Anyone who’s seen Jurassic World (or even Jurassic Park) knows that all of the dinosaurs on Isla Nublar are female to prevent unintentional reproduction.
But Hasbro missed that memo while creating toy versions of the four velociraptors and every other dinosaur.
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Update (June 29): Hasbro has started changing the pronouns on their site to describe the velociraptors as females. In a statement to Yahoo! they said it “was an oversight” and they are “in the process of updating the language with the correct information.”
At the time of this writing, Charlie and Echo are still listed as male while Blue and Delta are female.
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Original story (June 25): Let’s take the toy version of the most popular raptor from Jurassic World, Blue, as an example. As noted by io9, the listing for the new Jurassic World toy on Hasbro’s site repeatedly describes the velociraptor as male. It also puts “Blue” in quotation marks as a wink to the fact that this is not exactly the Blue you remember from the movie (because, gender aside, the Blue in the movie is actually the color blue).
In the movie, Blue and the other velociraptors are female. The description of the toy from Hasbro reads as follows (bolding is ours):
“Clever as ever, Jurassic World’s velociraptors are masterful hunters. And this awesome figure looks just like Velociraptor ‘Blue’! He’s ready to team up with his fellow Velociraptors (other figures sold separately) to hunt the ultimate predator! His slashing claws and growling attack will destroy anything in his way. Let the hunt begin with your Velociraptor ‘Blue’ figure!”
And it’s not just Blue who’s had a change in gender. Charlie, Delta, and Echo are all female in the movie but referred to as male on Hasbro’s website.
What’s more, a note at the bottom of each toy’s description notes “Velociraptor figure looks like Velociraptor ‘[Name in movie].'”
This all feels fishy. Either Hasbro’s writers made a mistake, or they’re purposely marketing “Blue” and the others as boys because they think only boys will purchase boy dinosaurs because girls are ew cooties.
Why only create toys who “look like” these raptors? Why not just make the damn raptors seen in the movie? Because — in Hasbro-world — girls aren’t interested in these toys — that’s why! Look what we found when we searched for Jurassic World toys on Hasbro’s website. There are no dinosaurs for girls when literally every dinosaur in the movie is a girl:
Hasbro appears to be operating under the assumption that no girl wants a dinosaur toy. Even boys who are 2 — 3 years old have more options than a girl at any age.
Like io9 points out, this gender-swapping to appeal to boys is particularly troubling in the case of Jurassic World because there are no features on these dinosaurs to suggest they are female. There’s no dress, no make-up, no feminine physical features, etc. It’s just a dinosaur whose gender has very little relevance to the story.
If Hasbro is truly scared of selling girl characters to boys, these dinosaurs would’ve been a perfect opportunity to test their ill-advised theory. Given the huge success of Jurassic World and the fact that these dinosaurs aren’t in-your-face female, there was no reason to switch the gender. Sales of the female dinosaur toys would not have been any worse than how they’re selling right now.
Yes, these are only plastic toys. But this is indicative of a larger issue: Hollywood is primarily interested in appealing to the male side of the human population which is virtually the same size as the female side.