'Let Toys Be Toys' Organising Thread - Part 2

[OneHandWavingFree]

"Let Toys Be Toys - For Girls, and Boys" is a campaign started by a group of Mumsnetters, to convince retailers to categorise their toys by theme or function, rather than gender.

We're inviting everyone to 'like' us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter (@LetToysBeToys) and join us right here for discussion and collaborative decision-making about the next steps of our campaign.

Himalaya has been hard at work compiling the information gathered by our fantastic LTBT Mystery Shoppers, and we will be agreeing right here how the surveys will be ranked, which retailers we will be targetting with our message, and how we will go about it.

If you think that girls and boys should feel free to play with whatever toys that interest them most, and that they shouldn't walk into a toy store and feel pressurised to conform into archaic gender roles and stifling stereotypes, please join in the discussion!

Sorry, don't want to clog up the organising thread with examples, but these "literacy aids" are so breathtakingly outrageous I think they're quite a good illustration:

Complement your National Literacy range with these favourite Girls words
Complement your National Literacy range with these favourite Boys words

Himalaya, I have some free time at the moment and am happy to help with numbercrunching, pm me if there's anything I can do.

Just sern a crap advert for petite filous or munch bunx yogurt.

Lityle girls todling around in mummies high heels and boys lifting pretend weights tag line let them grow uo to be just lije you and they say boys big and strong like daddy. Not sure what the voice over said re the little girl in the heels....presumabky she wants to give herself a bad back and corns just like mummy....

Yes I hate that advert too. When does grown up = wearing high heels?

I'm just writing a FAQ document for our media pack where I want to address the common criticisms / questions that have come up in the course of our campaign,

(eg. Why are you trying to force children to play with toys they don't want? Aren't there more important things to worry about? etc .....)

so that we have a set of standard answers and to give us more confidence. Can anyone think of any, from this thread or that you have heard in your talkings with friends/family?

Thanks

Q: 'But parents can ignore the labelling and buy a "girls'" toy for boys if they want it.'

A: "You've just acknowledged that both boys and girls will want the toy, so the label is meaningless anyway. And unfortunately, labelling isn't harmless, as the children pick up the stereotyping, and like the son of one of our campaigners, will be too embarrassed to ask for a dolls house."

Q: "You're trying to make children play with toys they don't like."

A: "No, we're trying to stop shops discouraging children from playing with toys they do like."

Q: "What's wrong with pink?"

A: "Nothing! If you like pink, you go ahead and wear pink! We're objecting to shops pushing children towards certain choices of toy, and sometimes they use pink/blue colour-coding to do that."

That petite filous ad is crap

Can we addchrissy Wellington to the celeb to contact list? She's fab.
Is there a list?!!
Also all the male hairdressers on tv.

I can help draft media releases. For local radio/papers, Ideally, in addition to the survey,there would be a specific human interest story - ie. cute kid annoyed at being excluded kind of thing and pic.

This is great, thanks! I'm typing furiously and swearing at the screen at the imaginary naysayer! I think this campaign is getting to me.....

Keep'm coming!

Parsing -the reviews and comments on those 'literacy aids' are brilliant though!

I read somewhere that Dara O'Briains Science Club had good female input so maybe he'd be another to contact?

is chrissy Wellington the 8x Ironman world champion? If not, then I suggest the Ironman world champion. who wason Chris Evans show early this week and wants to do sth about women in sport.

Lucy Worsley (re that tweet about Horrible Histories books in boys category)

It is her. Isn't she fab! - and has gone virtually unrecognised in this country.
www.chrissiewellington.org/

Male fashion designers? Henry Holland??

For a future tweet/facebook question, we could ask for photos of you as a kid with a toy defying gender stereotypes. (I have a fetching photo of me on my Blue Chopper.) Everyone loves a bit of toy reminiscence.

Q. They're only children! Why does everything have to be so PC?
A. We agree they're only children and want them to have fun and play with whatever toys they want. It's the shops who are bringing gender-politics into something as innocuous as toys.

Vicki Butler-Henderson? She's a racing-driver, TV presenter and mum of baby girl.

EEEEkkkk! Help us! Remember the Independent? They have gotten in touch again wanting to run a piece on our campaign (this sunday!!!). They want to do "Top Ten Worst Stores" kind of thing, but we feel unready to offer that, because 1) we don't have a wide enough sample yet and 2) worried about libel, so....

We're going to pitch (oooh get me!!) a "Can you guess? Boy toy or Girl toy" type theme - with pictures of the most bizarre/blatant stereotyping that we've encountered in our mystery shopping.

So, if you have any pictures can you upload them to the FB page if not already done so, with the retailer AND the location. The location is important because we don't want to imply ALL such stores in the UK/Ireland are like this, but just specific examples, IYSWIM.

Ta, greatl

Your 'pitch' sounds like an excellent alternative to what they proposed.

I do most of my shopping online - do you just want instore examples for this? If net too then Parsing's 'literacy words' are up there but I could suggest a couple of others.