Wednesday 17 December 2014

Gender Specific Toys - only if you want them to be.

I know I don't have children, and you have all been reading my blog to realise that I have pretty much a black and white view of the world, there are very few grey areas.

I hope that you have all realised that I am female too!

When I was little, my Gran spent a fortune on dolls and also a Silver Cross doll's pram to try and get me to play with them.  I didn't.  Eventually they all went to a little girl up the road.


I was far more happy playing with a remote control tank that my Grandad had bought, remote control in those days meaning that you were attached to the toy by a long wire.

I was also a huge fan of ferreting around in sheds, using hand tools, we had an old hand drill that I took great pleasure in making holes all over the fence and gate with.  I liked playing, I mean helping, up at the family allotments, I particularly enjoyed damming the small stream that ran through the middle of the site.

I loved running around scrapyards and builders yards, this was before Health & Safety was invented, most days I would come home caked in dirt from wherever I had been.

My other Gran bought me a Girl's World, I only played with it because I was fascinated at the way you could make the hair longer and shorter, the makeup that came with it I couldn't have cared less about.

If anyone had bought me a toy kitchen, I would have probably used the utensils to dig in the garden.

Children will play with what they want to, whether it is marketed for boys, girls or animals.  A doll will not explode just because someone with a Y chromosome plays without, similarly a toy chainsaw is not going to go rogue if the Y chromosome is missing in the player.


For a lot of youngsters, boxes are the best things ever as they can become many, many things.

Do you think it is a problem who toys are marketed at?


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