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Old 05-24-2016, 10:12 AM   #642
DanaC
We have to go back, Kate!
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Yorkshire
Posts: 25,964
A lotof this stuff is based on assumptions that don;t bear out in the real world. For instance, when the compute game, The Last of Us was about to go live, the publishers and distributers didn't want the female character to be shown on the box, despite her being a lead character, because they said, according to their consultations, boys and young men would be put off from buying the game i fthey thought it was a 'girl's game' and the presence of a female main character (as opposed to female set dressing) would give that impression. The makers stuck to their guns, she was shown on the box, and the game broke sales records and became a massive hit, with both male and female gamers.

It is absolutely the case that girls are often a lot more comfortable with, and subject to a lot less stigma for, playing with 'boys' toys than are the boys playing with girls' toys. But - kids of both gender seem perfectly fine playing with neutral toys that aren't specifically marketed at one or the other gender. The problem is that toy makers routinely market film tie-ins and action figures in a highly gendered way, whereas if they marketed them simply as toys, rather than as boys toys, they could bring in both boys and girls.


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Nope nope nope nope. We've never bothered with gendered anything (more because we're lazy than any kind of active choice,) but each of my kids came home one day (Kinder for the boy, first grade for the girl) declaring, quite emphatically, that they didn't want girly/boyly (yes, that's the word she uses) things.
That may be so - but that may just mean that we are coding toys too strongly, so that they do sit firmly in one of those camps. Boys may not want a pink bike, and girls may not want a blue bike - but they both want bikes.

Boys may not want a doll and girls may not want an action man, but there's no reason why they might not both want lego. And there's no reason why theymight not both want figures from the most popular movie on the cinema screen, if it's being watched by both girls and boys and has both male and female characters.

And it may well end up with the boys mainly playing with the male characters, and the girls mainly playing with the female characters - but if they're both playing with characters from that movie then the toymaker will make money.
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Last edited by DanaC; 05-24-2016 at 10:18 AM.
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