Recently, the Super Mario happy meals toys were briefly in the news, on account of it being a slow news day. That sort of thing has been written about endlessly already. However, what grabbed my attention was the Princess Peach toy.
Being vegetarian, I'm pretty much oblivious to anything McDonlads produces, but my partner eats meat, and knowing about my love for video games, they kept the toy for me. I wasn't expecting much from a happy meal toy; usually a level above something you'd get from a kinda surprise or a pound shop.
So, there's the monarch of the mushroom kingdom just...standing there. Looks wise, her sculpt is ok; it certainly looks like peach, but with slightly sloppy paint apps (especially the gloves that look like they're melting). Which, I guess is par the course for cheap toys, you get bundled in a kids meal. But shouldn't there be some kind of play feature, other than standing in an arch? I actually thought maybe I'd lost a piece, or couldn't find the button that made her do something. But no, She is completely static, screwed into the doorway for good measure. She couldn't of fired a mushroom-missile? Or be launched into the air, like Sky Dancers- replicating Peach's floating ability? Or even just have her spin around on a base and print little Mario-based symbols, like her previous Happy Meal toy did? Or just...anything?
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| "No, it's ok, Mario. I'll just stand and watch...forever" |
Maybe it's a new, anti-kidnapping, device? Bowser can't make off with her now because she's been bolted into her own damn castle. A drastic measure, perhaps, but when you live your life in fear of being abducted by a giant terrapin monster, what else can you do? This Peach toy is a sad indicator of how female characters tend to be treated in video games and in toylines, aimed at boys.
We've all seen the same thing happen; if a male-centric toy line, based on a movie/comic/game/cartoon, and there's a female character in it, then chances are she's gonna be a long time coming to arrive in figure-form, if at all. Just ask all the Avengers fans, who've been twiddling their thumbs, waiting for a remotely affordable Black Widow toy to turn up. Whether it's a case of the manufacturers only including Peach as an afterthought- because she is integral to the Mario canon, albeit as a glorified McGuffin- or did they think girls would be happy with her doing nothing? Jakks Pacific's Peach figure doesn't exactly set the world on fire, but at least she can move her arms and *spoiler alert* comes with her parasol- a nod to her main attack in the Super Smash Bros games. All this Happy Meal Peach can do is stand by a bit of masonry, looking mildly bemused.
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| She's turned around right now, but she is bemused, trust me |
I know Peach, for the most part, is pretty much a trophy in the Super Mario series; the end goal to Mario's quest- which is whole other matter- but it saddens me that so little effort has gone into this Peach toy. It's a little toy that gets bundled with some lumps of salt, sugar, and unrecognisable parts of an animal; I don't expect Hot Toys-level detail or a hundred gimmicks, but it would be nice to have her do something other than stand. Her Amiibo figure is stuck in a fixed pose too, but at least it does something. Hell, her previous Happy Meal was twist on a rubber stamp, but now nothing? Oh, and she's secured with those weird screws, with the triangular holes in them, so you can't just detach her from her baffling backdrop. What a waste.
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