With my kids, we tend to stick to more gender-neutral toys, wood blocks, that sort of thing. Get a lot of toys from Hapé, that sort of thing.
Went to a kid's birthday party today. Family has 2 boys. Played with the toys in the basement. And jfc, damn near every toys was heavily masc-coded. i swear to god, there was a toy fire engine that had literal muscles on it. Every vehicle had big chunky wheels and seemed to be designed with a certain masculine aesthetic. There was this cop car designed like a tank that shot out discs. Every toy just seemed overly aggressive and bought specifically to signal MY SON IS NOT GAAAAYYY!
Like, I was raised with "boy toys" like Tonka trucks. But those just seemed more like realistic representations of real thing. Even something silly like Transformers, their vehicle forms were like boring-ass sedans and shit. So many toys today seem like they have to crank up the gender coding to 11 (boys and girls); while at the same time there are a ton of toys that aren't problematic at all.
I feel like this says a lot about the social reproduction of gender and capitalism.
It's just marketing, children don't need these gendered embellishments to play with the toys and they in fact hinder them from truly expressing themselves in play. There has been pushback but it's up to individual toy companies to make changes and they do such if it is profitable.
Targeting a social group and catering to their perceived tastes is just more efficient. Another example is apparently Subarus and lesbians.
The most important thing you can teach children (apart from communism in general) is to ignore and resist marketing.
I recall of the words of Bill Hicks when I think of such things.
a long time ago i read that creating and reinforcing that pink aisle blue aisle shit was some marketing bullshit that works.
ad men get the wall
I hate being a product
subarus and liberals
Lesbians