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.
Rumor has it that the Street Sharks were supposed to be the weak first sales pitch for the publisher to shoot down before the writers shared their high-concept ideas, but the publisher just said yes immediately…