Expect more Gamora toys when Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 hits. Marvel's Kevin Feige addresses the #WheresBlackWidow and #WheresGamora campaigns.
During an on-set interview, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige addressed the #WheresBlackWidow and #WheresGamora campaigns, and discussed the efforts the company is making to ensure its female characters are better represented in the merchandise going forward.
Feige spoke with Peter and other assorted journalists during their visit to the set of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 last year. At one point, the Marvel exec offered his thoughts on the #WheresBlackWidow campaign:
That was very frustrating for us, because we see, we see it from the other side. When I say we, I mean the filmmakers, because we’re presented with the stuff that’s being made, and I don’t know if there’s an absolutely equal sampling, but Black Widow was all over that. Gamora was all over that stuff. What we don’t see is how much of it is in any given store. How easy is one piece of merchandise to find versus another piece of merchandise. So, we see the stuff and we go, oh great, these are all our characters, they’re all great represented, they’re all going to be sold, and then we find out, oh, you can’t find this, you can’t find that, or there’s lunch boxes or a backpack where a certain character is not on it, and I think the outrage was great, because that’s not going to happen anymore.
We can’t have sway over what a retail store, how many items of what they want to stock on a shelf, but when toy sets come over, or t-shirt designs come over, if they’re not represented properly or representative of the film, we’re not even saying is the equality of each gender specific, we’re going does it represent the movie we’re making, and if it doesn’t, we send it back until it does.
Talk is one thing and action is another, and we’ll have to wait a few more months to see how Feige’s promises play out in practice. It’s true that Marvel can’t control how many toys retailers order (which, in turn, impacts what kind of toys get made), but this is a case where consumers have voiced their demand for more female loud and clear. Marvel’s clearly heard the call; now it’s up to them to respond.
