I love toys. The first toy line I remember collecting was She-Ra, and I had all of them. My dad threw them out when I was in high school. I have yet to forgive him.
Courtesy of Flickr
I still collect toys. I even have a few She-Ras. The frustrating part of being a female toy collector and having an interest in buying figures that share your gender is the notion that girl action figures don’t sell. If they even put any female figures in a wave, they’re almost always shortpacked. So, if you don’t get to the store right when they open a case, you can either pay scalper prices on ebay or not get the toy.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand that I am not the target market for these toys. I get they’re for kids. But I’m not sold that they only appeal to boys.
Little girls don’t like Wonder Woman? Or Artemis from Young Justice? Or Batgirl?
Boys don’t like these characters?
Courtesy of Fully Jointed Play Figures
Maybe the problem isn’t that kids segregate toys as “boy toys” and “girl toys”. Maybe the problem is we tell our kids that “those are for boys” and “these are for girls”. Kids are pretty awesome. If you hand them a bunch of toys, they’ll play with all of them regardless of gender, unless they’ve been taught otherwise.
Besides, what’s the point of having Green Lantern if you don’t have a Wonder Woman to kick his ass?
