This is not exactly an advertisement for Disney’s upcoming Star Wars: Forces of Destiny.
This is a test bed. Disney — and never forget this — is in the business of selling stuff to girls’ parents. Oh, they’ll eagerly sell to boys’ parents. They’ll just as happily sell to adults with no children, too. And obviously they market to children generally, because it’s more cost-effective that way. But the Mouse owns Star Wars now, and they are accustomed to being able to move immense amounts of product accordingly, so it’s time to figure out how to make a nine-to-eleven year old girl need to have All The Things.
I am actually phlegmatic about this. This is what you get when you bring in the Mouse. This is what pays for the stuff that I want to see.
As someone with daughters in that demographic, I think the mouse incorrectly understands their problem.
The hurdle here isn’t making little girls want all the things, it’s getting their mothers to agree.
.
My daughters and their friends all adore Batman.
Very few of them have any Batman toys.
.
LEGO was brilliant with their pink-themed Friends and Shopkins sets, not because it appealed to girls, but because it appealed to their mothers. (And allowed fathers to buy Legos for their daughters without starting a fight.) The kids still take the Legos and build whatever their imagination conceives.
.
Space princess isn’t much of a stretch. Space princess who dresses like a boy and picks fights with squads of stormtroopers? Bit of a problem there, I’m afraid.