Star Wars: Rogue One Toys Launch on September 30

English: Opening logo to the Star Wars films
English: Opening logo to the Star Wars films (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After last year’s Force Awakens toy launch (find toys at Amazon.com*) in early September, there was a bit of a downtime as we waited for the next wave of toys and the film. This year, Disney has pushed the launch back almost a month, delaying the press of new toys until September 30. This strikes me as a smart move since it shortens the amount of dead time between launch and new toys/film. These days, what’s “new” doesn’t get much time in the world, and the fewer days there are between buzz events, the better off a project is.

Why is that? Why is it that everything is older faster than it once was? Speed of communications, yes, but I think it’s also the speed of marketing at play. As more and more corporations try to construct franchises, there are ever more “look, the new X!” at work in the world. That’s making it so that what we’re excited about today is overrun by the next big thing tomorrow, and competing marketing machines are cluttering our cultural brainspace and fighting for attention.

It isn’t so much that we had longer attention spans three decades ago. No, it’s that marketing has become a far more powerful and coordinated science today than it once was, and the instant communication of today’s future means marketing can reach all of us faster than we can keep up.

Anyway, new Star Wars toys in one month!