Wondering what the next new Angry Birds game might be? Developer Rovio gave a sneak peek today at its plans for Angry Birds Stella.

Sounds familiar? Stella is the pink Angry Bird who’s already appeared in a couple of games: Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Go. Rovio is turning her into a standalone sub-brand with plans for games, cartoons, toys, books and the inevitable merchandise.

“Angry Birds Stella is breaking the mould by introducing strong, passionate characters who really stand for something, while adding plenty of action and reality into the mix,” said Rovio boss Mikael Hed. “The Angry Birds Stella story will live and evolve across physical and digital, bridging them in fun and innovative ways.”

Could there be a bit of a backlash, though? Although Rovio didn’t mention ‘girls’ or ‘women’ in its announcement, it seems fairly clear that Angry Birds Stella is intended to be a more female-friendly arm (wing?) of Angry Birds, despite the fact that the existing games (and cartoons, toys, etc) are pretty unisex as far as we can tell.

Twitter has already seen some debate on this, with varying degrees of sarcasm. “I’m so glad my daughters will be able to play Angry Birds now,” being one example, and “I thought Angry Birds were female cos they wanted their eggs back, turns out they’re male because they’re not pink” another.

The idea that any form of technology is more appealing to girls and women just because it’s pink annoys a lot of people, and for good reason: there have been some truly patronising pink gadgets down the years.

That said, Lego has its Lego Friends sub-brand, which doesn’t seem to have been as controversial (Update: we’ve politely been set straight on this on Twitter: there has been a lot of debate about whether Lego Friends is a good thing or not!)

As another children’s app developer, Chris O’Shea, pointed out on Twitter today, though, Angry Birds Stella may have one eye on the way toys are sold in the real world. “If you go to any kids clothes section all the angry birds stuff is in the boys bit at the moment,” he wrote, prompting the response from Made In Me’s James Huggins that “Of course! Toy shops aren’t designed on the basis that girls and boys might like the same things ;)”

That said, we haven’t seen the games or toons yet, so we’ll await more details before judging them. What do you think, though: is Angry Birds Stella a good or bad idea? Let us know your thoughts as parents with a comment.

Read about more Angry Birds games for kids on Apps Playground, and check out our 100 Best iPad Apps of 2013 e-book – £1.99 from Apple’s iBooks Store