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So, this actually happened. I volunteered to plan a party for our Service Unit's leader appreciation meeting, and I decided the theme would be “Volunteers Are Heroes.” I spent weeks figuring out what to do for decorations, activities, party favors, food, etc. Then two weeks before, I went shopping for action figures to use as cake toppers and found out there is apparently no such thing as a female action figure. Major FAIL.
I've been in fandom a looooooooong time (about 30 years, in fact) and I'm familiar with how things work in the world of comicbook heroes. But honestly, the girls and I couldn't even find a Black Widow action figure, and last I saw, she was pretty popular these days thanks to the Avengers movie. So what gives?
On the upside, planning this party did rekindle my interest in comic books, a long neglected part of my geekdom, and I had the chance to spend plenty of time explaining to the girls about the different characters in comic books, especially the women characters. And this in turn led to me going into a local comic book store and starting up collecting again. Nothing major like I used to do. Pre-kids, I used to drop around $150 a month on comics. I can't afford that now. But I can afford a couple comics a month, and that includes some comics for the girls, who have become very interested in Cat Woman, Bat Girl, She-Hulk, and Wonder Woman. Too bad most of those titles aren't suitable for kids 12 and under (though we did find a Black Widow comic that was labelled as kid friendly, and Pixie snatched that right up!).
By the way, here's a quick look at some of the party decorations in progress. We ended up Photoshopping a picture of She-Hulk and putting her on the cake. It worked very well.
By the way, if you didn't see it already, Mich and I have started a new webcomic called Bitchcraft! The first episode is here. I'll be working to see if I can get this set up and running on every Friday, so keep coming back for more!
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Unluckily, Black Widow and Hawkeye were considered “secondary characters” in the Avengers movie. So, they didn’t get as many toy tie-ins as the main four: Iron Man, Capt America, Thor, and Hulk. Plus, the toy manufacturers still think that “action-figures” are primarily a boy’s product. They have not embraced the idea of gender-neutral marketing.