Rogues' Roundup Special: No Girls???

 

In the last few toy blogs, I've been covering the semi-obscure Tonka Play People line. In the process, I made a few offhand comments that got me thinking further about one of the most egregious issues with "vintage" action figures: There were hardly any female characters in the action figure lines, or at least I hardly ever saw them. I decided it was time to take a closer look, and see if we can get a better idea why this happened... of course, besides the obvious.

I can say to begin with that what I remember is that females weren't exactly absent, but usually very limited in number. The pattern here was "the" girl: Princess Leia, Scarlett, Teela, April O'Neill, perhaps a counterpart among the villains like Baroness or Evil Lynn, usually fairly prominent but always vastly outnumbered. Here's a pic of the only one of these I remember having, the Princess Leia/ bounty hunter figure, with a couple other figures... and damn, she looks young.

Something I can add here is that I don't remember ever having more than one of the major Star Wars characters, except maybe the Bespin and skiff-guard versions of Lando. From my further recollections, I never concerned with having more than one of the "character" figures. If I had, I suppose I might have tried to multiply the female cast by making several Leia a different character, pretty much as I've done here with the Truckstop Queen and her "sisters". (Most of my habits go way back.) But that simply wasn't how kid-me looked at things. To me, Leia was Leia, Luke was Luke and Han was Han, whether they were supposed to be on Hoth or Tantooine. The long-term result was that the vast majority of my collection ended up being stormtroopers, droids and aliens, a trend which got even more pronounced in my teens and adulthood. I couldn't have been alone, since a very large proportion of the ROTJ Kenner figures were monsters from Jabba's palace. The clear implication is that it wasn't just that kids didn't want girls; even humans could end up pushed to the margins.

That brings us to what started this, the Tonka action figures. I have already pictured above the one female figure I have obtained, the giant Tonka lady. It was my further assessment that the Tonka line offered a better range of female figures than most. In fact, after taking a closer look at Figure Realm. I'm satisfied that there were four female figures among at least 23 in the 3.75 inch line, or1 in 5 counting the two 5-inch sculpts- still not great, of course, but a good sight better than Star Wars. It is unfortunately telling that all of them were in the nominal first "wave", making it likely that the ladies were getting scarce well before the end. Here's an extra pic I found of a color variant of Lady Tonka figure from online listings, which we've already seen Tonka did a lot of.  I did correspond with the seller to confirm it was a 5" figure; I still left it out of previous posts, but decided to bend the rules here.

Returning to my immediate experiences, my usual solution if I wanted a female character was Playmobil, which I already routinely mixed in with regular action figures. Back then, the people/ figures had a different hair piece and body style for the women. Somewhere along the line, I figured out it was possible to switch the hair. I did this a few times, just to have a few "character" figures for women who looked dressed for whatever adventure was online. What stands out as an oddity even now is that there was exactly one figure with a woman's hair on a guy's body that I was sure I didn't swap myself, and it was by far the most worn of the figures. Was it made before the manufacturer had set down their own rules? Anyone who knew probably never cared. Here's some pics of the ladies, with and without modification, plus a few kids thrown in.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to be, but it feels good."

This brings me to my own conclusion. Left to their own devices, toymakers tended to work in some variety both in gender and roles. The Adventure People Fisher Price line (covered back in the first Rogues lineup) had even more women than Tonka did. The obvious answer remains that female characters faded away as action figures became "oriented" toward boys. But I find it even more significant that more and more toy lines were based on movies and cartoons. It was certainly here that "the" girl became entrenched, and it still remains debatable if we have really escaped it. It all gets me thinking further of some of my movie reviews. The two best examples by far for the portrayal of women remain Flash Gordon and The Adventures of Hercules. The first portrayed a woman as a leader of the forces of evil without even commenting on her gender, while the second gave two well-developed, self-reliant women who didn't simply drop into the "Amazon" stereotype. I still find either one preferable to the female superheroes and revisionist Disney princesses we have been buried under in recent times.

With the editorial out of the way, here's one more, of all things, the Definitely Dinosaurs line. As previously discussed, the dinos came with caveman figures that I very happily ignored. I still noticed that one of them was clearly female. At face value, it was just another case of "the" girl... except r the dinosaur she came with.

"I am woman, hear my T-rex roar."

As usual, we've come a long way. Mostly downhill.

That's all for now, more to come!