Wednesday, October 3

Pink non-girl toys in Boy Franchises

Pink is usually considered a female color and I am not going into my whole debate over the color pink. But it should be noted that as late as the 1950's, it was still considered a "boy" color. Pink was seen as a shade of red, which relates to manly concepts like blood and war. Blue was associated with the Virgin Mary and was seen as a more serene color reserved for girls (in fact, the traditional colour for wedding dresses used to be blue before Queen Victoria popularized the white dress; all that remained of that is the line calling for "something blue" in the rhyme). Early in WWI, the French Army uniform included bright pink trousers. This was changed when the leaders realized it made them easy targets. Pink has become more of a girl color thanks to industrial merchandising and Barbie adopting the color. I wanted to highlight some characters in Boy Franchises that were NOT girls that wore pink.

 
 Hot Rod
He was introduced as Optimus Prime's replacement in the Transformers movie. Before final production, Hot Rod was originally cast in a pinker plastic to match the color of his animation model, but oddly, he was changed to a less animation-accurate red before release. This change evidently came too late to modify the factory-applied stickers the toy bears: the small decals on either side of Hot Rod's vehicle mode feature a pink background that would have matched the toy's original color scheme.
Skids and Mudflap
In the sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, these two 'male' Transformers became a pink and white Ice Cream Truck. They later changed their form.

Fangry and other Decepticons
G1 Decepticons were pink such as Fangry, Spinster and Carnivac.

Hot Wheels and Monster Jam
There has been many many pink Hot Wheels through the years and only one pictured above is a Barbie car. Another is a Batmobile. Four are Monster Jam trucks: Madusa, Eradicator, Scarlet Bandit, and Heart Breaker.

Bret Hart
The most famous wrestler in Pink Spandex, he said he picked the color to intimidate his competitors.

Gambit
The X-Men superhero had pink torso and accents and his kinetic energy was pink.

 Nimrod
 Speaking of Marvel and X-Men, Nimrod was an all-pink deadly villain.

Kamen Rider Decade
Kamen Rider is also known as Masked Rider. For the 10th anniversary of the revival in 2009, they made a 'magenta' rider. Fans refused to agree he was pink. Most of the Riders of the decade were Red and most of the first ones were green. He and Kamen Rider Raia are the only 'pink' ones.