Force Friday: New Star Wars Toys Launched Ahead of Film's Release

Star Wars fans across the world have queued through the night for the chance to get their hands on hotly anticipated merchandise that is being released to coincide with the latest installment of the film franchise, The Force Awakens, which will be released in December.

Hundreds of fanatics, many dressed as characters from the films, waited outside U.K. stores which opened at midnight, hoping to grab some of the new action figures, toy lightsabers and fancy dress costumes on sale, according to Sky News. In Paris, one of the new toys on display included a life-sized triple lightsabre with three plastic light beams.

Various different toys have been rolled out over 18 hours in 15 cities across a dozen countries, in what Lucasfilm, the production company behind the movies, described as "the world's first ever global live toy unboxing event."

Such is the frenzy over the new merchandise that #ForceFriday became a trending topic on Twitter on Friday, with excited fans tweeting photos of their hauls and the queues outside toy shops.

"There's a synergistic history between the toys and the movies," Steve Sansweet, Lucasfilm's fan relations adviser, told USA Today. "If you go back to the very beginning, and that memory is still there in a lot of people, it was the start of merchandising of motion pictures."