>>10572443Can go on many paragraphs of the back history of this, but going to try and it brief:
The dragon is Figment, character from the Journey into Imagination ride at the Disney Epcot park. Over the past 2 decades Disney has basically tried to get rid of him, first in the late 90s they revamped the original 80s ride and excluded him and his co-star, and it went so negatively and with backlash they quickly rushed him back in but not the co-star. Later in the mid-late 2010s they were openly trying to replace the rie with Inside Out IP. The creator of that film didn't want to replace the character so he got the park to do polls and later do "test" merch drops to test the character's viability if he should stick around or be retired.
One of these was this figure meant as a popcorn bucket released January 2022. They thought it would be a small release but people went ballistic, it had 8 hour lines, sold out in 3 days when it was supposed to last for 3 months and was the single biggest park release in over a decade. So now within the past year he's getting a entire meet and greet section, he's become Epcot's mascot overtaking large portions of the park, has long lines of merch drops, they brought him into a video game and now are in the early stages of a film and potentially ride revamp. Some of this he had before as the merch drops were going well, but nothing to this level.
So this single figure single-handedly secured his future entirely and more.
