DailyDirt: Toys For Girls

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Every parent wants to encourage their kid's natural interests, but there are a ton of other influences in the lives of little kids -- like toy makers and advertisers. It can be difficult to find purely educational toys that aren't trying to peddle a bunch of other stuff. For parents of little girls, the toy aisles seem particularly loaded with questionable themes. Here are just a few examples. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.
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Filed Under: advertising, chemistry set, dolls, education, gwen thompson, lego, toys
Companies: american doll, lego


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  • icon
    Wally (profile), 29 Aug 2012 @ 5:20pm

    Oh man my family was close....I was brought up on Barbie...stop laughing...you try growing up with being the end of two older female siblings.... Dad and I were out numbered and in my defense I still got to pretend Ken was an old style G.I. Joe :-)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Aug 2012 @ 5:27pm

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Aug 2012 @ 5:40pm

    Toys for Girls?

    What a letdown... I was expecting to see actual toys for girls

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Pixelation, 29 Aug 2012 @ 5:55pm

    I have a Good Vibrations near my house. That's toys for girls, right?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 29 Aug 2012 @ 6:21pm

    I Saw One Blogger Write ...

    ... that according to her experience, what put girls off doing techie stuff was specifically these initiatives that targeted them as a separate group, singled out from boys.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Aug 2012 @ 6:28pm

    Other than the fact that the lego toys include a hair salon, I don't really think that they're reinforcing negative stereotypes all that much. None of these toys have to do with babies, housework or shopping, which are the stereotypes I loathe. According to the article (from last year) they've got a clinic, a veterinary clinic and a horse academy. I don't have a problem with girl toys that encourage interest in human and animal medicine, and while horses are a girl stereotype, in my experience they're at least an accurate stereotype. (So many girls I knew were into horses.)

    As a girl, I would have loved to have purple legos, although I wouldn't have liked the fact that they clashed with the rest of the lego colors. I think it's good that they recognize girls aren't as focused on putting together full sets (so they bag the pieces differently). I and girls I knew who played with legos, used legos to support stories. While I had a lot of cool sets, I don't think I ever finished putting one together - that wasn't my priority. Instead I created houses and things for my other toys (I preferred the playmobil dolls) and then played out fantasies.

    Lego's current "girl" offerings are more along those lines. Lots of Harry Potter, with some Disney princesses. However, I've got no idea what's going on with the "Bikini Bottom Undersea Party" (Spongebob) and I'm not thrilled about the wedding stuff.
    http://shop.lego.com/en-US/catalog/productListing.jsp?_requestid=1816975

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Xyzzy (profile), 30 Aug 2012 @ 3:03am

      Re:

      Horses only became a "girl" thing after it somewhat abruptly stopped being a "kid" thing -- it's no coincidence that in virtually all of the children's horse books written prior to 1950 (Black Beauty, The Black Stallion series, My Friend Flicka, many lesser-known books) plus adult fiction involving kids/horses like Steinbeck's The Red Pony, the kid's a horse-crazy boy. Until cars took their place as the "boy" interest, horses were even considered a specifically masculine interest, not something for girls at all!

      Regarding the toys: I agree that it's good that they're not pushing the worst of the stereotypes, but it's still taking normal gender-neutral toys that kids in general enjoyed, and making a small segregated crappy version what girls get. That gives the message that normal/mainstream things are male by default with a "feminine" version being a more limited girly-looking version, and that 'real' boys/girls wouldn't want certain toys. That results in different abilities being strengthened through play in the two sexes, then gives them the impression that they're better/weaker at certain things because those interests or abilities are inherently gendered (which can push kids to weaken or neglect what they're good at in order to follow their gender identity or avoid possible bullying).

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Divide by Zero (profile), 29 Aug 2012 @ 6:55pm

    'Girl' toys on the whole are shite (I say this as a girl who really didn't get the whole Barbie thing). And why is it so hard to just get normal lego now - just the pieces, as opposed to total lack of imagination connect the dots toys?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Aug 2012 @ 7:32pm

    I was just talking to my boyfriend about the way we played with legos. Mostly, he played with legos by using them to build things. In contrast, I used legos to build the toys I wanted. It seems like that'd be a good marketing strategy; Lego's let your kid build the toys they want.

    He'd build a spaceship, play with it for 8 minutes, then take it apart and build another spaceship. I'd build a house for my dolls and play with it. Then I'd come up with a better design for the house and build additions or tear it down and start from scratch.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      LDoBe (profile), 29 Aug 2012 @ 8:11pm

      Re:

      Maybe my brother and I (male too) got stuck in the Freudian penile phase, but all he and I ever made were the tallest towers we could (we were big on lego when we were around 7 or 8). We got some towers 3 or 4 meters tall before they fell over. We had a 3 story living room with indoor landing balconies looking out onto it from the stairs. (BTW, I'm not sure how I can explain the balconies other than it was kind of like an open atrium hotel where you could see ever floor from the ground.)

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        Xyzzy (profile), 30 Aug 2012 @ 3:20am

        Re: Re:

        Sounds like a variant of how I played with mine as a girl -- I found it kind of boring to just make houses or whatnot, I thought the real appeal was to build sideways (either bricks top-to-bottom but rotated 90° or truly to the side) as far as possible before it broke somewhere, figure out how to patch/prevent that break without adding enough weight in bricks to cause it to break at an earlier point, then (once I'd fixed it) start trying to lengthen it until it broke somewhere.

        Then again, the only use I ever found in the silly Barbie dolls my relatives kept getting me was in dismembering them, then rubber-banding wheels from other toys onto each individual body part, and rubber-band slingshotting them across the kitchen floor with my little brother, either to see which we could shoot the farthest or in a slightly demented form of bowling using other smallish toys. (Unsurprisingly, when my 7th grade science class had to create rubber-band propelled vehicles, I chose a Barbie leg as the core of mine.)

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    gnudist, 30 Aug 2012 @ 12:34am

    I played with both barbie dolls and action figure toys. Does that make me a hermaphrodite?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Jason, 30 Aug 2012 @ 11:03am

    Can't be both

    Either it's based on thorough research and observance of how actual children play or it's a harmful stereotype.

    It can't be both. I'm a father of girls and for two of them, if you want to market to them, you'd better go pink or go home. The other two, they want their own 3D printer.

    It's not wrong for Lego to give girls what they want to play with. It's just too bad they can't let the girls fabricate their own toys.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Liz (profile), 30 Aug 2012 @ 3:10pm

      Re: Can't be both

      A bit of toy history for you.

      Lionel Trains tried to create and market a train set just for girls in 1957. Most girls were incredibly put off by the pastel train set and the product failed to bring in the sales that Lionel had expected. It was also considered a marketing failure for the company.

      Turns out girls at the time wanted the same realistic trains that the boys had.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Jason, 30 Aug 2012 @ 3:39pm

        Re: Re: Can't be both

        I don't get it. Why was this vague historical tidbit directed at me? It doesn't seem to relate at all to what I said.

        The linked article (did you read it?) says Lego actually researched the differences in how girls play with their toys and planned the toys around what they observed in that research. My point is that an approach that diversifies available options based upon observed behavior is sort of the opposite of stereotyping.

        How is that related to Lionel simplistically painting their trains a different color back in the 1900s?

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • icon
          Liz (profile), 30 Aug 2012 @ 3:51pm

          Re: Re: Re: Can't be both

          You stated "it can't be both." it is even the title of your post. When in fact it can be both researched and horribly stereotyped at the same time. Especially when given a small sample size, or utilizing faulty data.

          The point is that girls will play with whatever they like, regardless of marketing or stylistic design. We can delve into the sociological aspects of feminine design choices if you like, but that's a bit dry for my tastes.

          link to this | view in chronology ]


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