My view is based on the Gobot Spay-C.Originally Posted by KELPIE
I owned the toy and barely watched the cartoon and for 30 years thought she was male.
These are toys that for the best part of 35 years been marketed at boys. There are civilians out there who don't know that female Transformers exist. The kids who play with them for the most part are boys. And because of wish fulfillment and self insertion they associate with the male characters. Plenty of boys out there think Prime Arcee was awesome but they will pick a male character first as toy sales showed. And if the character isn't overtly female the assumption is that it will be male until told otherwise.
To me that is the reality. Adding more female characters is good but I don't know if it will help. It may even hurt if they don't sell as well.
I love this article on the subject.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertai.../legos/484115/
If Lego are right the old Japanese trope of Arcee staying back at base might be the way to go. Of course not as a maid. But if boys play patterns are about the vehicles and girls play patterns are about interacting with an environment like a playset it would be interesting to see how Transformers would have to be modified to facilitate it.
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