I’ve heard it all my life: boys don’t like figures of girls. Girl toys don’t sell. Boys don’t want to play with the icky female figures. We’re currently reaping the fields sewn by that particularly scurrilous mantra. Over the past year dozens of knife fights have broken out in the toy aisles over figures like Storm or Black Widow due to their shortpacked scarcity. I personally had to gank a bitch for a Black Cat. It’s a violent, hostile apocalypse out there, and it’s all because of toys with boobs.
But when I think back to my own childhood, a time when the toy aisles overflowed and the keytars had taken over the airwaves, I don’t remember crinkling my nose at ladytoys like my arm would fall off on contact. I didn’t shy away from several Princess Leia figures just because she was one of the only women in the galaxy. She was an important, integral part of my Star Wars playtime. Whether on the icy lands of Hoth or the comfortable and pimped-out Bespin, Leia was always there. I never had her white gown figure, but that wasn’t my fault, I looked for it all the time. I would have loved to have it. For Stormtrooper killing and such.
G.I. Joe fared a bit better in the female department. While it was still a total dick parade up in there, there were at least more females in the Joe universe than in the Star Wars Universe. Scarlett anchored the first wave, after all, and it wasn’t long before Lady Jaye and the Baroness were introduced. Then Zarana showed up, and Jinx not long after. For an ’80s toy line not called “She-Ra,” that’s a hell of a lot of females. But did I shake my head viciously at them because stereotypes said they couldn’t open a pickle jar by themselves? Hell no. I proudly bought all of them. Well, all except Lady Jaye, who was apparently hanging out with white gown Princess Leia on the Phantom Peg where toys went to hide. But still, doesn’t that prove something? I never found Lady Jaye, but somebody had to have bought her enough times to deny me Flint’s prom date.
I didn’t say no to Teela or Evil Lyn, who were the only females on Eternia. Somebody had to keep Skeletor and He-Man in line. Teela was the better shot, and all the other bad guys were scared of Evil Lyn. And it killed me that, after watching “The Secret of the Sword,” I couldn’t get a decent She-Ra figure in the Masters of the Universe line. Sure, she had her own line, but I had to draw the line somewhere, and that line was rooted hair. I wanted a kickass warrior woman, not Barbie’s little sister. She-Ra was marketed to little girls and this boy, ready and willing to plunk down money for a She-Ra that was accurate to what he had seen in the movie, was denied that because apparently boys don’t play with girl figures.
The only time I didn’t get the females of the line was when I couldn’t find them, and it turns out I couldn’t find them because they were shortpacked, and they were shortpacked because “the powers-that-be” assumed that boys don’t want to play with action figures of girls.
Does anybody else see the problem inherent in that thinking?
Wonder woman from Super Powers. Never found her. Wanted her.
Cheetara from Thundercats. Never found her. Wanted her.
Mainframe, Mirage, and Ms. Demeanor and Nightshade from COPS. All females, and I never had a chance to NOT find them, because none of them got a figure. And I wanted all of them. Platonically speaking.
Arcee from Transformers. Yep, you guessed it: no figure.
Line after line, time after time, female figures were either hard to find, or nonexistent. I’m lucky I got what I got from the Joe line. I hear Baroness was apparently hard to come by.
I think there’s a flaw in the logic somewhere. Boys will buy girl toys. But the toys have to be good. Those G.I. Joe figures suffered no inherent flaws just because they were ladytoys. They had the same articulation scheme as the male figures. Female toys started sucking around the 1990s, when all of a sudden they started cramming V-styled hips into the Marvel figures to preserve the female shape, or some nonsense. But that sucked all the playability out of them. This continued well into Marvel Legends, when early figures like Elektra were friggin’ messes.
It continued into the DCUC line where scrawny arms and odd proportions prevailed. The Stock DCUC body type just wasn’t good. And as happy as I was to get certain character like Power Girl or Black Canary, the toys just weren’t fun.
But now? Now Hasbro is doing female toys right. And when girls are fun to play with, then we have no problem spending money on them and playing with them.
Wait…
Yeah, OK, that’s about right.
So I guess the point of this is simple: a fun toy is a fun toy. You make a fun toy, and it will be bought. Scarlett and Jinx and Zarana and Teela were fun toys. And now, Moonstone and Black Cat (minus the heels — get rid of the damned heels) are closing in on what makes a fun toy.
Stop the shortpacking and stop the assumptions. If you build a good female figure, we will come.
