Chewbacca and Teebo the Ewok are gone from the LEGO Store at Downtown Disney.
Construction walls are back up around the Star Wars window. Blueskin weather and water-resistant barriers are wrapped around the yellow brick frames. The platform behind the life-sized brick-built AT-ST is empty, and the Chewbacca minifigure that used to stick out of the top of it is gone too.
No reason. No return date.
The store is open and operating normally, per the Disneyland Resort website.
Some context.
And before anybody spirals: this is two LEGO minifigures off a store window. Galaxy’s Edge is doing perfectly fine on both coasts. Characters are still in the land. Disney World literally just added Rise of the Resistance to the Extended Evening Hours lineup a few days ago, so Star Wars is doing well at Disney Parks.
Star Wars at Disneyland got bigger this month, not smaller.
Credit: Disney
That Blueskin Is Telling You Something
Blueskin is a weather- and water-resistant barrier membrane. A building envelope product. You wrap it on something to keep moisture out while you work on it.
They wrapped it around the brick frames.
Which means the frames are the project, not just the figures standing in front of them.
So this is probably not a quick swap. This reads structural, which usually means a longer timeline and a different display coming back rather than the same one.
Now Look at the Year This Store Has Had
January. The Prince Phillip versus Maleficent model on the roof got restored with new elements.
February. Woody and Buzz, who had been at the entrance since the store opened, were removed. Rocket and backdrop followed them out.
April. Giant yellow and white LEGO brick frames show up around the windows. A Frozen display appears. Then an Avengers display.
May. Chewbacca driving an AT-ST arrives.
June. A LEGO Main Street, U.S.A. photo-op installation is installed to celebrate the launch of LEGO set #43302.
October. Chewbacca and Teebo out. Walls back up.
Six exterior changes. Ten months. One store.
‘Star Wars’ Characters Temporarily Removed from LEGO Store Display at Downtown Disney https://t.co/cBKdRqiTlS
Here Is Why This Store Churns and Nothing Else at Disney Does
Disney theming is permanent. A Frontierland facade gets built once and maintained for forty years, because it exists to hold up a story about a place.
LEGO window displays are advertising. They exist to move product.
Look at June again. That Main Street, U.S.A. photo op was installed specifically to launch LEGO set #43302. It had a product attached to it, which means it had an expiration date attached to it.
Credit: Jeremy Thompson, Flickr
Same deal with Chewbacca in an AT-ST, which showed up in May. Product cycle. Product cycles end.
So nobody lost anything the way you lose a theming element. This is inventory rotating, except the inventory is made of bricks and bolted to a wall.
Once you see it that way, the constant construction stops looking like a problem and starts looking like a retailer doing retailer things.
The Removal You Should Actually Be Mad About Was in February
If you want to be upset here, aim it correctly.
Woody and Buzz had been standing at that entrance since the store opened. People took pictures with those. People had a relationship with those.
Teebo and Chewbacca got installed five months ago.
One of those was a landmark. The other was a window.
And the Roof Is Fine, Which Is the Real Tell
The best item on that whole timeline is January.
The Prince Phillip and Maleficent model on top of the store is the actual signature. It is the thing you see from down the walkway. It is what people point at.
Disney did not remove it. They restored it with new elements.
A store spending money to fix up its landmark while cycling through its window ads is investing in itself. Not one quietly packing up.
Credit: LEGO
What Happens Next
Shop there. It is open.
That window will come back as something. Probably not Chewbacca and Teebo. Probably whatever LEGO is launching next.
And the storefront will almost certainly look different again before the year is out, because it has every couple of months since January.
Source: On-site reporting from WDWNT at the LEGO Store at Downtown Disney, Disneyland Resort.
