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How Hasbro and Marvel Are Making Me Feel…

Hasbro and Marvel are not making Black Widow merchandise, and it's disappointing.

Hattie Kennedy

Staff Writer

Hattie is a comics scholar and obsessive reader from Brighton(ish) but living in Glasgow, Scotland where she is working towards a PhD in Canadian Studies, more specifically about Québécois comics and politics. Mostly she reads comics about other peoples’ lives because she’s nosy like that. She is an enthusiastic, if not experienced, seamstress and could win Olympic Gold Medals if only Procrasti-Sewing and Procrasti-Baking were recognised sports. A not insignificant percentage of her free time is spent worrying about whether her cats like her as much as she likes them. She is resident Quebec Comics Monkey over at Graphixia where she likes to lay claim to being more Canadian than she really is. Twitter: @HattieK

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I really am trying hard not to lose faith in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its attitude towards the women it portrays. I really am. This is not me not trying. But on more than one occasion over the past months it has felt like they are trying to alienate and annoy their feminist fans.

First of all they still haven’t announced a Black Widow movie and that makes me feel all:

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Then there was the thing where Jeremy Renner and Chris Evans were kind of awful and I was all like,

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Then when I went to see Age of Ultron even though I could see what they were trying to do with Bruce Banner and Black Widow I could feel my face slipping into my “BUT THE PATRIARCHY” grimace.

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And now, now I see that Hasbro (who think that I need my nerf guns pink, with feather accents and with the girlified name ‘Rebelle’) have produced an ENTIRE range of Age of Ultron merchandise in which Black Widow, the SOLE female Avenger, is absent.

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Not only can I not buy a Black Widow action figure,

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Though I can buy Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Nick Fury, Hawkeye, and Ultron,


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And when I go on the Hasbro website all of the Avengers toys are tagged for boys,

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But to add insult to injury Marvel Age of Ultron Cycle Blast Quinjet toy, representing a key moment from the film in which Black Widow was dropped from the jet on a bike and still manages to kick arse, has had Black Widow replaced by Captain America. So now you can recreate the moment that didn’t happen when Captain America was dropped from a plane on the back of a bike and still manages to kick arse…

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Don’t worry though, it isn’t just Hasbro who don’t like Black Widow. These t-shirts show that Uniqlo seems to have forgotten about her as well.

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And Disney seem to have left Black Widow off almost all of their clothing featuring pictures of The Avengers as a team.

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I wish I could be surprised by these omissions. I wish I didn’t know that my lady dollars aren’t worth enough to these companies to ensure that stuff like this didn’t happen. I wish that they would acknowledge how important it is to small boys and small girls that they see ALL of The Avengers represented in their merchandise, that toy Captain America doesn’t take credit for Black Widow’s kicking of arse.

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However, I am not surprised.
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I am disappointed and angry and sad, but not surprised any more.

 

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