Eliminate Empties

Some assets create empties that are not really useful in Blender but mostly in the way. A typical example is this jacket with buttons, where each button consists of a mesh that is parented to an empty that is parented to a bone.

The Eliminate Empties tool removes this extra layer of empties. Select the parent armature and press Eliminate Empties. The empties are gone and the meshes are parented directly under the bone. Eliminate Empties can be done before or after Merge Rigs. Or not at all if you wish to keep the empties. Other vendors implement jacket buttons as empties that are instanced to a mesh. Instanced empties are important because they show up in renders, and therefore the Eliminate Empties button does not remove them.