'Let Toys Be Toys' Organising Thread - Part 2

AGH if anyone is on thebookpeople website, have a look. Boys recommendations, full of dinosaurs. Girls? Full of fairies.

Sorry to have not tuned in much - rough few days - but still very much onboard :)

You might need a Q/A (or Challenge-Response) on the difference between website and store layouts. Or even the difference between website category layout and search results, along the lines of the discussion Nickel and I had on the previous thread. I'll give it a go...

Q: From the searches online for girls toys we (shops/toy companies) know from web cookies that they then choose pink, glittery, fantasy and domestic things (or, for boys toys, and go on to choose diggers and guns). Are you trying to get retailers to engage in social engineering to force more 'worthy' toys in front of little girls, and force boys to be all touchy feely?

A: Adults search online and make those choices. It's up to them if they want to gender-limit their children and discourage or play down their abilities and potential for the future or something less strident and judgy here! . However, manufacturers and retailers control what they put in their adverts on the TV and other media that children see. Kids can be deeply prone to peer pressure, wanting to fit in, wanting to look/act like their role models - that's why there are rules about what commercials can be shown on children's TV, e.g. regarding junk food. Those messages are so powerful that they can stay with a child for their whole life, consciously or unconsciously. May want some examples here of things on the media which influenced our generation. For me, the prime minister being female in my childhood was a huge influence, never mind colour of politics. Didn't watch much tv so can't name an advert straight off. There really aren't big differences in boys and girls psychology pre-puberty (need a reference, perhaps help from Dr Laura?!?), so actually what we are trying to get back to is that boys have outlets for the sensitive side of their nature that anyone who works with young children knows is there, and that the adventurous side of girls' characters is able to be exercised too. Otherwise you find yourselves in an uphill struggle to get girls to participate in sport in their teenage years, and to manage behaviour in boys later.

On re-reading, there is a lot of assertion there, really needs someone who can back up my amateur child psych attempts. mind you, if it was on the radio with that tosser from 3 counties, you might as well say whatever unreferenced opinion you like, he's hardly John Humphries level of intellectual debate.

Q: "So what are you actually after? Do you want everything to appear in equal blue and pink versions? Or are you trying to stop anything being made in pink?"

My A:
We don't much care what colour something comes in. We do care if some categories of toy are labelled explicitly or implicitly as being 'boys' or 'girls'.

Q: "So what are you actually after? Do you want everything to appear in equal blue and pink versions? Or are you trying to stop anything being made in pink?"

A: "We want to stop this idea that toys must be gendered, which any colour-coding promotes.
"And we're particularly concerned where there is a special pink version that is smaller and less powerful, or about domesticity and beauty, where the 'normal' version is about cleverness or strength or more physical, investigative play."

yy, and in addition, the need to look in both the 'Boy' and 'Girl' section is a nuisance, so the argument its more convenient for shoppers is bogus.

Q: "Some of these toys are appearing in the girls' section in some stores and the boys' section in others. So it shows there's no bias,"

A: "It shows the whole gender-labelling business is a nonsense."

Aufaniae, that's a really difficult one, "things unnecessary to be gendered", because it almost encapsulates the whole campaign!!!

Ok here is what I got in a google search of "girls science toys": a fairy magic kit by the Science Museum. oh but I so want to judge judge judge
Whereas a search for "boys science toys" was all science box kits. My point there is that the science kit appears to have been gendered so that fairy-prone girls have a 'way in' to that bit of learning. That is really sad. What next, play medic kits with centaur, faun and satyr anatomy sheets? Engineering kits for raising a giant pumpkin onto a glittering sprung chassis?

Just to try to do an opposite search, I put in "boys fairy toys". Got mostly some children's craft kits, but quite a few adult dressing up costumes. Sad really because I associate 'fairies' with the Cicely Mary Barker books, which had boy and girl varieties of imps/etc, and for fairy fantasy to be purely about girls closes off or makes more difficult (later in their childhood/learning) stories like A Midsummer Night's Dream. (Have we any male actors on our twitter hit list? A generation of boys without the scope to play anything but the Vinnie Jones roles would be a dreadful thing for theatre.) I really just want a reason to speak to Benedict Cumberbatch

Huffington Post article from Dec last year includes a slideshow at the bottom "Brands that have been updated to be more "girly". Troll dolls never struck me as that girly, but apparently they now come with handbags...

Hi Rowan

Thanks for getting back to us - we know you're busy!

It would be great if you could plug our twitter account (@lettoysbetoys) and our facebook page.

Also, as you probably know from the thread, our wonderful media face Newsworthy has been on BBC Breakfast and a regional BBC radio station (where she was cool as a cucumber under some very hostile interrogation) and so any advice on that side of things would be welcome, as we know you're seasoned campaigners!

Plus, we're virgins in the whole area of what's libellous and what's not, so any advice re. that too.

Thanks so much

Yes bet stuff and animal stuff is marketed at girls. Cuddly tiys and hand puppets and puppet theatre type toys also seen marketed towards girls.

Lego Friends Vet Set

Amazon pink vet set

Hamleys pink and blue sparkly vet set

Tesco website - ZhuZhu puppies vetinarian playset in gaudy pink. For 4 year old girls, apparently. Most vet sets seem to be aimed at girls, that I recall noticing...

Re questions people may ask about the campaign and how to answer two things i have had raised

Firstly people see the camoaign as negative towards girls toys...if they actually read the stuff on fb etc they can see that us not the case!

Secondly people have said its ok to market pink for girls as they naturally like pink. Imo its more of a social construction eso as 100yrs ago pink was for boys and blue for girls which highlights how societies artitudes to the clours have changed rather than rhere being something innate in girls that makes them like pink!!

Have been out all day so.just catching up.

Btw in my local qd (super saver type store) moshi monsters was being marketed as a girls toy. it was not in the boys section.

Have seen peter pan type stuff also in tje girls aisles and not boys. Tinkerbell is if course marketed to girls.... But peter pan is generally unisex?

Am guessing play food comes up in girls searches and not for boys, ditto hama beads and yet there are more 'boy" kits.

I think i was looking up pkayfoh online somewhere and it came up for girks!! Its bloodt playdoh...maybe it was the sweet shop playdoh range?

Also fuzzy felts.

Asda website - Girls - Music = 5 items
Asda website - Boys - Music = 18 items, the difference seems to be boys can have electric guitars?!

Debenhams website should be able to oblige...ok here is one which you get under the Girls if you go through Dolls to Playsets. Boys do get some sylvanian families but not this one (and others)

I need to find some more examples of toys marketed to girls which aren't the usual ones, and which you really wouldn't expect to be gendered. I've got loads of boy's examples (marble runs, Elmer the Elephant, Science toys etc) but I'm lacking girls examples.

Can anyone help me out with some good examples? Perhaps of shops which put all Arts and Crafts in the girl's section?

It's for the media.

(Reckon probably some good examples in the surbey, I'll ask! But if you have any more, that'd be great :) )

Absoludel Joy! That's lovely!

Sounds great to me :)

Thanks grimma :)

Yay, that's brilliant! I was wondering what had happened to them :)

It was their website. If you go directly from the top menu of a page to Kids->Toys and Games you get here with Shop Boys' Toys and Shop Girls' Toys. If you go in one of those and then filter to get Science toys you'll get a very different set of items.

Fantastic