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I finally figured out why the Toy Store 4 trailers are bugging me a little. I get that the filmmakers want to keep the familiar, marketable toys, but Bonnie is a reasonably cared-for, apparently doted-upon little girl.
Unless the filmmakers are trying to comment on children and gender identity in a way that I sincerely doubt, she's meant to be read as a cis girl. And every cis girl I knew as a kid--and know now, as an adult--has shown a strong preference for animal or female toys.
It's great how that nice boy from down the street gave Bonnie a box of his old, well-loved toys! And Jessie should absolutely be central in Bonnie's life. But where is her box of Barbies and My Little Ponies? Where is the plush army?
Where is her personal Mother of Dragons, the one special doll who gets to ride Rex into battle every time she unspools her plastic Gormenghast, and who has probably done so many make-believe murders in the shadows of Bonnie's bed?
TL;DR: Little girls tend to prefer to play with female-identifying toys, a preference that is constantly reinforced by society in both active and passive ways, and the lineup of toys that worked for Andy's Room is insufficiently nuanced and diverse for her room.
I'm not shocked that this movie was written by two men. I am a little shocked that apparently two women were involved with conceiving the story (although it does make taking Bo off the bus make a little more sense).
All three of the new toys we have met through the trailers are male-identifying, with masculine pronouns. My childhood room was lucky if it had three male toys at a time, much less three new male toys entering all at once.
And again, if I felt like the filmmakers were saying something, this wouldn't be so jarring. But it feels like another INSIDE OUT, where they implied that Riley was genderfluid by making half the voices in her head male...
...and then were confused and a little horrified when people asked them about it directly. Half Riley's voices were male so that parents would bring little boys to see the movie, because girls can see movies about boys but not the other way around.
