Star Wave Essay
Men and women alike throughout the world are asking the same plaguing question “Where’s Ray”. Nearly a month after the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in the US, people are still wondering why they can’t find the main heroine of the movie on shelves. In the Article “‘#wheresrey’? Disney says more ‘Star Wars’ heroine toys on way” by Ryan Nakashima, the author grapples with this controversial dilemma pervading the mind of many customers. A better restatement of this popular question however may be “why are there so little toys and figurines of Rey?”. Many have already begun to claim that the reason for this lack of Ray merchandise is that the filmmakers and retailers of the Star Wars enterprise just didn’t think that there would be
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such a heavy demand for Rey figurines and toys due to her being a girl, and retailers as well as Star Wars film companies Lucasfilm and Disney believing that Star Wars is “primarily a boy’s brand”. As one 8-year-old wrote to Monopoly maker Hasbro, “girls matter”.
However, as far as what these large film corporations have to say about this topic, this is not the whole truth, and many people may just be misunderstanding the entire situation. Rather, “part of the problem was that high demand for hundreds of products featuring Rey meant some shoppers could not find her on store shelves”(Nakashima ,1). This means that in some cases, Rey figurines were just being sold to quickly for some customers to even realize they were being sold there.
Furthermore, another reason for the absence of Rey merchandise may be that these large corporations actually didn’t expect such high demand for Rey merchandise, however this is not entirely because of her gender as many believe, and actually her gender may have even led these large corporations to manufacture more Rey products than they would have if the main protagonist had been a guy.
“... evil lord Darth Vader has outsold any other character by at least 3 to 1. ‘We assumed Kylo Ren was going to be the next great villain’, he said”(Nakashima,1). Star Wars retailers and film companies may have just expected a greater demand for Kylo Ren merchandise rather than for Rey due to previous incidents of high demands for Darth Vader merchandise rather than for any other characters in the movie, regardless of their position or role. On top of this, Disney actually revealed that it had already been planning to release more Rey merchandise, it had just been waiting for the next “Force Friday”, which will come on September 4 this year, to release them, so as to not spoil the key plot in the movie where Rey battles Kylo Ren with Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber.
As the Chinese philosopher Xun Zi once wrote, “In order to properly understand the big picture, everyone should fear becoming mentally clouded and obsessed with one small section of
truth.”
such a heavy demand for Rey figurines and toys due to her being a girl, and retailers as well as Star Wars film companies Lucasfilm and Disney believing that Star Wars is “primarily a boy’s brand”. As one 8-year-old wrote to Monopoly maker Hasbro, “girls matter”.
However, as far as what these large film corporations have to say about this topic, this is not the whole truth, and many people may just be misunderstanding the entire situation. Rather, “part of the problem was that high demand for hundreds of products featuring Rey meant some shoppers could not find her on store shelves”(Nakashima ,1). This means that in some cases, Rey figurines were just being sold to quickly for some customers to even realize they were being sold there.
Furthermore, another reason for the absence of Rey merchandise may be that these large corporations actually didn’t expect such high demand for Rey merchandise, however this is not entirely because of her gender as many believe, and actually her gender may have even led these large corporations to manufacture more Rey products than they would have if the main protagonist had been a guy.
“... evil lord Darth Vader has outsold any other character by at least 3 to 1. ‘We assumed Kylo Ren was going to be the next great villain’, he said”(Nakashima,1). Star Wars retailers and film companies may have just expected a greater demand for Kylo Ren merchandise rather than for Rey due to previous incidents of high demands for Darth Vader merchandise rather than for any other characters in the movie, regardless of their position or role. On top of this, Disney actually revealed that it had already been planning to release more Rey merchandise, it had just been waiting for the next “Force Friday”, which will come on September 4 this year, to release them, so as to not spoil the key plot in the movie where Rey battles Kylo Ren with Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber.
As the Chinese philosopher Xun Zi once wrote, “In order to properly understand the big picture, everyone should fear becoming mentally clouded and obsessed with one small section of
truth.”