That’s a good question… there is some merchandising based on characters played by humans, though they often don’t resemble the actors that much (see Disney Infinity characters). I would imagine some of these actors, with the clout they have, were able to limit the use of their likeness.
I suppose the difference here is that with Disney Infinity, the full body character combined with the game play gives it more context to understand the character. If you took a generic face and called it Han Solo and put it on the cup, it wouldn’t have enough to make it “Han Solo” to make people want it… if that makes sense…
