'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!

Shopping online good - cos the survey covered that too bung it all in!

Oh wow, good luck!

OK, here's a pair from Debenhams.
This appears if you go in via Boys Toys and look for Science toys. It does not appear if you go in via Girls Toys ... a girl could have this (how that qualifies as a 'science toy' I'm not sure) , its not under boys.

The reason I picked the first example is because that seems like the sort of science toy which if I had to assign to a gender I'd have said was more a girl than a boy thing - but as its actually real science Debenhams have put it in the boys only.

Thanks Grimma. Good luck Joyful at Asda! Don't look too closely though - you might get full of rage and start flinging things right there in the aisle!!

Grimma do you mind if I ask which Debenhams it was? (We can use it in publicity if we know)

Fantastic

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.

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

Thanks grimma :)

Sounds great to me :)

Absoludel Joy! That's lovely!

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 :) )

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)

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

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.

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...

Lego Friends Vet Set

Amazon pink vet set

Hamleys pink and blue sparkly vet set

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.

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

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...

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