Wow.

Yeah, I think I'd stick with the cars for boys, thanks.

Mauve! MAUVE EVERYWHERE!

I must be getting old, because I immediately thought of Penelope Pitstop when I read "Polly Pocket." At least she won a few Wacky Races, unlike Danica Patrick.

Oh my. I'm sticking with a Ford Shelby GT or a Dodge Viper thank you very much.

I used to play with Hot Wheels all the time as a kid. I would never have picked up one of those pink/turquoise/purple monstrosities. Mall race? Once again why do they always need to equate girl's and women's interest in anything with shopping?

I was all about the Hot Wheels & Micro Machines when I was little. I had a Barbie car, but I got it as a present, I don't think I even asked for it.

The race to the mall thing reminds me of this horrible game from when I was young. I never had it but it was advertised like crazy. It was called Mall Madness & I'm pretty sure the goal was to shop. You even had a fake little credit card that you swiped at all the stores.

Why separate toys as being "gendr appropriate"? WHy not just have abunch of 'em for boys and girls alike....
And for God's sake shoppin gis every woman's dream- my fiance shops more than I do... and spends more time buying clothes and grooming too- I get bored...

but back to the cars.. can you imagine driving a mauve or bubblegum pink thing???

I played with hot wheels as a child, they had personalities, names, and I loved to build them insanely complex and automated garages with my legos and erector set.
THIS is what I want from a toy car. http://www.supercars.net/cars/1219.html
Or a Zonda, or just a line of supercars. NOT some wierdly coloured rounded ugly crap that looks as though it's been carved out of bubble gum. Gah. Not only are girls supposedly dumb, we also apparently have no taste whatsoever.
My favorite hot wheels car was the 1970's series datsun z. I stripped the paint and painted it black with an under coat of red, with nailpolish and sharpies.

Products like this just enforce all the stereotypes associated w/ women and cars. I'm a 22-year old art student who actually has a huge thing for cars... I work on my mustang, and am fixing up my dad's '58 corvette for it's 50th aniv. in 2008... but even when that's said and done, I get little to no respect when I attend car shows and want to talk shop, and I have to sometimes EARN respect from my dad's friends or men that are in the car design major at my school. I HAVE noticed though, that older men (my father's age and up) will refuse to actually admit that maybe I know something, whereas my male peers are way more willing to have a conversation about it.

Maybe one day toy designers will meet somewhere in the middle, and just decide that girls will play with Hot Wheels if their parents are open minded enough to buy them for their daughters.

Ewwwww. My daughters will NEVER own these. The older one has hot wheels and remote control cars, and the younger has these awesome 'my first cars' with flames on the sides... my first car was a 69 Chrysler with a 383.

Mattel is stupid, for lack of a better word. Their other toys do nothing but feed into gender stereotypes, so I guess we shouldn't expect their toy car line to be any different.

Do you remember the furor over the pregnant barbie, cause she was sold without ken in the package? That was one of the few times I had to buy a Mattel toy. Most of my daughters 'girlie' toys have come from grandparents, etc. But I have always tried to buy toys that were more neutral and creative than 'polly pocket' 'barbie' 'bratz' etc. When I was pregnant I laid down the law with people- no pink, no barbie, etc. and I think that's why they all got on the pink bandwagon and gave that crap to my older daughter- I didn't bring it up with my younger daughter and I haven't seen as much pink girlie girlie stuff.

Honestly, though- people spend so much money on toys for their kids- if a group like moms rising or something could get the word out for parents to stop buying products from Mattel until they knock off the sexist steretyping in their toys, I think it could make an impact. There are so many alternatives to buying these crappy, cheesy toys that are mass marketed on tv!

This happens in both girls & boys toys. It's assumed that boys only play with cars and girls play with dolls. But if you watch toddlers play, they make no distinction between "girls" & "boys" toys. A 2 yr old boy is just as likely to play with a doll as he is with a car. and vice versa.

At least these toy cars bear no resemblance to real cars. I think I'd rather buy my kids toy guns or bubble gum cigarettes than realistic toy cars.

Hey! I painted my Hot Wheels with sparkly nail polish. That was about as "girly" as it got (my brothers did it too).

This reminds me of Legos when I was a kid. There were the "girl" legos that were pink and pastel and made cabana bars, apartments, or pool patios, and there were the "boy" legos that made space ships, pirate ships, and cities. I had boy legos. When I asked my mom how come my lego sets never had girls in them, she said she didn't know and we wrote a letter to the Lego company. They wrote back saying that all their research indicated that girls mostly wanted the pink and pastel sets, so that's what they sold. However, they did include girl Lego people tops with outfits suited to the space ship and pirate sets. So I had my girl astronauts and pirates anyway.

With some of the newer Harry Potter sets that are gender neutral it's getting better. But then crap like this comes along. All of my children will have whatever toys make them happy. If that means my daughters have Tonka trucks and my sons have these atrocities, then so be it.

Maybe they're going to ram-raid the mall?

It's definitely hard to find toys that aren't really gendered. I have a 3 year-old niece, and it's really, really hard to figure out what to buy her for birthdays and holidays. Her father wants her to have lovely pink princess stuff, and toy dishes and baby dolls and such. I'd guess that these would still be too close to boy toys for his tastes- cars are for boys, after all. Meh.

I used to play with Hot Wheels all the time as a kid. I would never have picked up one of those pink/turquoise/purple monstrosities. Mall race? Once again why do they always need to equate girl's and women's interest in anything with shopping?

Not to be paranoid, but I think it's altogether more sinister than just a reinforcement of a certain stereotype. By enforcing this stereotype, large corporations such as Mattel are attempting to train a new generation of consumers, all the while masquerading as relatively harmless clueless chauvinists.

By the way, I hate that word. What the fuck ever happened to "customer"?

Also, and I can say this as a guy who knew a good toy car from a bad one, those things suck and if I had a daughter I'd get her something else.

This reminds me of when they put those computers out in the late '90s where the "girl" computer was all Barbie-ed out and the "boy" computer was all Hot Wheels-centric. Ick! That's why we just started a column reviewing girlhood.

And it's funny because my best friend's three year old has just entered this stage where all she wants to wear are drsses. Now, my friend is 100% feminist and is all about being gender-fair so she gives her daughter choices and exposure to things both 'masculine' and 'feminine' and until now her daughter has been very interested in things associated with both genders so this dress issue is a little disconcerting for her.

I bet that the automotive industry is just thrilled that a whole new segment of consumers just opened up for them. Vehicle advertising has long been geared toward men, think about how many toy cars little boys have! Now the girls can look forward to being good automobile consumers too!

It never occurred to me when I was a kid that Hot Wheels were boys' toys. And thank goodness I never even saw the pink Legos.

These cars fit in perfectly with the Polly Pocket line, which started out being a very cute, if overly pink, miniature doll. But now that I know Polly only ever goes to the salon or the mall, I guess my children will never have a Polly Pocket. And if they do get one as a gift she'll ride in a regular remote control car, to wherever their imaginations take her.

Yeah, the cars are pretty dumb, but why is it that pink and purple are considered signs of weakness? My mom teaches first grade and says that most of the girls in her class call pink or purple their favorite color. Yeah, that's just anecdotal, but I think it's silly to write off anything in that color range as frivilous or weak (not that people here are necessarily doing that, but I just wanted to throw out the thought). They're just colors...they occur in nature. A friend of mine refuses to buy her daughter pink clothes, and that seems just as controlling as MAKING her wear pink.

That said, I don't like the marketing of these cars. As others have mentioned, why not just sell cars...period? I'd be curious to see the sales info. on these gender-specific items. Maybe they sell. But maybe they sell because silly aunts and uncles buy them for girls who don't want them.

Not all little girls are feminists in training. Just because none of you cared for feminine toys as children doesn't mean that the majority of little girls feel the same way.

I don't know if anyone was saying that "feminine" toys were bad, Pearl. I had lots of toys targeted for girls, including Barbies, baby dolls, princess dresses, and fake make-up sets. I think that people are (or at least I am) objecting to the idea that marketing a generally gender-neutral or gendered-male plaything--toy cars--to girls means making them pink and sparkly. It's not that pink or purple are terrible colors, or that girls shouldn't play with these things. It's the limiting of our girls' imaginations to worlds in which this is the only acceptable feminine color palette and the proper destinations are malls and other locations of "feminine" consumer activities.

I hope that the little girls who will play with these cars don't act within those limits, and I also protest that these things are prescribed to little girls as what they *should* like. Young girls can and do like a number of different things, including but not limited to those things Mattel deems appropriately girly.

pearl,
nobody is saying that little girls don't like to play with "girl" toys. But the problem is that sometimes gender roles are pushed on them.

I think the pressure is mostly on boys though. A girl playing with a car is "cute". But a little boy playing with a doll or playing dress up is seen as a sign of weakness or being a sissy. And may even get the child punished.

Lots of feminists play with dolls. I did, for example.

But I suppose they should have been boys' dolls, with spikes, tendrils, lots of hair, and scratch-and-sniff Brut cologne.

Cheers,

TH

I used to play with G.I. Joe action figures and Transformers when I was a kid, does that make me unfeminine?

Whenever I'm shopping for gifts for my young cousins, I'll often go with art supplies or books - it's a lot easier to find alternatives to the gendered crap in those categories.

"As others have mentioned, why not just sell cars...period?"

My guess is that these toy manufacturers fear that if they just sold toys instead of gender-labelling them too then children might play with their older siblings' hand-me-downs more often and bug their parents for new merchandise less often.

Maybe they think that a boy will be less willing to play with his older sister's older toys and more likely to whine at his parents for their products if they convince him that boys and girls can't play with the same toys?

I bet that if way, way more families looked like the Jolie-Pitts then some toy manufacturers would also promote separate toys for separate races to discourage black children from playing with their older Asian siblings' hand-me-downs and so on...

no dolls for me. just stuffed animals. unless raggedy ann and andy count.

my nephew, 4, is into bob the builder, the most macho toy series. meanwhile my niece, one, is girly and into shoes and jewelry. their parents are liberal and gender-neutral and did not expect this.

Mattel Thinktank: "Hmm, what are all of the stereotypes when can think of about females, money, and preferences? OK, now do you think we can fit them all into one car?"

My issue with these cars is that the sheer fabulousness of toy cars is that they look like real, grown-up cars that grown-ups drive. These do not. Someone decided that girls wouldn't/shouldn't like realistic-looking miniatures of grown-up cars, and needed their own line that is purely fantastical and cutesy. It's like "Cars Lite." It's like saying realistic-looking cars are too tough and abrasive for delicate flowery little girls. Girls don't need an OTHER; some watered-down alternative to everything boys have. We need to stop OTHERING girls.

And Pearl, why shouldn't all little girls be feminists in training? To be incredibly simplistic:

Feminist: A person whose beliefs and behavior are based on feminism.

Feminism: Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.

Doesn't seem like such a bad fate for little girls to me.

my hypothetical kids will have toy trains and bicycles and rollerskates and skateboards. these toys arent just gender specific, they also perpetuate the myth that cars are cool and sexy. would you buy your kid a toy oil refinery? probably not. this just makes me feel dirty.

Not all little girls are feminists in training. Just because none of you cared for feminine toys as children doesn't mean that the majority of little girls feel the same way.

Perhaps little girls want to play with feminine toys because those are the toys that most adults give them to play with. Little girls are supposed to make of sugar and spice and everything nice, remember?

As a society, we talk a big talk about equality, but we raise our children to fit gender stereotypes. I know a woman who was concerned that her baby girl would be born without hair, which meant that she couldn't put a little bow in it. Why do we feel the need to dress babies according to gender? Would a baby boy care if he was in a pink dress?

And anyway, what is wrong with being a feminist in training? This isn't something exclusive to little girls.

Well, it would be nice if all girls (and boys) were feminists in training, but I think pearl's point is that not all of them are, so why pretend this stuff would be unappealing to all of them?

I guess a product like this makes me irritated with Mattel, but it doesn't necessarily make me worry about the girls who will be given the cars. When I start to think about all of the toys that push kids into gender roles, I become frustrated, and I wonder how anything can change. But I also think that kids' reactions to the way that they're brought up are complicated. I bet there's a good chance that many of the girls who are given this sort of toy exculsively will rebel against the traditional female gender role if only to rebel. Not always, but sometimes.

I'm surprised more parents aren't pissed.

I'm not. My retail experience (I know, I know, it's anecdotal) taught me that parents often thoroughly embrace the gender binary. A book with a female lead? "But... my child is a boy, I don't think he'd like to read about a girl."
*sigh*

My niece's father was really unhappy that I started giving my niece "boy" toys to counteract all the pink/princess/house stuff she'd been getting. Apparently, toy soldiers and robots are boy toys, not girl toys.

"I'm not. My retail experience (I know, I know, it's anecdotal) taught me that parents often thoroughly embrace the gender binary."

Maybe parents who don't thoroughly embrace the gender binary buy fewer toys retail on average because they let their sons and daughters share toys more?

"Apparently, toy soldiers and robots are boy toys, not girl toys."

How about toy soldiers wearing *blue* camo?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5323140.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6316387.stm

This reminds me of when I was a kid and used to go to my friend's house to "play with dolls"... I was usually more interested in her brother's He-Man toys.