so Having The Chocobo is this concept i've developed to talk about universes beyond and what works/doesn't for it. the thing is that for 99% of crossover IP promotion, all you need is iconic characters. you wanna get your shit into fortnite, mortal kombat, so on, all you need is a handful of beloved recognizable characters. but for an mtg set, you need way more than that: you need iconography, creatures and places and objects that fans will recognize and be excited about. one of the reasons for all god-awful cards in spiderman was that wotc were worried about players opening packs and not seeing spiderman. this is because spiderman doesn't Have The Chocobo: there's no franchise specific place or object or concept that holds the same iconic and beloved status as its ~6 most prominent characters. you have to make a bunch god-awful generic filler cards with peter parker or miles morales randomly slapped onto them if you want to get something recognizable to fans into most packs.
final fantasy on the other hand--final fantasy Has The Chocobo, which here means the literal actual chocobo but when i use it means 'the breadth and depth of non-named-character iconography to fill out all the needs of an mtg set with cards fans of the original property actually want to see'. nobody was worried about final fantasy fans opening packs and not seeing cloud strife, because they would see a moogle, or a black mage, or a summon, or a town, or a mother fucking Chocobo, and that would be exciting and cool for them. so when evaluating UB sets i have found it really useful to think about the property its adapting and ask, does it Have The Chocobo?
Allow me to also present the complimentary to this: It's In A Mechsuit.
It's a concept that we actually see happening in the Lego franchise where Lego will acquire an IP to create a series of sets for. Most IPs have no issues - Lego can create, say, LotR sets based on iconic locations or scenes from the Lord of the Rings world. However, some IPs, they acquire and deliver in such a rushed or shallow manner that half the sets end up being "minifigure of recognizable character In A Mechsuit" because selling just the minifigure isn't profitable enough, they didn't allow themselves enough time and/or budget to create thoughtout sets of iconic places or scenes, and so they just slap the minifig in a mechsuit, despite the IP not having mechsuits in its universe.
So when I want to evaluate if a crossover IP was thoughfully considered, planned... or rushed for greed and profit... all I have to do is look to see if any of it is In A Mechsuit or something analogous to it.
