Jon Favreau feared making Baby Yoda too cute

Vanity Fair

“I was worried about what we called ‘Bleep Syndrome,’” he tells Vanity Fair, referring to a sickly sweet animated sidekick from the 1970s Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space. As Vanity Fair notes, "Bleep Syndrome was Favreau’s watchword against concept designs and merchandising plans that sought to round off the quirks of a creature he wanted to keep a little weird and off-putting." Favreau adds: “We wanted to make sure the Child wasn’t just going to be a comic relief. What George (Lucas) had established with Star Wars was that no matter how fantastical these characters are, how weird they looked, the characters within the world always treated them as normal citizens of the world.” Lucas had a knack, Favreau said, for making characters like R2-D2 “just cute enough” that every Star Wars fan might believe they were the only one who found a “trashcan with one eye on it” cute.

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