If you go to Children’s Place, you’ll find lots of overpriced T-shirts, including ones with the hottest fictional characters. That includes the Guardians Of The Galaxy, unless you’re a boy, in which case, for some reason, Gamora is not featured.
To give you an idea of how strange this is, here’s the shirt in question, found by a Twitter account:
If you know anything about design, it’s a cluttered, messy and badly done shirt designed to cram in the entire team. Notice Rocket is just shoved in down in the corner there. Also, Drax appears to have been attacked by the dreaded villain Airbrush, or the artist mistook Dave Batista for Tor Johnson.
Still, we expect shoddy design from children’s clothes because, let’s face it, kids aren’t usually critiquing a picture on its framing or the arrangement of its visual elements. What’s weird is that Gamora is missing, and when you’re trying to cram in the whole team and leave her off at the same time, it’s a little awkward. What, would it have ruined the artist’s vision to stuff her in behind Star-Lord’s shoulder?
So, when asked about it, did Children’s Place say “Oh, we got them that way from the factory, ask Marvel?” or “Huh, that’s weird, we didn’t notice, we’ll ask our supplier?” No! They chose to say the one thing guaranteed to annoy the entire Internet:
Which… really? It’d be one thing if this were a Turtles shirt and we were talking April O’Neil, but if the Power Rangers, the Planeteers, the Avengers, and the Justice League, plus who knows how many other hero teams aimed at kids, have taught us anything, it’s that kids don’t care if there’s a woman on the team. Realistically, if your kid sees a woman on his shirt and says “Ick! A vagina!”, your problems go well beyond clothing him, although we will warn you that you don’t find many fedoras that fit an eight-year-old.
Anyway, because I have delusions of being a real journalist and don’t mind being added to a few more watch lists, I poked around the Children’s Place website and looked at their licensed boys tees, and this does appear to be a consistent policy. Whether that’s due to Marvel not making them or Children’s Place not stocking them is unclear. And they may not sell; it’s not like Children’s Place backed this assertion up with any data. Still, come on, guys, at least have the awareness to pass the buck.
UPDATE: We’re getting a lot of comments that this isn’t just one store, but across the board. That indicates it’s a specific decision by Marvel, which is pretty strange. We’ve contacted Marvel PR to see if they can offer any insight.