Packaging repels girls from drive-on toys, experts warn (News Feature)

By Jean-Baptiste Piggin Feb 3, 2011, 13:49 GMT

Nuremberg, Germany - Toymakers are being urged at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, which opened Thursday, to repackage products such as ride-on cars and science kits which currently send a message to little girls: 'This is not for you.'

The toy industry has upheld a gender divide that goes back to the 19th century, according to Richard Gottlieb, who edits US web magazine Global Toy News and organizes conferences on toy business.

In an interview about a conference he chaired ahead of the toy fair, Gottlieb commented, 'In doing my research I found that typically, in any product that has to do with science, there is always a boy on the cover.

'If there are both a girl and a boy on the cover, the girl is either passive or is handing him a test-tube.'

The conference, 'Building our future: Girls and Toys,' raised the question, 'Do the toys that girls play with as children have an impact on the academic and professional choices they make as adult women?'

Gottlieb commented that 'the charge is that we are to a very large degree responsible that girls are not going into science, math, engineering and that the toys that we give girls to play with are too much about nurturance and do not provide the challenges that boys' toys do.'

He said his own surveys found the gender divide applied to photographs on the packaging of drive-on toys such as pedal cars and scooters, just as much as to science kits.

'In the ads, whenever there was a boy in the car, the boy always drove,' Gottlieb said.

'I did research on all the companies doing these cars, and I was not able to find a single image of a girl driving a boy,' he said.

Gottlieb said boy-oriented packaging, even if the customer soon discards it, carries an enduring message that may repel girls.

'If there is a boy on the cover, the subliminal message was, 'This is not for you',' he said.

Conversely, boys avoid 'girls' toys' unless it is socially acceptable to play with them or if the boy is alone.

'Culturally, boys won't play with toys perceived as for girls. If you put pink on it, they won't play with it, no matter what it is,' he said.

'The general consensus was that we force children to be in one of two buckets: the boy bucket or the girl bucket,' Gottlieb added.

'The range of what children want is far bigger than what we allow them in terms of how we package, how we present the products, the colours and so on,' he observed. 'Most of the way we merchandise products today is a relic of the 19th century, when the first department stores were established.'

Feminist debate around the globe has moved on from the period when radicals claimed there was no inborn difference between what interests boys and girls, and that sexism was 'nurtured' by society.

'We talked about nature versus nurture, and the sense was, yes, there's a huge nature component to all this. Girls probably are predisposed to playing with dolls. We see that in nature. And boys love sticks, they love violent things.

'But we feel there is a broader range of what interests children: that you may like dolls, but you may like other things as well,' Gottlieb said.

'Being individual is about being uniquely you, and with these buckets - boy or girl? - there's just not enough choice there,' he said.

The message to manufacturers was not just about the social impact of packaging but also advice to try something new to increase sales.

'Maybe you'll pick up more business,' he said. 'It's to get the toy industry thinking about its ethical responsibility. And whether we do or not, it's a good business.'

Gottlieb said an abiding difference between toys for girls and for boys was likely to remain, as in the case of fashion dolls and action figures, which are both, in essence, dolls.

'What fashion dolls and action figures have in common is, they allow the child to act out adulthood.

'For boys that's violence and for girls that's socialization,' he quipped.

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