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s/LEGO/toy manufacturers/ (There, I fixed it for you!) The trend towards highly gendered media-tie in toys that are designed to generate follow-on sales oppor

by cstross 15y ago

s/LEGO/toy manufacturers/ (There, I fixed it for you!) The trend towards highly gendered media-tie in toys that are designed to generate follow-on sales opportunities for accessories rather than to encourage kids to develop their imagination through semi-structured but open-ended play nauseates me. I am doubtless betraying my personal bias here, but the corporate discovery that the quickest way to a parent's wallet is through their offspring is a bleakly exploitative example of market amorality; it may be legal, but is it decent?

pfarrell 15y ago
Hasn't this always been the case... the marketing influence, I mean? I've gone to the Lego store in my town. You can still assemble a nice set outside of the movie tie-in stuff. Now, whether you can get you kids to think that's cooler or not? That's the real problem. IIRC, Lego was on verge of bankruptcy in the early 2000's and had to figure out a way to get kids to keep buying. We're witnessing the same type of turnaround Apple had. We snort at this one, though, because we've constructed memories of childhood that remove the marketing we now see as adults.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  we've constructed memories of childhood that remove the marketing we now see as adults You're telling me this: http://www.innovationinpractice.com/.a/6a00e54ef4f37688340133f18b47f8970b-800wi http://www.innovationinpractice.com/.a/6a00e54ef4f3768834013... Is a piece of marketing? Because that & similar pieces was 95% of what I used.
  - pfarrell 15y ago
    That's the product, not the way it was sold. That product is still available. My nephews are guilty of the same build the set and chuck it type behaviors. I've got my own son and daughter interested in the building aspect. I remember looking a the awesome pictures of what you could build with the Technics sets (this is way before Mindstorms). That was me being marketed to. I wanted those sets without knowing anyone that owned one or having ever seen one outside of the adverts. That's being marketed to.
    - sliverstorm 15y ago
      I guess my experience was probably a little different from the usual. My parents simply bought a sack of old pieces unprompted from Goodwill one day and gave them to me and my brother. I suppose they could have been acting on marketing they saw though.
maximusprime 15y ago
BS @ trend. Go back 50 years and it was dolls and toy guns. Nothing has changed, boys still like building and destroying, and girls still like caring about things and craft things. You can try all you want to make boys play with dolls, and girls play at killing each other, but they won't in general, because it's not in their biological makeup to do so.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - maximusprime 15y ago
    I agree, but I really don't understand how or why scientifically minded people could claim that they believe male and female brains to be absolutely biologically identical. We evolved to have specific gender roles. We have obvious physical differences related to those roles. We have obvious psychological differences as well. I can only imagine that to some people, the truth is inconvenient to them in their "everyone is absolutely identical" utopia.
    - lemming 15y ago
      I'm no proponent of "everyone is absolutely identical", but I would go with "everyone is absolutely much more similar than the cliches pushed by e.g. the toy industry". The role of cultural influence in this is enormous and impossible to separate from intrinsic biological differences. I'm from New Zealand where (at least in my peer group) gender roles are not too clearly defined. However I live in Spain where they absolutely are - are New Zealanders biologically less sexist than Spaniards? Of course not. There's another interesting discussion to be had around brain plasticity and whether people raised in cultures which promote differences are actually more different, but I'm not aware of research in this area. It would be interesting to see.
    - einhverfr 15y ago
      Right, but before WWII, pink was a boy's color and blue was for girls. Few here are saying that brains are entirely identical, but the fact is you cannot overlook cultural aspects. These aspects are at best only loosely tied to biology and many are purely arbitrary (such as color preferences).
einhverfr 15y ago
I think one has to see toy manufacturers as a conservative (in a politically neutral sense) cultural force. Let's take this a step further and look at the way heterosexual relationships are sold to kids. We can't see lesbian Barby & Kendra sets because that would be sexual, but Barby and Ken are evidently not. So here we are selling a specific model of sexuality to young girls as normal. And this is a major aspect of our cultural heteronormality.

by cstross 15y ago

pfarrell 15y ago

Hasn't this always been the case... the marketing influence, I mean? I've gone to the Lego store in my town. You can still assemble a nice set outside of the movie tie-in stuff. Now, whether you can get you kids to think that's cooler or not? That's the real problem. IIRC, Lego was on verge of bankruptcy in the early 2000's and had to figure out a way to get kids to keep buying. We're witnessing the same type of turnaround Apple had. We snort at this one, though, because we've constructed memories of childhood that remove the marketing we now see as adults.

sliverstorm 15y ago
we've constructed memories of childhood that remove the marketing we now see as adults You're telling me this: http://www.innovationinpractice.com/.a/6a00e54ef4f37688340133f18b47f8970b-800wi http://www.innovationinpractice.com/.a/6a00e54ef4f3768834013... Is a piece of marketing? Because that & similar pieces was 95% of what I used.
- pfarrell 15y ago
  That's the product, not the way it was sold. That product is still available. My nephews are guilty of the same build the set and chuck it type behaviors. I've got my own son and daughter interested in the building aspect. I remember looking a the awesome pictures of what you could build with the Technics sets (this is way before Mindstorms). That was me being marketed to. I wanted those sets without knowing anyone that owned one or having ever seen one outside of the adverts. That's being marketed to.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    I guess my experience was probably a little different from the usual. My parents simply bought a sack of old pieces unprompted from Goodwill one day and gave them to me and my brother. I suppose they could have been acting on marketing they saw though.

maximusprime 15y ago

BS @ trend. Go back 50 years and it was dolls and toy guns. Nothing has changed, boys still like building and destroying, and girls still like caring about things and craft things. You can try all you want to make boys play with dolls, and girls play at killing each other, but they won't in general, because it's not in their biological makeup to do so.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- maximusprime 15y ago
  I agree, but I really don't understand how or why scientifically minded people could claim that they believe male and female brains to be absolutely biologically identical. We evolved to have specific gender roles. We have obvious physical differences related to those roles. We have obvious psychological differences as well. I can only imagine that to some people, the truth is inconvenient to them in their "everyone is absolutely identical" utopia.
  - lemming 15y ago
    I'm no proponent of "everyone is absolutely identical", but I would go with "everyone is absolutely much more similar than the cliches pushed by e.g. the toy industry". The role of cultural influence in this is enormous and impossible to separate from intrinsic biological differences. I'm from New Zealand where (at least in my peer group) gender roles are not too clearly defined. However I live in Spain where they absolutely are - are New Zealanders biologically less sexist than Spaniards? Of course not. There's another interesting discussion to be had around brain plasticity and whether people raised in cultures which promote differences are actually more different, but I'm not aware of research in this area. It would be interesting to see.
  - einhverfr 15y ago
    Right, but before WWII, pink was a boy's color and blue was for girls. Few here are saying that brains are entirely identical, but the fact is you cannot overlook cultural aspects. These aspects are at best only loosely tied to biology and many are purely arbitrary (such as color preferences).

einhverfr 15y ago

I think one has to see toy manufacturers as a conservative (in a politically neutral sense) cultural force. Let's take this a step further and look at the way heterosexual relationships are sold to kids. We can't see lesbian Barby & Kendra sets because that would be sexual, but Barby and Ken are evidently not. So here we are selling a specific model of sexuality to young girls as normal. And this is a major aspect of our cultural heteronormality.