It took a baffling 18 months, but Hasbro has finally cried uncle and agreed to include a Rey character in their “Star Wars” Monopoly game. Why the toy company snubbed the lead character of the “The Force Awakens” is a mystery for the ages. Or maybe not: Rey is a girl after all, and played onscreen by a girl (Daisy Ridley). And “Star Wars,” as know, is exclusively for boys, or man-children. It has no female fans — certainly not the legions of women who’ve been idolizing Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia since 1977, when the first film came out. And these women definitely don’t have any interest in thrilling space tussling, because girls, and only girls, play with dolls and unicorn figurines.
Or so Hasbro apparently thought. When they first announced the Monopoly set back in 2015, a Rey token was conspicuously absent. Instead, it was a sausage party between all the boys. There was outcry, but it took an 8-year-old girl, Annie Rose Goldman, from Evanston, Illinois, to really rally the masses to the cause. She wrote a letter to Hasbro in January of 2016, informing them that “girls matter.”
And yet here we are, in late July 2017. As early as last week, Hasbro was telling the AP that, while co-ed sets had been sold around the world, there was “insufficient interest” among Americans for a game that featured a token female token. This prompted no less than “The Force Awakens” director J.J. Abrams to tweet from his Bad Robot account a sign reading, “For those ‘sufficiently interested’ contact Hasbro customer service to get your Rey Monopoly token!”
But now Hasbro has had one of their characteristic changes of heart. The set being sold on July 25 will now include Rey, and any sexist “Star Wars” boys will just have to deal. Better late than never, right? Though it should have been better never than ever.
