Sphero Disney Droids

» see sphero.com/star-wars as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obit ~

sphero's licensed droids were the kind of christmas toy that lived in parents-of-friends households. you saw them in unboxing videos and at the back of a kid's bedroom shelf, rolling across a wooden floor while a phone in someone's hand swiveled. i was 31 when bb-8 launched in september 2015 alongside force friday and the run-up to the force awakens. a phone-controlled droid that cost 150 dollars was not a category i ever owned, and it would have shipped to ankara through grey channels anyway.

sphero itself was a colorado startup that had been making rolling-ball robots since 2010. the original sphero was the ball you'd seen on shark tank. the disney connection started when ian bogost wrote about bob iger spotting sphero at a disney accelerator demo and asking if they could make him a bb-8 in time for the movie. they could, and they did. the bb-8 toy shipped about three months before the film opened. it was the most-anticipated tie-in toy of the year.

the catalogue grew. r2-d2 followed in september 2017 for the last jedi push. bb-9e went out the same day in a slightly cheaper sku. ultimate lightning mcqueen, a separate cars-licensed product, came in 2017 with a face screen and a body that could lean into corners. r2-q5 (a darker imperial astromech) was a later limited release.

~ the rap sheet ~

~ the disney deal ~

the partnership was a tight fit for a few years. sphero got prime shelf placement and the star wars halo. disney got an instantly photogenic toy that sat well on instagram and shark tank reruns. by mid 2018 the math had turned. licensed toy sales fell off fast once a movie left theaters, and the development cost did not scale down to match. in december 2018 sphero announced it was leaving the licensed-toy business altogether to focus on its sphero edu robotics line for schools.

that december notice did not brick the droids. the apps stayed on the store. the toys you already owned kept working with the existing app. sphero promised a couple more years of app support before sundown.

~ the day the app stopped ~

the actual cut came on 1 october 2021. sphero pulled the dedicated control apps (sphero bb-8, sphero r2-d2, sphero bb-9e, sphero force band, sphero lightning mcqueen) from the app store and play store the same week. existing installs continued to launch as long as the phone they were on kept running ios 14 or whatever android build had last been compatible. fresh installs were not possible. new owners with a hand-me-down droid could not download the app at all.

the toys themselves did not stop rolling. they still pair over bluetooth to anything that speaks the protocol. sphero kept the edu app running, which can still drive a bb-8 around a kitchen floor in a programming-class mode. that is not what most owners bought the toy for. the disney-branded experience (patrol mode plus the holographic message recordings) lived in apps that no longer exist on a 2026 phone.

~ the long tail ~

secondhand bb-8s still circulate on ebay for around twenty dollars. the box itself is usually worth more than the toy by now. forums host workarounds and sideloaded apks for android running the 2018 final version. you can keep one alive with effort.

sphero pivoted hard to education after 2018 and is doing fine on that side. the bb-8 line is a footnote in their company history page now, filed under legacy products with a polite paragraph thanking the disney partnership for the years it ran.

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