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Pre-orders are open at Amazon and it ships October 2. The number worth noticing is the price: it's listed at $64.99 against an $89.99 RRP, so pre-ordering today locks in about 28% off before a single unit has shipped. Amazon's pre-order price guarantee means if it drops further you pay the lower price, which makes waiting pointless.
Where To Pre-Order
Three Star Wars Puppetronics land on the same day, October 2, and they're all open for pre-order now. Yoda is the flagship; the two Palm versions are the smaller, cheaper format.
| Item | Status | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yoda Puppetronic17.3in, 120+ actions, display case. RRP is $89.99. | Pre-Order | $64.9928% under RRP | Check Stock Status |
| Yoda Palm PuppetronicThe pocket-sized version. Same October 2 release. | Pre-Order | $39.99smaller format | Check Stock Status |
| Wicket Palm PuppetronicThe Ewok. Also October 2, and the sleeper of the three. | Pre-Order | $39.99smaller format | Check Stock Status |
This is the rare case on our list where the sellout warning is backed by something you can go and check yourself. RealFX has done this twice before, with Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon and with Stitch. Both went viral. Both are now nearly gone: as of writing Amazon shows "Only 17 left in stock" on the Toothless Puppetronic and "Only 12 left" on Stitch.
And there's a listing on Amazon right now selling a Stitch Puppetronic for $212.44. That's what this product category looks like after the official stock runs out. Yoda is a single annual run landing eleven weeks before Christmas, from a company whose last two animatronics both did this.
So the honest read: $64.99 on pre-order is very likely the cheapest this will ever be, and there is no downside to locking it in, because Amazon charges you the lowest price it hits between now and dispatch.
Forty-four centimetres of Yoda, which is 17.3 inches, in proper woven Jedi robes with the cane. A joystick hidden in the robes drives it: the head turns, the mouth and face animate, the eyes blink with that slow deliberate Yoda blink, the ears move and the brow furrows. Over 120 sound and action combinations, from "Do. Or do not. There is no try" through to lines written for the toy. Officially licensed by Lucasfilm and it ships in a premium display case.
What It Actually Does
The word "animatronic" gets thrown at anything with a motor in it, so it's worth being specific about why this one has people's attention.
It's a puppet first and an electronic toy second. There's a joystick concealed inside the robes, and you drive the performance yourself: tilt for a head turn, trigger a blink, work the mouth in time with the dialogue. That's the difference between this and a $30 talking plush, where you press a button and wait. The skin is a soft silicone-style material rather than moulded plastic, so the face genuinely creases when it moves.
Tom's Guide got hands-on with it ahead of release and singled out the eyes, describing "the slow, wise Yoda blink fans instantly recognize," along with the moving ears and forehead. Their reviewer found the concealed joystick intuitive, and noted the dialogue mixes the canonical lines with new material written for the toy. Their only real reservation was tongue in cheek: depending where you put it, it will either delight Star Wars fans or mildly unsettle your house guests.
What Buyers Say About RealFX Animatronics
Nobody has one of these yet, so the Yoda has no reviews. What it does have is four years of reviews on the same mechanism wearing different faces. RealFX has shipped this platform as Stitch, as Toothless, and as a Jurassic World raptor.
These are Amazon's published star ratings for other RealFX Puppetronics, not for the Yoda, which has none yet. Same manufacturer and same mechanism, different character.
Our Read On The Reviews
Three products, three different licences, and the scores land at 4.3, 4.4 and 4.6. That consistency is the useful signal. It says the platform works and the company can build it repeatedly, which is not something you can assume about a $65 animatronic.
The Toothless breakdown is the one to look at closely, because it has the biggest sample at 192 ratings: 76% five stars, but 7% one star. That shape, lots of love with a hard tail, is typical of motorised toys and usually means a small number of units arriving faulty rather than a design people dislike. Nobody rates a working animatronic one star for being boring.
Which points at the one piece of practical advice we'd give: buy it somewhere with a straightforward returns window, and open it when it arrives rather than in December. If you're pre-ordering in August for a Christmas present, that's seven weeks of it sitting in a cupboard untested, and a dead motor discovered on the 25th is a much worse morning than a dead motor discovered in October.
We'll add real Yoda reviews to this page once it ships and enough of them exist to mean something.
Who It's For
- You want it before Christmas. Single annual run, October ship, and the last two of these ran dry.
- The puppeteering is the appeal. You're performing with it, not pressing a button at it.
- It's a display piece. The case and the Lucasfilm licence are aimed squarely at shelves.
- $64.99 against an $89.99 RRP is a genuinely good entry price for this category.
- It's for a young child to carry around. Ages 8+, and it's built to be displayed.
- $65 is a stretch. The Palm Puppetronics are $39.99 and land the same day.
- You want reviews first. There are none for this character yet, and that's a fair thing to wait for.
- You expected Grogu. This is the original trilogy Yoda, robes and cane, not the baby.
Pre-Order Timeline
No restock history to give you, because it has never been in stock. Here's the shape of the next few months instead. The first two are dates from Amazon; the last two are what happened to the previous two Puppetronics, not a schedule anyone has published.
Yoda Puppetronic FAQ
The Bottom Line: Of everything we've looked at this season, this is the one where pre-ordering is the straightforwardly correct move. It's $64.99 against an $89.99 RRP, Amazon guarantees you the lowest price it hits before dispatch, so ordering early costs you nothing and locks in a discount. Meanwhile the two previous animatronics from this company are down to their last dozen units and one is being resold at $212.44. The only real reason to hold off is that no customer has laid hands on this specific character yet, and if you'd rather wait for reviews, that's a perfectly sensible call. Just don't wait expecting it to get cheaper.
