‘That’s very sexist’ Scarlett Johansson is rightly disappointed there’s so few Black Widow toys

Scarlett Johansson had an interesting encounter at the premiere for her movie Transformers One, and it had to do with gendered toys.

While walking the red carpet, Johansson was greeted by a reporter from ITV News who was handing the stars the toys their movie characters were based on. She had an Optimus Prime for Chris Hemsworth, a Megatron for Brian Tyree Henry… but nothing for Johansson, who plays Elita in the film. She hadn’t been able to find a toy of her.

“It’s a conspiracy!” Johansson said, seemingly only half jokingly. The reporter said, “That’s sexist, right?” to which Johansson answered, “It’s very sexist, I agree. There’s also very few Black Widow toys out there too, and I think that’s very sexist.” They joked that perhaps there were no Elita toys because they’d sold out, but the truth is likely to be more depressing: marketing executives don’t think that “girl toys” sell very well.

Trying to find the women in the merch

This has been a problem for some time now, and no character illustrates the scale of the problem better than Johansson’s Black Widow. When The Avengers first hit cinemas, toy sets were frequently released with Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Thor and Hawkeye only. Even on disposable things like cards and gift wrap, no Black Widow. She was the only main female character in the movie, so where was she?

Then came Guardians of the Galaxy, which again had only one main female character, in this case Zoe Saldana’s Gamora. And guess what happened! Same thing again. Plenty of women pointed out at the time, isn’t this a little weird?

People were starting to sit up and back attention to this by the time Avengers: Age of Ultron came out. This time there was one other major female superhero in the movie, Scarlet Witch… and both of them were left off the merchandise. It was starting to look just plain silly: what were the executives worried about, exactly? That a boy wearing a Black Widow t-shirt brought him too close to femininity? That girls would start getting ideas above their station if female characters were made into action figures? What sort of bizarre, outdated logic were they operating on?!

People on X still remember that time when there was barely a Widow action figure to be found, and even now there’s not exactly an abundance of modern merch for her. They’re not happy about it.

But gradually, and thankfully, times changed… even if they changed a bit too late for Black Widow. Thanks to lead female characters like Rey from Star Wars and Captain Marvel, there’s a bit more gender diversity at the toy store these days. And I had a look on Amazon for Elita toys, and there are indeed some, which is promising. But Johansson is absolutely right about the initial lack of Black Widow toys being “very sexist.”