Gendered Kinder Eggs

[RunkyJam]

Apologies if this has been covered before, but I'm quite new here!

Someone advised on one of the other channels to make a post in this one, so here goes...

I just wanted to share my petition about the pink / blue Kinder eggs doing the rounds at the moment:

www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/ferrero-stop-making-sexist-kinder-eggs

Reinforcing negative gender stereotypes at children to make a quick buck, not a good display of corporate social responsibility kinder!

I for one approve .... 1 in 3 of the boxed pink eggs is a themed one so a princess or whatever the other gifts are unisex.
If my children want to collect the cars or whatever then we buy the 'blue' ones .

There is also the option to purchase white ' historical' surprise eggs so IMo they are giving the consumer what they want .

If you don't like them then its simple don't buy them . I do that with Nestle.....

See, now, it's feeding into the gender thing to say that these are gendered eggs - when Kinder are very, very careful not to ever say boy or girl eggs.

I'm as feminist as they come (or I try to be), but Rosa has the same attitude as me - DS gets a blue one if he would like a vehicle, a pink one if he wants a figure, and steers clear of the white ones because he's had one too many of the rubbish jigsaw or sticker eggs.

TBH I wish they'd do more themed ones, green with dinosaurs or brown with animals or something, because the surprises are often so rubbish these days that it's nice to be relatively sure you're getting something worth playing with

Ferrero, with this foolish egg gendering, you are truly insulting us.

I'm not bothered by it.
I let DS (3) pick which one he wants out of pink, blue or white (or Transfirmers, Barbie, plain or whatever the theme is) never boy or girl.
He goes for a mixture.

I think that it would be better if the colours weren't blue and pink but I do think that giving an indication of what's inside is a good thing. I was always gutted when I got a figurine as a child and much preferred the toys that you had to put together and stick the labels on.

The problem is, they HAVE marketed as "for boys" and "for girls"...

I wrote more on the issue for a blog for the lovely people over at "let toys be toys"

www.lettoysbetoys.org.uk/%C2%ADgive-them-back-their-surprises/

I've never noticed the 'for boys/for girls' labelling in our local stores. Like PPs, DS chooses depending on what toy he wants, sometimes a figure, sometimes a superhero, very rarely a click-together plastic vehicle. They come in pink, blue or white so I don't see them as being gendered although yy it is unfortunate that they picked pink for the ones that contain princess figures.

I really don't like them. We've tried two pink ones and got a little mermaid figurine and a my little pony bracelet. Both useless to DD. I like the bits you put together! We don't buy them at all now. If it was pink for a figurine and blue for a vehicle I wouldn't mind but it's not. It's pink for stereotypical girly things and blue for stereotypical boy things.

I'm quite glad my 2 are older, I'd have found this 'everything must come in blue for boys and pink for girls' bullshit very annoying and difficult to cope with.

I signed it and I also wrote to Ferrero.

I think they're very insidious. Where I live you can only get the blue or pink ones, there is no other option. My DD has started refusing the blue ones because they're "for boys". So I've stopped buying them.

I thought it was Pink for a Barbie figurine - or is that just a special promotion at the moment?

Thanks PocketfulOfSpondulix - great to hear of the support!

It's been pink and blue for a while - not just specific to a barbie campaign I'm afraid.

And yes, PuffinsAreFicticious - it IS very annoying and difficult to cope with. I'm just very worried we are heading backwards not forwards and hope it doesn't have an impact on the next generations attitudes / aspirations etc.

Just to let everyone know that we're going to move this to our Petitions board as we don't allow petitions on our main talk boards.

APocketful why did you stop buying them rather than explaining that 'blue' isn't just for boys?

I buy the blue ones for my dd as they mostly have toys you can play with unlike the pink ones that just have a barbie on which falls apart every 2 minutes.

APlace because in the country where I live the gender lines are firmly drawn and reinforced. Girls have long hair, they don't play in the mud, at Halloween they are all princesses (DD was the only girls in her school that wasn't, she was Superman, and everyone commented on it to her). Ever. I can talk till I'm blue in the face about colours just being colours but it all gets undone at school. Thankfully we're moving away soon.

(Not sure why the random 'ever' is in my post!)

Ah, I see and I sympathise about the impact of school. DS came home from nursery and explained 'boys' didn't use certain colours when colouring in . It does feel like a constant battle sometimes.