit short of the company’s expectations for the cute aliens.
“Iger wanted porgs to sell out in less than 3 parsecs and cause mass hysteria… it’s really the only cute thing they’ve got, and he fears a potential porg backlash in China, since the design is based on pretty much every anime stereotype for kawaii characters,” said an anonymous source.
Given “Porg Mania” is sweeping the nation at a slower rate than the Mouse House would like, you can expect to see porgs on even more merchandise – and in a multidude of shapes, colors and genders — in the coming months. We predict at least three porglet doll variants along with cute accessories akin to American Girl collectibles in time for the holiday rush.
The question is: will Disney’s overreliance on cuteness chase old school Star Wars fans away? It’s one thing to include Ewoks or Jar Jar Binks as a merchandising ploy for children within an otherwise entirely new Star Wars film. But it may be harder to swallow cash grab cuteness shoved onscreen during what may turn out to be a soft reboot of Empire Strikes Back.
It’s becoming more and more obvious that Disney simply cannot please three generations of Star Wars fans, each with its own subset based on degree of fandom. The path of least resistance may be to simply ignore the vocal minority that is the superfan, and cater to the casual fans across all ages/races/genders. Expect to see more of what the average Star Wars fan wants to see onscreen. Unless of course, the numbers somehow steer the ship back the other way, but we don’t see that happening anytime soon. You will get your porgs and you will love them.
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-William “Willybobo” Bobo
