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Sarah Valadez
June 22, 2014
Instructor Gina Lawrence
Marking Creativity
The realm of creativity and learning is not often thought of as being specific to male or female.
That is, unless, you stamp a Fisher's Price or Crayola logo on it. At any Toys R' Us in the United
States you will find a creativity and learning based section that includes merchandise that ranges
from art supplies, science kits, Legos and train track sets to puzzles and books. Within this
setting of gender neutral rainbow packaging, lie several hidden gender inducing biases that are
made apparent by merchandise arrangement, colors, and gender choices on packaging, which
subconsciously sway us into purchasing choices.
On my way into a maze of crayons and volcano kits I passed a Play-Doh display. The display
revolved around Disney princess and Marvel editions of Play-Doh play kits with a rack of
normal Play-Doh on the side. Behind this female targeted stand of clay, lay an isle dedicated to
the likes of Leap Frog and other learning toys. I took note that the entire learning and creativity
section was void of outside aesthetics other than that which the packaging on the majority of the
merchandise (Leap Frog, doodle pads, flashcards, puzzles, and building blocks, and arts
supplies) provided; rainbow lettering or a rainbow scheme on a white background. In the
learning toy isle, I noticed several toys aimed at toddlers as indicated by the age of the children
on the packaging. The toddler toys appeared to be gender neutral as indicated by the pictures of
boys and girls on the boxes, multiple bright primary colors of the toys themselves. A Toys R Us
employee I spoke to mentioned that parents tended to be more lenient in purchasing toys,
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regardless of whether the toy was gender specific, for their toddler. In the childrens book isle
titles by Eric Carle and Dr. Seuss are prominent, featuring a wide spectrum of colors on their
covers and seemingly genderless anthropomorphic characters. Disney princess and Marvel comic
coloring books line the shelves of the book isle as well.
Despite these seemingly gender neutral isles there were several that seemed to cater to a specific
sex. In a small Legos section next to the science and discovery isle, I observed a little boy
accompanied by his mother and father. The little boy avoided a majority of the learning toys as
most children did when they came through this section (when they would come through), and
instead gravitated towards toys such Thomas the Tank Engine and Lego building kits,
completely avoiding the girl section. When the family moved on, I went over to the small Lego
section and noticed that the majority of the other boy toys were represented by bright blues,
greens, reds, and black. I also noticed that at the very bottom of all these male toys were about
four boxes of some knock off Lego toy packaged in a pink plastic case, featuring five little girls
standing in formation with the title Beauty of Building.
Next, a family of five entered the space I was observing; A mother, father, and two little boys
that appeared to range in age from 1to 4, and a 6 year old girl. As the parents began leading their
children through each isle of the section, their little girl expressed interest at the feminine based
creativity isle (make it yourself bracelets and tshirts dominated by a brand called Totally Me,
obviously targeted at females with their purple and hot pink packaging). When walking through
the Thomas the Tank Engine and track and trains section the little girl exclaimed, I really want
this for Christmas!, as she put her hands up to the case enclosed Mountain Road Train Table
Set. I followed behind discreetly as the family made their way to the electronics section of the
store and their daughter then began to grasp for all the robotics toys with her little brother. As I
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finished watching this family, I was reminded of Anne Nortons The Signs of Shopping, in which
she states that consumers are swayed by the language of merchandise and displays. The little girl
had been drawn to the display of the train set because of how it was intricately arranged to make
it look grand in size and the colors of the set encased were appealing (rainbow). This idea also
holds true for the art supplies isle, because art based toys, such as Catwalk Creations, is a toy
obviously targeted for girls with its depictions of little girls on the box and Marker Airbrush, on
one box a boy was shown drawing a shark and on the box beside it a girl was shown drawing a
butterfly, show how packaging art is a visual language meant to appeal to certain customers. I
saw that Crayola tended to try to boost sales by marketing their toys to separate genders simply
by changing the color of a mega art supply kit to hot pink, exact same product, different color.
When I asked a 5 year old girl walking about whether she would buy the pink or normal case,
she replied yes. This five year olds statement seemed to be reflected in a study by Leinbach and
Fagot mentioned in Yvonne Calderas and Mary Sciarraffas "Parent-Toddler Play With
Feminine Toys: Are All Dolls The Same?." children with more elaborate gender schemas
have stronger preferences for sex typed toys. Children as young as 18 months were picking toys
that reflected the degree of gender differences they had been exposed to, displaying that gender
roles are not simply imposed on children through the toys, but that perhaps gender roles are
imposed by the home, then onto the child, then that gender role is manifested by the selected toy.
Walking about some more, I noticed several painting easels on display. One painting easel was
hot pink on one side and bright blue on the other another easel was wood and for adults, I
couldnt help but theorize if marketers thought that adults outgrew gender.
Lastly, I observed a ten year old boy wandering about. According to a Toys R Us employee it
is mostly young boys who frequent the learning and creativity section. The boy wandered
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through the train and track section and I called his attention to the science toys. I asked him what
he thought about the representation of mostly males on the packaging of the science toys such as
the microscopes and fireworks kits (interestingly enough a girl was shown on the packaging for
Rainbow in My Room, a rainbow projector). He said that he though there should be more girls
on the packaging and when I asked him why he said, I think its important that we play with
different things.
Within the creativity and learning section, gender neutrality thrives with the exception of a few
isles. Many of the choices to place exclusively girls or boys on the packaging or to use specific
colors such as pink or blue are put in place in hopes of reigning in specific consumers. Perhaps
we should be quick to abandon the next few examples of packaging that induce gender bias in
society in order to use these imagination driven toys to inspire society to create a gender neutral
environment in which we can learn and create.








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Works Cited
Caldera, Yvonne M., and Mary A. Sciarraffa. "Parent-Toddler Play With Feminine Toys: Are
All Dolls The Same?." Sex Roles 39.9/10 (1998): 657-668. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 7 July 2014.
Norton, Anne. The Signs of Shopping.Berkely:
The Nature Company, 1990.Print.