Hypable.com - Power Rangers Executives didn't want girl toys
 

Our article - http://news.tokunation.com/2016/01/2...irl-toys-31338

Original article - http://www.hypable.com/star-wars-toy...to-exclude-rey

It's not surprising, unfortunately. It's kind of the same for the 'girl' brand I avidly follow, too (GEE I WONDER), but inverted.

I really do hate this mentality that boys don't buy female characters, but it hurts most for Power Rangers because they're a unified team. Any kid wanting to complete a team is gonna have a hell of a time as they sit with 4/5 muscle bound dudes desperately searching for the harder to find Pink ranger.

It's not at all surprising, but still rather... disgusting to know that this mindset is still such a big thing in the toy industry these days. Things are changing for the better, but really slowly.

That said, while I'm disappointed in the lack of Rey merch in some areas (Monopoly and other non-toy items), I think the backlash over the "lack of Rey" was over hyped. She's certainly difficult to find, but that has more to do with her selling so fast than it does with a lack of options for her.

It's just the situation of "MAXIMIZE PROFITS!"
But as long as it's someone raised from the GI Joe and He-Man era of toy buying at the helm, at the end of the day, things won't change.
It's a lot easier to get fans voices heard these days to rectify these problems, but it's still rather annoying that they won't fix the issue until much later in the line.

What's funny to me is that this is obviously a slight at Hasbro and their Star Wars releases, which yes are mandated by both Lucasfilm and Disney.

However, in their own franchise, Transformers, they've held two fan votes to create characters and both have been females (Windblade and now the Victorian combiner). They've also improved on their "Marvel Legends" figures having female characters more and more in the assortments and more and more available ... even if during the movie years the toys are few and far between.

This is an age old marketing thing - boys don't buy girl toys. I get it. But the only way to buck the trend is to allow the customer to make the choice instead of making it for them, leaving them to wonder "Where are the girl toys?"

Not surprising. Most younger girls don't seem to be into action shows while boys are normally are. I have a 8 year old and 12 year old second cousins don't seem to be in action shows. They are more into the live action teen drama shows on Nick and Disney Channel. While my three year old second cousin is really into stuff mainly market to boys like Spider-Man and Sonic.

Besides Barbie, I don't think there is many toys market to girls here in the US. Going by what I seen, most girls these days are more into the teen drama shows on Nick and Disney. I don't think you can make a toy line out of ICarly unless I'm wrong (I haven't watch Nick in 10 years. I just hear on my two female second cousins on what they like that is airing on TV).

No, as in, where are the toys based on the girls. The pink and yellow rangers, Rey, Scarlett, etc etc.

Nicely wrote article Kickback. It is nice to see the newer toylines having more girl figures given we had barely any the last few years.

i have this argument constantly at work. its not that boys don't want girl figures. its that they don't want just the girls.

Also it's rarely kids that buy the toys. Parents are the real problem. they don't want little johnny playing with a girl action figure.

My nephew, when he was a kid, wanted the girl toys. He was drawn to the girl characters because they were "nice" and "the boys need the girls to win". He even got a roleplay kitchen because he liked to pretend and it was one of the only things you can get that allows you to roleplay pretend things.

My sister, bless her heart, never discouraged it. She didn't encourage it, but if he wanted it then she would get it for him because who is she to tell him what he can and cannot like?

You'd be surprised how many kids don't get the toys they want as a kid because "No that's a girl toy" or "No that's a boy toy". I remember when I was 5 years old I would be next door playing with the girls (because there was like one fellow boy on my street) so yup - I played My Little Pony and it was fun. They had all the ponies and the playsets.

Why should toys have to be gender-geared? Why can't toys just be toys?

Wasnt there something in mid-late 2015 about target trying to get rid of the Boy/Girl toy aisle setup for their stores?

No, just their clothing section.

I understand the mentality. Some female characters deserve toys. Others shelfwarm. You run a risk, either way. Amedala toys stagnated back in the prequel days of Star Wars...but GIJoe Baroness toys usually would eventually sell. As a toy company, you don't get to pick which girls to do...the mentality is generally do them all or policy them out.

It's easy to say "let the customer decide". But if that means product starts to collect dust, it's not the customer's job on the line back at corporate.

Toy Kitchens shouldn't be a "girl" thing anyway. Does this look like a girl to you?
http://www.thegourmetreview.com/dine...a-Marsalis.jpg

Obviously a boy who likes cooking probably wouldn't want a pastel purple kitchen set but he wouldn't NOT want a kitchen set at all! Hell, I had one. And I mostly pretended the toy toaster was the one from The Brave Little Toaster but still!

It's always just a case knowing what you're selling. Padme was an action girl for, like, 2 scenes out of the prequel trilogy. She wasn't going to sell because she wasn't interesting to the adult or the child audiences. Characters like GI Joe's Baroness or Scarlett were more popular because they got the quips, the fights, and screen time of them doing more than sitting around acting important.

Also, concerning cooking and toy kitchens, hasn't it been proven that men cook as often, if not more, than their female partners in recent years? The kitchen has stopped being the "Girl zone" for like, 50 years now...Cooking is fun~
I've always found it odd how many male professional chefs you see, but they never market the cooking "Toys" (For lack of a better term, since you can actually cook with them) to girls.

[Also, Kickback played with ponies? Oh, thank you for giving me that nugget of information~]

Bandai, please stop giving Feminists fuel.

Sincerely,
Everyone who's tired of Gender Politics being inserted into EVERYFUCKINGTHING.

I remember when feminists targeted ponies briefly.
http://i.imgur.com/RaX8IuY.png

I'll never forget it. :lol

It's almost like women still aren't treated equally or something.

That's less feminist and more just stupid people using words they don't understand.

Fair enough :lol

It bothers me when people blame stuff like this on the toy companies. Like Kickback said, it's typically whoever owns the property who's at fault (Lucasfilm, and Saban in this case). The toy industry as a whole seems to be willing to blur the lines between boy and girl toys. Heck, whenever the issue is brought up at school, all of my professors say that they'd like to blur the lines more, and society is slowly getting there, but you still need to skew things one way or another, because that's how things are unfortunately. The toy industry can't be the only one who makes that change, since it depends on the license holders, as well as the general populace to also be willing to give girl toys in boy's lines, or what have you, a chance.

Really is it that big of a deal? Yeah there might be less toys of Rey, but really only a few need to exist, with good distribution. Her outfit changed once and got "something" at the end. Why people think there needs to be so many toys of girls in these lines is beyond me, they come they go and you can only do so many variations on a character before it starts to get old.

It's not that there needs to be tons of figures, but she was barely featured in any of the promotional things, packaging etc.

It's the same thing with Power Rangers. The world is evolving and so should the industry. Someone has to be willing to take that chance and let the boy who wants to buy Barbie know that it's OK. Everyone likes what they like and they are who they are.

There are a ton of toys marketed towards girls, but they are all scary as shit.

Barbie, Monster High, Ever-after High, MLP (supposedly), the MLP in human form, LaLa Loopsie, Disney Princesses, and Disney Princess animals. There are probably more, but this is the only stuff my daughters have wanted/I have bought, but I also buy them Marvel and PR stuff.

I think it's just rather noticeable due to how toys are released. While I don't follow the current Star Wars toyline and I'm basing my next statement off my experience with the toys released around the prequels and Clone Wars, it's odd that Rey, the protagonist, would get only 2 toys in a franchise that releases the same character as a hundred toys (Standard Obi-Wan, Lightsaber swinging Obi-Wan, giant lizard riding Obi-Wan, Force Push Obi-Wan (Comes with force missile), Obi-Wan vs Anakin battle set, electronic talking Obi-Wan, etc etc).
While I don't have a problem with a character not getting a new toy every wave, ever since the prequels, it's been Star Wars' nature to just pump different toys of the same characters on the shelves, which makes the lack of Rey's presence notable.

Once again, though, I haven't been following the Force Awakens toys, so I don't know how they're doing things.

MLP isn't scary. They're actually rather easy. As long as you know the name of the character, shopping for MLP toys is incredibly easy.
Unless they're Pinkie Pie or Twilight, in which case...Good luck.

I have no idea why this whole Rey has no action figures thing is still going on. It's already been proven to be bullshit. Hasbro has released 7 different Rey figures so far. She's also featured in multiple LEGO sets, including at least one where she's the primary minifig. Then there's the Bionicle style figure of her.

I don't think they're talking about her not having toys of her. I think they mean the amount of toys produced. They made a small amount of these toys thinking they wouldn't sell because boys don't want to buy girl figures.

Still online shopping is becoming bigger and bigger, if people or a kid can't find what they want in a physical store, then they can go to Amazon or what ever, show their parents and there, they have their toy. This whole debate is pretty stupid if you ask me.

No. They've been pretty clear that they mean the number of different products. The part that really irritates me, is that when they do see Rey toys, they start acting like they had something to do with it.

BoA on the other hand does have a problem doing female figures. They're slowly getting better about it, though.

If they ever do a Legacy Shogun Megazord, I look forward to someone complaining about them making the pink zord, white.

Exactly! When I was a kid I would travel to Mexico to see my grandma and my cousins and I would always play with my cousin and with Barbie dolls she had. She had a crap load of houses and vehicles to go with them to.

Bandai America is sexist.

I object to this. Simple fact is female toys don't sell to boys. Power Rangers fans are lucky they even get female action figures as pack-ins.

To put it in perspective, I was not allowed to refer to the green Paladin in Voltron: Legendary Defender as female EVER, because retailers would refuse to stock merchandise if we did. The Princess wasn't allowed to be called a princess either.

It's not that toy company executives are malicious. They tend to make toys for both boys and girls. But when you got shows that cross gender boundaries like Power Rangers and the current My Little Pony incarnation it's hard to market their respected toys to both boys and girls. It tends to fall on one gender or the other. Rarely both.

Think back to when you were kids. Either you or some kid you knew thought of the opposite sex as gross. They had "cooties." No six-year-old boy wants to be caught dead holding a pink ranger figure. "Pink is for girls." "Why are you playing with dolls you freak?" Same goes for the girls. "Boys are such slobs." "Why are you playing with that dumb red ranger figure?" "You're just a gross tom-boy." Kids are mean and unfortunately that reflects in the marketplace.

And it's not like the toy companies didn't try marketing to both genders. Bandai America had dolls of the MMPR girl rangers back in the 90's. More recently Hasbro tried marketing to young bronies with the Guardians of Harmony series. It didn't do too well with either gender so the movie toys were marketed directly towards girls. Unless there is a major cultural shift, the only way to get boys to buy girl toys and vice versa is to bundle less popular characters with the more popular characters.

That's an archaic standpoint. As has been evidenced in this thread - there're loads of boys all over the world who would - and do - buy female figures.

There's a fear that female toys won't sell - and certainly, some don't (either the character isn't popular, or, yeah, some hyper-masculine-types aren't interested). You weren't allowed to refer to the Green Paladin as female not because she wouldn't sell but because people feared she wouldn't. There is a difference.

To put you in perspective, you've no idea how many times I've physically seen children of both genders (usually boys, though) looking for the female Power Rangers (Pink Dino Charge and White and Pink Ninja Steels) at my local Smyths and being quite vocal about not being able to find them.

Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool.

No.