Rey from The Force Awakens finally makes her way to the toy shelf

Share

Star Wars fans meticulously pore over every detail of the franchise, but when toys for the new movie began hitting shelves, it hardly took Jedi-level skills to notice a glaring omission. Rey, the character played by Daisy Ridley, was practically nowhere to be found.

Furious fans began a social media campaign demanding to know #WheresRey.

Now, Disney has finally responded, saying it is working on getting more toys and other merchandise featuring the character into stores.

"Rey is a true breakout hero in the movie and is proving a huge hit with our guests. Demand for Rey merchandise was strong even before the movie released, with products selling as quickly as we could restock shelves, and it's only growing with the success of the film," Elissa Margolis, senior vice-president of Disney Stores, said in a news release on Tuesday.

Although the character's absence from merchandise looked to many like blatant sexism, the people behind the toy empire say it was actually done to avoid spoilers.

"This new wave of products has got key elements from the film. You see Rey with a sabre, her blaster and a number of other elements we wanted to hold back until the film had been released," Paul Southern, head of licensing at Lucasfilm, told Entertainment Weekly. "The timing is good to try and address some of the social discussion that has been created through the 'Where's Rey?' movement."

That "discussion" has seen fans angry and confused since September, when Star Wars: The Force Awakens toys were first unveiled. One toy set included six characters from the movie, but not Rey (or General Leia Organa, for that matter).

But the anger reached a tipping point in recent weeks over a Star Wars Monopoly game – released in September and so covered by the spoilers defence – that does not include a Rey piece.

An eight-year-old's letter to Hasbro asking how the toy company could exclude Rey – "Without her THERE IS NO FORCE AWAKENS!" it read in part – went viral when it was tweeted earlier this month.

Even director J.J. Abrams said last weekend it seems "preposterous and wrong that the main character of the movie is not well represented in what is clearly a huge piece of the Star Wars world in terms of merchandising."

Hasbro now says it will release an updated version of the Monopoly game with a piece based on the character.

Perhaps it is true that Hasbro and Lucasfilm were only doing their best to avoid giving away important plot details by excluding Rey from so much merchandise.

What can be said for sure, given the overwhelming demand for Rey toys, is that the film's female characters are just as popular among fans as the male ones, both on film and toy store shelves, Steve Sansweet, president of the Star Wars memorabilia museum Rancho Obi-Wan, in California, told the Associated Press.

"I think Hollywood and merchandisers are waking up to the fact that it's not just women and girls who want to buy Rey figures, it's guys, too," he said.

It's a shame that the character has so far been given second-class status at toy companies, while being such a huge part of the movie. The popular demand for Rey toys is a good sign that we are moving beyond the retrograde notion of a "girl's toy."