Gender Neutral Toys Now

[Bobbisox1]

Removing labels,shelf presentation, colour neutral , I was happy with a dolly dressed in pink, my brother loved his fort and soldiers,
Total stupidity !

[jazzyjen]

This reminds me of when I had my daughter she was the first girl in the family since me 25 years previously!

Both sets of grandparents were naturally delighted and went all out to purchase dollies and pink dresses etc.
Within the first 18 months it became evident that she only wanted to wear trousers and play with her brothers’ toys!

[Bobbisox1]

And that’s so natural JJ , the whole point of my OP was to illustrate how , on a daily basis, we get this GN shoved at us from toilets to toys

[Cloverjo]

Like my dad with the first girl in the family for 40 odd years after three grandsons. He made a doll’s house for her. She’s hardly looked at it.

[woofgang]

but surely if toys are going to stop being labelled as "for boys" or "for girls" that is less pushing stuff at people and not more. The loo thing is easily solved. My local Costa has two toilets. One is bigger and is adapted for people with disabilities, the other one isn't and people use whichever one they choose.

[Bobbisox1]

My friend attended our local hospital last night and needed to use the toilet, they were for both,she went in and a man was in the next one

[yogi-bear]

Yes, Cloverjo, .....well, not me, but back to 1995, when Toy Story was out in the cinema, our first baby son was completely besotted with Talking Woody and Buzz Lightyear figures which at Christmas that year was almost impossible to find in ANY shop, near us or in the UK.
But, Mrs B and I had made an enquiry for them at The Disney Store in Croydon, a couple of weeks before.....out of stock, as all shops were, but the manageress took our tel number, as maybe some stock was coming in around 21st December.
That date passed and we decided we will get him the figures after Christmas when the demand was not so manic......23rd December around 5:00pm we were just about have dinner and the phone rings....it's the manageress of the store saying that they have just got a delivery in but they shut in half an hour at 5:30pm and she can only hold them for us until then. We lived in Mitcham, about 3-4 miles to Croydon, so put the dinner on hold, grabbed our son, strapped him in the car seat, and I drove like the clappers, probably taking chances, but, perhaps, still legal, I think, to Croydon.
The Disney Store was in The Whitgift Centre, and it was very hard to park, so I dropped Mrs Bear as near as I could, son in the car seat, and I've never seen her run as fast, so as to not miss the store shutting, circling around the block to pick her up again.

She got them both, thank goodness....thanked the manageress so very much for thinking of us, and she said, due to the demand when customers in the store knew they were now in stock, she extended the closing time to 6:00pm! (She was likely to sell them to someone else, if we were later) ...there was a limited 40-50 of each, that had almost sold out by the time Mrs Bear got there panting and out of breath.

But you should have seen our son's face on Christmas morning, which we have lovely photographs of. :-)

Apols for the 'war and peace' answer.....which I started about an hour ago, but have been on the phone three times sorting out future gigs.

Mrs Bear is seeing A-HA at The Brighton Centre tonight, with a few girlfriends heavily in to them too, so on me todd. :-)

Sorry Booobi's, but know you'll forgive me, my lovely Geordie minx xx

[Bobbisox1]

Always Yogi, always xx

[Spicerack]

Get woke, go broke.

[Cloverjo]

Brings back memories, yogi-bear. My son was mad about Buzz Lightyear. We managed to get him to overcome his fear of the swimming pool by promising him a Buzz figure if he jumped in on his own. Eventually he did it and was thrilled, and I still keep the Buzz 24 years later.

[yogi-bear]

That's wonderful, jo......x

Bet that made you so proud of him. :-)

Like yourself, we have kept both talking Buzz, and talking Woody too, albeit a bit gummed and slightly knocked about, but good condition, and kept them in their original boxes too.

They have about 15 -20 large boxes of assorted toys the four of them used to play with, upstairs in the loft and garage, ranging from Batman, Spider-Man figures, literally ALL the Jurassic Park figures and toys, remote control cars, dolls, Wendy houses, so many others.

[fender62]

i liked toy soldiers, model planes, boats..one could create in the back garden.. whole recreations, from being a corporal to a general, or a pilot or captain of a ship, with a garden hose or bucket of water, you could make a moat round your castle...no electronic games, pity children today..they hardly seem go out anymore, glued to computer games..square eyeballs.

[pixie374]

That's quite a cliche, fender, but not true in my experience. You obviously know some very different families.
We still have a buzz and woody, my son refused to take them when he moved out though :-)

[pixie374]

My oldest used to build really complicated train tracks around the whole of our upstairs, in and out of every room. He was only about 2.

[ummmm]

Not quite true, Fender. I live very close to a park and it's always full of kids.

[jim360]

I can't see a problem with this. As long as you don't spoil kids, and as long as you don't force boys to buy "girls' toys", and vice versa, then what is the problem? If people moaning about this are right then the boy would still end up buying the toy soldiers or equivalent more often than not, the girls would still buy dolls' houses, and nobody would care. All that changes is that maybe they have more freedom of choice now.

[pastafreak]

Same here. Loads of kids...and their parents...in the park. Plus many out playing...and screaming...around our blocks of flats. It's quite noisy in the summer.

[pixie374]

I think they have always had freedom of choice, jim. Certainly over the last few decades. That's about education of parents, not product placement.

[ummmm]

Jim...that's what's good about having children of both genders. I probably would have leaned towards boys toys but I soon found out the youngest boy much referred girls toys.

[Bobbisox1]

I think only Naomi and perhaps Pixie get my OP, kids will play with whatever toy they want to, it’s the Gender tag that’s attached to stuff now I’m fed up with seeing !
Just because I can’t give a link.....it was said on my local news but why am I trying to stress this?make your own minds up

[jim360]

Well yes I guess the freedom of choice has always been there, but presumably it becomes a little easier to sell toys across genders if you don't have the "this is the GIRLS section" debate.

In any case, as long as there's no forcing kids to buy a certain type of toy to conform with or to confound stereotypes it's a strange thing to kick up a fuss about.