How Hasbro Brings Some of the Greatest Star Wars Icons to Life | Star Wars Celebration 2025
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Hasbro revealed quite an impressive lineup of new toys and collectibles at Star Wars Celebration 2025, including new The Mandalorian figures and a long-overdue Dash Rendar figure. They also had many of these upcoming releases on display at the show.
IGN was able to snap some photos of Hasbro’s Star Wars Celebration display and speak to designer Chris Reiff and Hasbro Marketing’s Jing Houle about the thrill of designing toys based on these iconic characters. Check out the slideshow gallery below for a closer look at these new toys, and then read on to find out what Reiff and Houle had to say, including why there’s still room to improve with some of the biggest heroes of the Star Wars franchise.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor fans were no doubt pleased to see new figures included in this new crop of Star Wars toys. Nightsister Merrin is getting a new figure (see it at Amazon), while series star Cal Kestis is featured in a three-pack set alongside Turgle and Skoova Stev (Amazon). And best of all, Cal comes with multiple swap-out heads, including one with handlebar mustache. According to Houle, that particular look was a big priority for this release.
“Honestly, we just wanted to have fun with it,” Houle tells IGN. “This is one of my favorite packs that we revealed in the panel. We actually started with the handlebar mustache and the mullet and then added in the clean cut. Then the short beard later. So for us, the primary look is almost the handlebar and it’s just so much fun.”
As for Merrin, it was a given that Cal be joined by his crewmate, given how important Merrin is to the larger Fallen Order/Survivor saga. The challenge was properly depicting her unique Force abilities.
“It’s tough to have Cal without Merrin,” Reiff says. “So we’re glad we finally got to Merrin, but doing that Force effect, the green blast coming there, all the great detail of that new costume and the face tattoos with the inkjet. Just some beautiful subtlety going on there. She’s a really cool character I know we know fans are invested in and really being able to build out that world.”
This year’s toy lineup includes two characters who are certainly no strangers to Hasbro by now – Han Solo and Chewbacca. (See Han and Chewie at Amazon) But despite how many Han and Chewie figures we’ve seen over the years, Houle is adamant that there’s room for improvement.
“I mean, we haven’t done them in a long time,” Houle says. “They needed an update, so we gave them fully new tools so they’re brand new with the latest articulation so that fans can really celebrate and enjoy… classic characters out again in the latest technology and articulation that we have. And they’ve made quite a few updates on top of the articulation just in general. We learned a lot from the Wookiees that we’ve done where they have really long hair.”
Houle continues, “And so, despite the long hair, having softer plastics so he can still pivot and move his head in a seamless way, that was really important to us. And we added articulation into Han too, but we didn’t give him the thigh break because we didn’t want to separate the red bars on his right side of the outside of the thigh. So we thought it was important to keep that clean. So we added articulation to the top of the boot instead.”
No figure in this lineup is more striking than The Ronin, based on the anime anthology series Star Wars: Visions. True to the series, The Ronin is a black-and-white figure whose only color comes from his red katana lightsaber. Because The Ronin is a Celebration-exclusive release, it was important to both Houle and Reiff that they get the small details right.
“I love that we kept to it,” Houle says. “And then taking from learnings from what we know about Japanese culture and stuff, the way the box is built, how premium it looks, the magnets that let it open, how clean it looks, the watercoloring, the accessories that’s hidden on the top of the box so you don’t just see it. Everything. There was so much attention from packaging to design to engineering.”
Reiff adds, “And even the Japanese language for this exclusive packaging, we don’t do that normally, but for here, because we’re here in Japan, we wanted to really embrace all that and do a special package that was just Japanese language for that too.”
Finally, Hasbro also had something for fans of the 1:1 scale Black Series helmet line, revealing a stunningly detailed Death Trooper helmet during their Celebration panel.
“[It’s] a great fully new tooled helmet for the Black series Premium roleplay line,” Reiff says. “It looks like it’s straight out of the movie with the weathering, the lighting detail, and you poke a button on the side and you control the chin lights and the spectre sensor lights over on the side. So, just a great addition to our line. And working with Lucasfilm in partnership to work from original files so that we could really nail all the details of this helmet and then add our own stuff to the inside because the real ones never had an inside, but this one does. All our other helmets, it has the full detailed interior.”
For more on Star Wars Celebration, find out what we know about the plot of Star Wars: Starfighter and see the biggest news and moments from Celebration.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
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