Toys by Story 1977-2026

One wave after another

Each row is one story era, and its ridge is how many of the catalog's toys from that story came out each year – counted by the year a toy first came out, never again for a re-release.

Most stories arrive as a wave and fade. Solo put out 316 toys in 2018, and 93% of all its toys came out in 2018 and 2019. The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker each put out 78% of their toys in their biggest year and the year after. Even The Phantom Menace, 87% of all the toys of 1999, settled into a long, low ripple.

The story that never stopped

A New Hope is the exception. It has toys in 45 of the 46 years the catalog has any, and it was the year's biggest story 20 times, from 1977 to 2025. And it is still growing: only 240 of its 7,093 toys came out by 1985, while 3,982 – more than half – have come out since 2015. Its biggest year was 2015, 38 years after its first toys.

The rest of the original trilogy follows it. The Empire Strikes Back had its biggest year in 2015, and Return of the Jedi in 2023, forty years after its first toys.

The quiet years

Every ridge goes flat at once in the late 1980s. The catalog has 3 toys from 1986, none at all from 1987 to 1990, and just 8 from 1991.

The new wave

The Mandalorian doesn't fade. Its wave began in 2019, it has put out at least 187 toys every year since 2020, and it was the year's biggest story five times. 2026, with weeks still to go, is its biggest year yet: 618 toys, more than A New Hope's best.

Try Each its own to see every story's shape at the same height, or pick a toy type – Lego, say – to see how one kind of toy follows the stories.