Life has seemingly once again found a way in the Jurassic Park franchise, as Hasbro’s new Jurassic World dinosaur toys have inexplicably been marketed as male, in place of their female screen counterparts.
As anyone who has watched Jurassic World will recall, the vast majority of the dinosaurs are referred to on-screen using female pronouns. In fact, the use of exclusively female dinosaurs as a method of population control was a key plot point in the first Jurassic Park film, as well as the original novel. The breakdown of this system, through the application of frog DNA, highlights one of the major themes of the franchise, namely man’s inability to control nature.
Apparently, #hasbro made all the #JurrassicWorld raptor toys male: http://t.co/TwN5PSCl8e @dailydot #dinosaurs pic.twitter.com/OUSh9nMe01
— Baylee Pulliam (@BayleePulliam) June 25, 2015
Just as the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park changed gender when doing so was opportune for survival, so too have the dinosaurs of Hasbro’s Jurassic World toy line . A number of the plastic dinosaurs have been mysteriously re-gendered as “he,” though in some cases the gender neutral “it” pronoun has been employed. As Polygon notes, the box copy for Blue, the raptor pack’s beta, even directly references the franchises’ famous “Clever girl” line, while notably sidestepping the female noun.
“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!”
Hasbro made all the icky #JurassicWorld girl dinosaurs into macho dude dinosaurs http://t.co/n5hht1JEbd pic.twitter.com/jwfdqWNl7z
— HitFix Harpy (@HitFixHarpy) June 25, 2015
Fans flocked in record numbers to view Jurassic World , as the Inquisitr previously reported, and they will no doubt recall the great lengths to which the film went to point out the female nature of the raptors. The character who repeatedly mis-genders the raptors, though corrected multiple times during the course of the movie, eventually ends up eaten by one of them. Several observers even attempted to deflect criticism of sexism in Jurassic World by pointing out that all of the dinosaurs in the film were referred to as female, as Hitfix notes.
Why is Hasbro only selling male versions of ‘Jurassic World’s’ female raptors? (opinion) – http://t.co/JlXNKT0dHo pic.twitter.com/Xk04N4ehBV
— Hypable (@Hypable) June 25, 2015
The mis-gendering of the Jurassic World dinosaurs is hardly the first criticism to be leveled at Hasbro, which faced a debacle over the lack of Black Widow toys earlier in the year with the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron . Despite fans’ somewhat puzzled and surprised reaction, Hasbro, at this time, has yet to address their decision to gender-swap the entire Jurassic World toy line.
[Image: Universal via Polygon ]
