Playmobil and Imaginext

Both my daughters love vehicles, diggers etc. Whenever they get something with a "male" figure - ie builder/fireman - I just pretend they are women and call them the names of my daughters etc (they are only 2 and 5 though). Remmeber the astronaut may be a woman with short hair.

I get annoyed when the only way in which toys show a female character is to be dressed in pink and/or with a bow in its hair.

Agree that playmobil not too bad re. men/women. Am always a bit about the fact that all the characters that you get with 'standard' farm / school / doctor etc sets are white though - dd's selection is a bit bizarre as a selection of 21st C British people . . .

We have several female police and firefighters, and a female robber, and ambulance and rescue workers. Also some of our hospital staff are female, and there seems to be no real distinction between nurses and doctors, so you can easily have male nurses/female doctors etc.

The captain of the expedition ship is also female (she is called Eleanor in our house).

The difference between the adult male and female playmobil characters is that the female ones have a bump for the breasts on the torso. That is how you can tell that some of the police, robbers, paramedics and so on are meant to be women.

The male ones (other than some stubble faced vikings and safe crackers) are all pretty androgynous looking, so they could all be either men or small breasted women.

Playmobil is not so bad. But Imaginext is awful if you actually watch the DVD that comes with some of the toys it shows the imaginext "heroes" getting together to fight some aliens All of them are male, the pirate, the firefighter, the explorer etc... not one is female. Never really occurred to me until this thread but I'm going to glare every time I see them at work now!

No juist checked, you're right.

That was on eBay, afaik they aren't labelled "police woman" or "female firefighter" in the actual box.

They do have the weird eyelashes though.

The paediatrician is female as well.

BUT the playmobile characters are labelled 'police woman' whereas I bet there are lots of different types of male characters.....is the male assassin just called an assassin or male assassin?

Eyelashes are generally used to signal females of any age (plus femal animals) in cartoons, don't think it's quite equivalent to mascara.

Ooo I just realised you said DS not DD, so perhaps not Barbie....

having said that now I'm going to be doubly flamed on a feminist thread

Or if you want to get creative you could get a fine sharpie and draw eyelashes onto some of the firefighters or pirates to designate them as female!

Ah, but that implies women should have big fluttery mascara-caked eyelashes... :o

Barbie!!!!

As Wiki says
"She also holds a pilot's license, and operates commercial airliners in addition to serving as a flight attendant. Barbie's careers are designed to show that women can take on a variety of roles in life, and the doll has been sold with a wide range of titles including Miss Astronaut Barbie (1965), Doctor Barbie (1988) and Nascar Barbie (1998)."

Ds has a playmobile vet set, police car and fire engine, and as previously posted there are male and female characters in each.

I suspect the woman in the vet set is meant to be a nurse, but ds assumes that she's the vet as he's never met a male one..

You can pull the hair/heads off playmobile figures btw.

police woman

countess, could go in a castle

female assassin!

mY dss both complained of the lack of girls or girl characters in Lego. I was only thinking the other day girls toys don't involve as many occupations as boys. Boys also have more TV of action/occupation characters and so lend themselves to Lego and console games..... girls don't.

Or if you want to get creative you could get a fine sharpie and draw eyelashes onto some of the firefighters or pirates to designate them as female!

We have a male Playmobil icecream seller; he came with a little bike and icecream cart. We also have a female vet.

A great tip I read on here a while ago: you can take off the Playmobil characters' hair and swap them round. So if you have a female character with a skirt and long hair, and a male character with short hair, by swapping their hair you can make them both appear female.

Lego people's head come off if you pull hard enough.

Mwahahahahaha!

Oh bugger to taking their helmets off and they are all men.

Why?

Bastards.

I think playmobil is generally ok. We have an ambulance which came with male and female paramedics, a police car with male and female officers, etc. Though I do note that the ice cream parlour came with a female server, and the ice-cream parlour apron only fits onto the female figures. When we put ice cream parlour Playmobil dad behind the counter he'll just have to get ice cream on his trousers.

You can take their helmets off OrangeHat and they have very 'male' shaped bodies.

Imaginext is made by Fisher-Price

Just had a quick look at imaginex spaceship on amazon. How do you know that the astronaut figures are male?

I don't think Lego are quite as bad, they do include a token female explorer/spy/cop/spaceperson in most of their sets.
Yes they signal the fact that they're female with long hair/pouty lips and obvious breasts, but it's very difficult to signal femininity otherwise in a 3cm high figure with a rectangular torso.