Let Children Play

Toys R Us in the UK to end gender-specific marketing (MSN News) - A thorough discussion of the Toys "R" Us UK decision to stop gender-based marketing to children

Kids’ Toys: More Gendered Than Ever (Ms. Magazine Blog): An overview of how toys have become more gendered than they were in the past, not only in their packaging and placement in store, but also in how they are advertised on other media, including on websites.

Could Your Toy Choices Help Close the Gender Gap? (The Jane Dough): How children's perception of themselves and their gender changes depending on the toys they see.

Guys and Dolls No More? (The New York Times): Sociologist Elizabeth Sweet discusses differences in toy marketing from the early 1900s to the 1960s and the 70s to today and addresses why gendered marketing is becoming more prevalent again.

Should toys get a gender-neutral makeover? (Jessica Yadegaran) : The benefits to children of encouraging play with a wide variety of toys; includes a discussion of Goldie Blox, a recently released toy featuring a female engineer.

Highlights From The Gender-Neutral Swedish Toys “R” Us Catalog (The Wall Street Journal): Tom Gara writes about Sweden's gender neutral Toys "R" Us catalog (released in fall 2012). The article includes multiple images from the catalog, demonstrating how different this marketing looks from standard gendered toy marketing.

Toymakers See Profit in Going 'Gender Neutral' (Bloomberg Businessweek): As demonstrated by Hasbro's modification of the Easy-Bake Oven's look and marketing, making toys gender-neutral can also be quite profitable by opening up the market to both boys and girls.

Down With Toy Apartheid: The Gender Apocalypse Of The Playroom Can't Come Soon Enough (Deadspin): Tom Scocca attacks the idea that gendered toy marketing is a response to children's desires rather than a social construction that children pick up.

Parents struggle to find gender-neutral toys (Phys.org): Why finding gender-neutral toys can be a challenge for parents, and how apparently unimportant gendering of toys (i.e. changing the color to pink) sometimes covers up other changes that reduce the effectiveness or use of the toy.

Beakers, Blocks, and Rocket Ships: Expanding the Universe of Girl Play (A Mighty Girl): An essay on the genderization of toys and its repercussions on children's development. It also discusses the motivation for creating A Mighty Girl's new girl-empowering toy section.

Gender-Neutral Easy-Bake Oven Announced By Hasbro Following 13-Year-Old's Petition (Huffington Post): An article reporting 13-year-old McKenna Pope's success in convincing Hasbro to introduce a gender neutral Easy-Bake Oven

Sweden makes my gender-free toy Christmas wish come true (The Guardian): Opinion piece on how Sweden’s largest toy company recently released their first gender neutral toy catalog, generating an international reaction.

Gender-neutral toy catalogues leave the boy holding the baby (The Sydney Morning Herald): Australia reports on how major toy companies in both Sweden and Denmark are taking major steps to be gender-inclusive in their toy marketing this holiday season.

Toys R Us Scolded for gender discrimination (The Local): Also in Scandinavia, a few years ago a group of concerned middle school students reported Toys R Us to a self-regulatory agency, where TRU was publicly reprimanded, having been found to “discriminate(s) based on gender and counteract(s) positive social behaviours, lifestyles, and attitudes”.

Hamleys’ baby steps towards gender equality (The Guardian): An article discussing the massive London toy store, Hamleys, and their significant shift to a theme-based toy organization rather than a gender-based one last holiday season.

Toys Start the Gender Equality Rift (The New York Times): A more recent article in the New York Times addresses how things are still not equal at Hamleys. The author also touches on the fallout these stereotypical and segregated toy themes have on our society, worldwide.

When kids play across gender lines (CNN Living): Britain’s largest department store, Harrod’s, also took steps in the last year to re-imagine the layout of their toy section, organizing the toys by theme rather than pre-determined gender assignments. In this article, the author discusses how toy marketing by gender is increasing instances of bullying towards children who are interested in stepping outside of the ever-narrowing definitions of what it is to be a girl or a boy.

Wonder Girl (The New York Times Magazine): Peggy Orenstein wrote this article highlighting her own daughter’s switch from princess infatuation to superhero infatuation, and what superhero play can do for all of our daughters, if only they had as many fun and fabulous stories as their male counterparts.

Toys for Girls and Boys (Comedy Central): Comedian Jared Logan made two mock toy commercials that very succinctly sum up the problems in toy marketing for both girls and boys in our modern world:

Are pink toys turning girls into passive princesses? (The Guardian): This article outlines several studies on the possibility of a scientific basis for color preference between the different genders, and how any statistical bias has been warped and mutated by highly gendered marketing.

Why science and engineering toys aren’t for girls (The Guardian): A research scientist/writer wrote this article about the disconnect between the way that toy shelves are organized in comparison to other types of merchandise, and points out that the origin of highly gendered marketing of toys is companies trying to make twice as much money.

How Toy Ad Vocabulary Reinforces Gender Stereotypes (Achilles Effect): These word clouds created by a sampling of overly gendered toy commercials say a lot about what society is teaching our children:

Rules of Play (Bitch Media): This article outlines five rules of gendered marketing the authors observed, and some strategies for avoiding those pitfalls.

What the Research Says: Gender-Typed Toys, and What the Research Says: Impact of Specific Toys on Play (The National Association for the Education of Young Children): The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) published several brief question and answer series with researchers in the field of gender and how toy marketing and selection relates to gender development.

Good Toys for Young Children by Age and Stage (The National Association for the Education of Young Children): The NAEYC also developed this list of suggestions for toys that will promote healthy development and education of young children, organized by age.

Girl Toys, Boy Toys, and Parenting: The Science of Toy Preferences in Children (Parenting Science): In this article, a biological anthropologist discusses some of the scientific studies done on the biology of gendered play.