Gendered Toys

Exactly the same here, and agree about it being quite damaging. I grew up feeling quite comfortable about being a Tom Boy who also wanted to be a mum one day. It was almost a badge of honour (strange there was no boy equivalent though 🤔)

I promise you, Mr Frosty was utterly, utterly shit.

My mother has been dead for almost 20 years and I occasionally find myself wondering if I ever actually apologised for mithering her into buying me Mr Frosty.

Kids just got less and things were passed down and toys were for xmas and birthdays only, in my case anyway.

Agree with this. We didn't get stuff all the time, including clothes. Christmas I always got a new dressed up outfit to wear over Christmas as part of my presents.

Exactly, it's just casual misogyny.

I feel this about the constant digs at Disney Princesses but never at the male characters.

@TheClogLady oh God I wanted Mr Frosty so badly.

There were plenty of 'gendered' toys around in the 80's, star wars, transformers, he man, care bears, my little pony, barbie, cabbage patch kids etc. Kids just got less and things were passed down and toys were for xmas and birthdays only, in my case anyway.
We were also more free range and played out and built dodgy go carts which would never pass a H+S inspection nowadays.

It does annoy the shit out of me when people go on about Lego friends being the most horrendous thing ever though.
I assume those who complain about 'pink' lego don't actually know much about lego or use it.

Never seem to complain about lego city's blue boxes and endless fire/police/robber sets, monster fighters, castle, ninjago, monkey kid, nexo knights, star wars, ben 10, space, bionicle, speed champions, technic etc all aimed at the male market?

It’s quite a small step from here to the LGTBQ ambassador at school
suggesting the child may be trans because they are attracted to the ‘wrong’ toys. Children displaying a liking for certain toys that marketing companies have deemed as being for the opposite sex is frequently provided as an example as to why the parents have taken them to the doctor thinking they may be trans.

It is a very worrying phenomenon as I often coveted toys, clothes and activities broadly (though in those days it was quite loose) aimed at boys.

Restricting (safe) toy choices for tiny children is just going to cause them confusion and distress. Why shouldn’t the little girl play with trucks? Or boys play with sparkly dolls?

The one toy I remember desperately wanting (probably after seeing a TV ad) was the original Mr Frosty.

Completely unisex toy (apart from the ‘Mr’ obvs). Just found one on Etsy and the box shows 1 boy and 1 girl, both wearing blue.

Mr Frosty turned out to be little more than a giant plastic cheese grater and is, to this day, a story I use like a parable, a tale of how crushingly disappointing life can be, even when you get what you thought you (desperately) wanted.

I hear Mr Frosty has made a comeback lately, presumably now bringing crushing disappointment to a whole new generation of children.

I really really hope thats not true. Who the hell gives lego to a one year old? That is more shocking imo

If the rest is true then I hope a toy garage and some cheap cars are on a little girl's santa list 😉

Interestingly enough a male friend of mines dad would heavily enforce a No Dolls rule for his son but allowed Action Men which if you think about are just dolls with less hair and less pink!

And Yes clothing is horrible for children now. You get either hideously pink, hideously blue or beige. Ugh.

You mean the support thread for a poster who had been bereaved and was struggling to help her son, that got attacked & insulted repeatedly? That one?

Yes, I think that was the one.

I was born in '65 with older brothers in a comfortably off home. I don't remember any of my friends' mums having a job.

Toys were handed down/across families in those days. All bikes seemed to be red or blue (and nobody cared what bike they had unless it was too big or small).

I honestly don't remember "pink aisles and blue aisles" in toyshops. We were expected to spend most of our time outdoors doing pretend play stuff or using whatever bodge there was for a playhouse/camp in the garden.

Toyshops focussed on board games, plastic farm animals, hoops/bikes/roller skates/beach stuff, Action man/Sindy/Barbie dolls and a few prams and baby dolls for toddlers. Soft toys weren't cheap (and tended to be what you were given as a baby).

I suppose it was the availability of cheap imports that made "gendered toys" a "thing". There is now a generation of parents that know no different.

Yup that's what I've seen as well.
It's the adults pushing the gender stereotypes on their kids. My kids didn't care what aisle a toy was in or what colour it was as long as it was fun. I didn't make a big deal out of it either, my daughter loved Lego friends and her stepbrother played with it too. So did I for that matter!

It was much better than all the butterflies on girls t shirts and tigers on boys t shirts.

Lots of clothes were home sewn too, trouser hems forever being taken up and let down as one kid grew out of the dungarees and the next one grew in.
Brand names and designer labels weren’t really a thing until after I started secondary school in the 80s.

Trainers were elastic fronted plimsolls or maybe Dunlop green flash if you were fancy,

Ugh this drives me crazy. My 5yo DD keeps coming home from school saying things like “I can’t play with cars because they’re for boys”, “I like unicorns because I’m a girl”. 🤮

I have no idea who is pushing this stuff on her. I try to push back on the idea whenever I can, but it seems pervasive.

We were visiting my DH‘s brother a few weeks ago and my 1yo DS started playing with some dolls. My BIL picked him up and moved him to the Lego, saying “don’t be playing with girls’ toys now, my little man”. I was shocked! I wish I had a clever retort but the best I could come up with in the moment was “he can play with whatever takes his interest; please don’t move him”.

Wasn't there something called 'pink stinks', it started before genderwoo went main stream.

In the 70s, clothes and toys were, relatively, more expensive than today. Perhaps darker colours would last longer, not get stained and could be passed between siblings. Also, there wouldn't have been the technology to inexpensively add glitter and embroidery.

Largely.

If you back back to Victorian and Edwardian times, baby clothes were all white.

You started to see more colours as people had more money and there were more store bought items. But for a very long time boys and girls clothes had very similar colours, with not a lot of differentiation.

Now, girls did for a long time weardifferent clothes, in terms of wearing skirts and dresses. But there was still not the amount of pink. And play clothes were very similar and often passed down. There was a lot more emphasis, even for dresses and such, on being hard wearing. Lots of corduroy, wool jumpers, and so on, often darker colours that would not show dirt.

Most people only had a small number of outfits. School uniform, one set of play clothes, and Sunday best. One sweater for the winter.

Eg

Everything was orange and brown corduroy in the 70s. Maybe a bit of green for variety.

brown T bar shoes from Clarks and polo neck jumpers, handed from sibling to sibling.

Girls had to wear dresses but only for occasional family parties and maybe church on Sunday if your family went in for that.

In the 70s and 80s toys traditional 'girls' toys like dolls prams, dolls clothes, toy kitchen stuff were the colours they were at the time, blue, brown, orange, things just didn't come in pink.

I recall having two pots with faces, one orange, one blue. My toy iron was orange the iron board blue. My toy buggy was blue, my sister pram was brown.

Traditional boy's toys were primary colours, red, blue, yellow.

I had a red ride-on tractor.

Now all girls stuff is pink and purple. And boy's stuff green and blue.

Even stuff that doesn't need to be gendered like slides, paddling pools, baby walkers, ride ons.