Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been in theaters for some time now, and it has been given a mostly positive response from fans and critics alike. On top of it being a fun movie for all ages and a nostalgic trip for long-time fans, it has also been praised for being the most progressive Star Wars yet. Placing a female lead as the Luke Skywalker of this story and a black male hero at her side was proven to be a bold choice (i.e. the backlash against John Boyega being cast as Finn), but also still a safe choice, as the movie has now garnered over $1 billion.

But like any movie, it was not perfect and it did receive some criticism that had to do with plot, characters, and – not surprisingly – merchandising. If you have followed Disney's merchandising of certain properties, such as Marvel and Star Wars movies, you might have noticed that there are a plethora of male characters being represented in their products and a lack of female characters being represented.

Disney has received criticism for this before in regards to the characters Leia, Black Widow, and Gamora. A rather infamous example came around the time that The Avengers: Age of Ultron was released. Remember the scene where the Avengers are in Seoul, South Korea, going after Ultron, and Black Widow drops from a Quinjet on a motorcycle? Well, Hasbro and Mattel decided to make a toy depicting this scene, but replaced Black Widow with Captain America and Iron Man.

A similar thing happened when Hasbro decided to make an Episode VII Millenium Falcon set that included the ship, BB-8, Finn, and Chewbacca. If you've seen the film, you know that they left a really important person out: Rey. She pilots the ship. Why wouldn't you include the pilot?

One might argue that Disney was just trying to keep from spoiling their fans, which could make sense, in theory, because Disney was very good about being tight-lipped about the movie. But wouldn't Chewbacca being on the Millenium Falcon again be a spoiler, too? And why wouldn't you include Rey in this set of characters, that includes Finn, Poe, Chewbacca, Kylo Ren, a random Stormtrooper, and a random First Order pilot?

Imagine my disappointment when I was in Kohl's recently and saw these figurines of characters from The Force Awakens that included Chewbacca, Finn, Kylo Ren, Poe, a random Stormtrooper, Yoda (who is not in the movie, by the way), and even Captain Phasma, but no Rey. I was a little excited to see Captain Phasma there, as she was the only female character represented, but, at the same time, quite miffed. Phasma, played by Gwendoline Christie, tragically did not receive much screen time. Yet she was there and Rey, the protagonist and heroine, was not.

If I was still at the age where I liked to play with dolls, and I saw The Force Awakens, I would have loved to play with a Rey figurine. The same goes for Gamora or Black Widow. And I would not have been the only child, as evidenced by all of the people who expressed their disappointment with the #WheresRey hashtag on Twitter.

Unfortunately, this is not new. But fortunately, the people have spoken, and Disney responded by saying that a wave of new Rey products will be coming out this year. A Target spokesperson said that “fans will start to see more of her in 2016.”

So let's see how this goes and hope that Black Widow and other female characters are given the same attention in the future.