Toy maker Hasbro is launching a new female character. As The Hollywood Reporter writes, the company will introduce Hanazuki, “a girl gifted with powers that are tied to her many moods.”
The toy line comes along with the launch of a digital series, “Hanazuki: Full of Treasures.” An app will hit devices in April, with toys and clothes hitting shelves in June, and long-form content to follow.
“We’re leading with stories, because stories are key these days,” says Meghan McCarthy, Hasbro’s head of storytelling for girl brands. “And we’re meeting [girl tweens] where [they are] 11 hours a week: on the web.” The series will begin with nine, 11-minute episodes.
THR dove into the appeal of girl’s toys, writing, “Even with legacy brands such as Mattel’s Barbie or Hasbro’s own My Little Pony, girls products continue to be big business and, in fact, the competition for dollars has intensified in the last few years. Lego launched a line aimed at female brick builders with its Lego Friends line in 2012, and followed that up with Lego Elves in 2015. Mattel teamed up with DC in 2015 to launch DC Super Hero Girls, a line that, like Hanazuki, takes the 360-degree approach with toys, animation, apparel, and books.”
But this approach to girls toys differs from the challenges faced by other entertainment-related franchises. As Women and Hollywood has previously reported, female characters, specifically those featured in action films, have a hard time making it to toy shelves.
“Iron Man 3” director Shane Black revealed a surprising truth about why Rebecca Hall’s character, Maya Hansen, and female super-soldier Brandt (Stéphanie Szostak) were tragically underdeveloped and ignored in the 2013 film: They were told that “the toy won’t sell as well if it’s a female.” Marvel has a notoriously bad track record when it comes to the toys of its female characters. Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow character was missing from a good number of “Avengers: Age of Ultron” playsets. Then, Zoe Saldana’s character Gamora from “Guardians of the Galaxy” was missing from toy sets and T-shirts.
The issue came up again when Daisy Ridley’s Rey character from “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” also lacked a significant number of toys, with Disney opting instead to include unnamed Stormtroopers or an alien that didn’t even make it into the movie in their playsets. The problem was raised on Twitter, where young girls and their parents repeatedly asked #WheresRey, shortly after having had to ask #WheresBlackWidow and #WheresGamora.
Thankfully, the environment has since improved. Over the summer, during the release of the female-led “Ghostbusters,” we reported that toymaker Mattel has strong sales for its line of “Ghostbusters” toys. Both girls and boys were snatching up the action figures, which include all four characters, played in the film by Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones, as well as the Ecto-1 toy car, and kid-size proton packs.
And this winter’s release of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” saw an abundance of accompanying Jyn Erso toys. The toy companies seem to have gotten the message that, not only do girls play with toys too, but if you make toys out of female characters, (gasp!) boys will still play with them.
Hopefully this Hanazuki character will be a positive role model for girls, and the merchandise line’s potential success will inspire toy companies to include female film characters in their toy plans.
