social justice league chats
Marvel axed female villain from Iron Man 3 after fears of poor toy sales, says director
Marvel axed female villain from Iron Man 3 after fears of poor toy sales, says director
Shane Black, the director and co-writer of Iron Man 3, has said he was forced to change the gender of the film's villain from female to male after pressure from the production company Marvel, which feared toy merchandise would not sell as well.
theguardian.com




I really wish everyone would actually name drop who was directly responsible for this decision, as well as all the other anti-female non-ideas at Marvel: Ike Perlmutter. He really needs to be held accountable for being such an incorrigible shit stain on this franchise. I like that this article is one of the few (and maybe only) that actually mentions him.
Is there any actual market research to back up this idiotic notion that a woman villain wouldn't sell toys?
How would they know if they've never tried?
Ugh. Who thinks that girls don't buy toys? The Toy Industry Association's own numbers show that Dolls vastly outsell Action Figures year over year ($2.59B vs $1.44B for 2015).
Not only that, but an action figure IS a doll (by definition, it is "a poseable doll marketed to boys"). Hasbro created the term 'action figure' to sell GI Joe DOLLS to boys.
NORMAL
AND
APOLITICAL
Another perfect example of marketers ruining somebody else’s work. There was a similar (but less severe) incident where Hasbro demanded that Faust use the name Princess Celestia instead of Queen Celestia, partially because Disney had stigmatized Queens. If somebody were to create a complete compilation of all of the ways in which capitalists tampered with people’s creative works, it’d be pretty damn long.
Rightists love to go on & on about how ‘political correctness’ is ruining the media, but I’d be surprised if even half of those folks criticized this decision. Quite probably, they’ll refer to freedom of contract as an excuse.
This type of argument is always the weirdest to me.
When I was a little girl, my parents never forced me to play exclusively with dolls. So growing up my toy collection included "boy" toys AND "girl" toys. Therefore I was patronizing both companies equally and at the same time.
Honestly all of this just reeks of laziness. Instead of making toys that any kid would play with, they make toys that follow a stereotype and then force kids to abide by them.