Toy Op-Ed Reflection - Ren

    As society and social and gender norms have changed over the years, the issue of gender-stereotyped toys and how they are marketed comes to light. Children's toys have long been advertised by toy monopolies such as Hasbro and Mattel. These giant companies all use the same marketing strategies aimed at different age and gender groups. One of these marketing strategies that they use is with the colors of the toys. To create a stronger base, they use colors associated with boys and masculinity and girls and feminism. This has created a strong divide between boy and girl toys. Another thing that these companies do is create very gender-based commercials for these toys. Not only are they using colors like blue and pink to separate these commercials but they also feature only one gender in most of these commercials and often use exaggerated masculine or feminine voices. Because the majority of mainstream toys are owned by these giant companies, we are seeing these marketing and design strategies used in most toys.
    Now that gender norms have changed and become more open, many parents are wanting to see change. After having this discussion, many of us agreed that the gender divide could be fixed by using a variety of colors instead of just the pink//purple and blue toys. I think that it would also help to see a change in the developers' thinking at companies like Hasbro and Mattel. They should start trying to create toys with the vision that both boys and girls will be able to play with them. However, I think that the reason that they market separately in the first place is because kids have a stronger view on gender norms than adults or teens do. It is a natural thing for smaller kids to separate themselves from the other gender.

(This is what I tried to do... but oh well)