Over at Shiny Shiny — “A girl’s guide to gadgets” — Camille Dumas laments the lack of Legion ladies in McDonald’s Happy Meal toys:
Even more stupefying is the new line of McDonald’s Happy Meal toys promoting the Legion DVD release. McDonald’s has eight toys: Superman, Timber Wolf, Lightning Lad, Brainiac 5, Bouncing Boy, Mano, Tharok, and Validus. There no women - leaving out founder Saturn Girl. The last three on the list are actually villains from the Fatal Five, yet their female leader is absent! Worst of all, the “girl toy” offered as a Happy Meal alternative is a fuzzy dress-up “Build a Bear” that is not only entirely unheroic, but seem to be aimed at toddlers rather than anyone who can form a complete sentence. Brainfreeze noted her Bratz-loving, glitter-wearing eight year old, offered one, “replied scornfully ‘I’m not a girly girl!’”
Are girls not “interested” in superheroes? Bull. I had a whole set of She-Ra figures, and dressed up as Princess Projectra for Halloween when I was six. The popularity of Xena, Buffy and Alias demonstrate that kickass women are just as good a deal as men. If McDonald’s thinks it can’t sell girl superheroes, it’s not doing it properly - and if the sexism was originally suggested by the Legion series, it’s doing a disservice to our children. This is purely unimaginative marketing and in addition to being despicable, it’s costing them money.
The Legion boys will be at McDonald’s through the end of this month; you can check them out here.
August 21st, 2007 at 9:12 am
It’s true. I don’t know what the reasoning is, but I think it’s a mistake. I think it is, anyway; my four-year-old son only likes boy superheroes and not girl superheroes; similarly, he only likes boy colours, boy numbers and boy words and not girl colours, girl numbers and girl words. And he won’t listen to me when I try to tell him that there’s no such thing. So maybe McDonald’s knows something I don’t.
[quote]I [...] dressed up as Princess Projectra for Halloween when I was six.[/quote]
Awesome.
August 21st, 2007 at 9:26 am
The toys just sit there though (at least that’s what the one I’ve managed to pick up does), which is kinda lame. I mean, where’s the punchy? (But I kinda liked the Superboy Pop-Up Punchout thing on the box…)
August 21st, 2007 at 10:08 am
Definitely a mistake, in my POV. A lot of us have got kid-aged relatives we’d like to turn loose into Legion fandom. Daughters, nieces, that sort of relatives?
How about it?
August 21st, 2007 at 10:31 am
The Avatar line of toys has the same problem. We’re two waves in, and we have yet to see either a Kitara or a Toph action figure.
August 21st, 2007 at 11:40 am
I’d be less offended by the sexism and more offended by the fact that Bouncing Boy made it, but Saturn Girl didn’t.
August 21st, 2007 at 12:28 pm
My daughter will be very upset to not have a Saturn Girl toy– my wife has already commented that she wasn’t featured on the bag.
This 3-year-old little girl picked Saturn Girl out from the cartoon and has named one of her imaginary friends after her. I don’t know how much she actually absorbs of the cartoon, but she loves watching it, and has her favorite.
At least she gets a “Bouncy Boy”.
Yes, I am a proud Daddy Legion-fan.
August 21st, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Here’s a case of McDonald’s missing out on the comic book and action figure marketing morass. They should make a Saturn Girl figure but SHORT-PACK it. Then, because of its rairty, you have umpteen gazillion collectors rampaging into the Golden Arches to get this “rare” figure.
Only partly said tongue in cheek, but what do I know. In Manhattan McDonald’s they will not sell you a Happy Meal unless you have kids in tow physically in the store. Arguments that “what do you care, I’m buying the freakin’ Happy Meal!” fall on untrained ears.
August 21st, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Yes, but generally (in my limited and mostly quite dated experience with these things) you don’t get to choose the toy. You get to choose which toy set they’re coming from (Build-a-Bear or Legion in this case). So if your goal is to get your girl the Saturn Girl toy with the Happy Meal, even if they offered one odds are you’d be disappointed. And if a boy got stuck with Saturn Girl, he might be particularly disappointed (yes, boys shouldn’t be like that… but they often are.) So their goal would seem to be to make a gender-based selection, although I understand those who think the B-a-B choice might be less than optimal (though it sure brought a smile to my 2.5 year old gal when we stopped at McDonalds on the way back from her first trip to the emergency room — anything that does that gets a positive vote in my book).
When McDonalds was offering Bratz, I don’t recall anyone being offended that they didn’t have a boy Bratz. (I shudder to think what that would look like!)
August 21st, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Well, my 5 and 7 year old girls are loving the Legion figures, so I think they made a mistake not making any of the female team members.
May 25th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
I know that totally stinks I am a total fan and Saturn Girl’s biggest I totally agree with Joshua Bouncing Boy and not Satrun Girl HA Ha Ha and you know what why would even give out super - villains talk about a bad influence that is totally true please
e - mail me at SaturnNShade@yahoo.com so we can discuss it more - Saturn.J