How has toy design shaped us as individuals?
Toy design has shaped us as people through play and learning, stimulation, development, and self-image. One of the biggest way’s toys have shaped us as individuals is through gender stereotypes.
“Gender stereotypes are not always obvious. They start to follow us from our earliest days in the toy store and continues to influence us when choosing subjects at school and career”.
The world isn’t black and white. Its pink and blue!
Gender stereotyping and market segmentation has meant that in a business concepts by segmenting the market into narrow demographic groups they can sell more versions of the same toy.
For example: LEGO in 1955 was not directed to any gender but in 2012 LEGO released a LEGO Friends targeted toward girls, which tripled the number of girls using LEGO and scored the company a 25% increase in global revenue. It was no longer about the toys play use but the target market to increase profits.
Businesses and companies also use shape, texture, packaging, logos, verbiage, graphics, sound, and names to define the gender of a brand. Lighter colours, smoother edges, floral motifs, softer lines equal girls and darker colours, harder lines, squarer shapes, and scientific type pictures equal boys.
The obvious stereotype we’ve been bought up with is: Pink is for girls and blue is for boys. As Cas Holman says: “It’s infuriating and makes no sense. There are some children who like pink and children who like blue. Why have we assigned that to girl and boys? It’s absurd it’s just not how children are, or it is how they wind up being because that’s the options that they are given.”
But it didn’t always used to be like this:
“Pink, being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy. While blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl”. – Earnshaw infant’s department, June 1918
Consider Barbie, she is unrealistically thin and “perfect”; yet her body proportions are completely off the mark. Over the past years she has been riddled with controversy. When girls play with her it damages their self-image and cause them to feel they must be perfect to be liked. They become obsessed with looks and weight. It leads to millions of eating disorders and billions in spending on makeup, clothes, and plastic surgery. Her ‘whiteness’ has alienated little girls of colour making them feel not pretty. Some of her outfits and accessories lead girls to want to dress inappropriately leading to promiscuity. She has been banned in some countries. Barbie throughout the years has been the centre of much controversy. Because of feminists claiming that she represents an unrealistic, unhealthy and unfair standard of beauty for young girls and their self-esteem, but it is widely overlooked in what’s classed as “boy’s” toys that the He-man action figure and forgotten to mention the he represent an unrealistic, unhealthy and unfair standard of hypermasculinity leading to a crisis for children and their self-esteem.
Throughout the year toy companies have released many different types of Barbies doll. Some bringing more controversy like teen Pregnancy Barbie, which really isn’t a good role model for young
girls (or young boys) However, in modern-day times other Barbie releases have be revolutionary in helping self-images and self-esteem in young children through, Black Barbie, Curvy Barbie.
Letting your son play with a Barbie doll, an attractive woman, but this toy will turn your son gay, however giving your son a practically naked buff “beef cake” action man or GI Joe toy to play with is normal and keep your son straight.
Why can’t a child, boy or girl, straight or gay, black or white, play with a barbie doll or an action man figurine, just to play?
Sometimes it feels like some toys aren’t designed with children or play value in mind and not something children are getting something out of, they’re designed to keep them occupied not to develop. Some just purely exist for a business’s/companies profit in the market.
On the other hand toys like: Caroline Pratts wooden unite block in 1913 is a toy that stimulates a child in building on their own for their own pleasure, engagement and enjoyment. “lots of toys are very goal orientated, they look like something, there’s one way to play with it, you quickly figure out it can go this way or that way and you’re done, so it shuts down that building on their own pleasure engagement and enjoyment”
As a young girl in my nursery lower school I enjoyed playing with the jumbo wooden blocks. We’d make forts and castles, I even made a dragon at one point, we’d make ramps for the toy cars and use the massive hollow blocks and pretend to be zombies climbing out of graves. I remember certain things and those wooden blocks were a big part of my childhood. I just remember being so creative and having so much fun, having everyone else work together, there were endless possibilities to those gigantic lumps of wood. I don’t remember everything we made I don’t know what I did, but I know we loved spending time playing with them, and that’s what a good toy should do. I think that those building block shaped me in a way, wanting to become a designer and building making things, independently and in a team of friends... and even the people I weren’t friends with, we could get to know each other by playing together and make new ones.
There was the odd occasion, especially amongst young children, that the toys would cause argument, but this implemented knowledge of ethics. What was right and wrong. Learning to share things, play nicely together, teaching us kindness.
The way toys are designed has developed over the years and intern has developed the way we interact with them. Many toys have been designed to help children with difficulties helping to stimulate themselves and sensitise them to the world around them, they can help Autistic children with social skills, these games require discussion, figuring out the solutions to socially challenging situations, offering a fun and positive way to teach children important social skills. Most children love to explore the world around them using all their senses but some children with Autism need some help to appreciate the world by using sensory toys.
Innovation moves fast in educational design and often has a nod to cultural and technological trends. In researching and visualizing data on change in the toy world and more generally of the role of the family in child development identifies possible future visions to provoke and stimulate the curiosity of ‘insiders. The research phase involved specialists in development, futurists, innovators as
well as leaders in the field of design, technology and education science to have complete and verifiable opinions on the topic; all the interviews were then filtered and integrated with technological trends and cultural behaviours. By crossing these three areas, it has mapped the future of toy design in six key points:
1. Dynamic simplicity
2. Contextualized response
3. Keep it human
4. Imaginative immersion
5. No boundaries
6. Quantified self
Dynamic simplicity amplifies the use of everyday objects and activities through a natural interaction. Contextualized responses include the gaming and learning experience that changes and interacts with what happens at the specific moment, assisted by reactive and integrated environments. This time is supported by responsive objects that stimulate interaction between parents and child. The development of a toy to tech experience must be able to reflect the human touch, the future smells of wood and has the heat of the felt, materials away from technological imagination. We could define this process as humanizing technology because it hides and disguises interacting with people spontaneously. Imaginative immersion is an interface that will no longer be just the screen, whether it’s a tablet or PC, but the whole living space will support game and learning. It changes the definition of space and the environment becomes an interface to incorporate technology into our life in a natural way.
No boundaries simply means interaction between senses and devices, between physical and digital. Connected objects that ‘speak’ each other and adapt to each member of the family allow an endless and constantly evolving gaming experience.
There’s no future without data, and so the quantified self is the last vision, focussed on collecting and interpreting extremely qualitative data. The challenge is to start from the analysis and interaction between different intuitions to design precious, qualitatively, and emotionally valuable products to embrace humanity and not replace it.
Toys are meant to invoke enjoyment and pleasure and develop the senses and synchronises the bodies and mind together like a type of therapy. “An easy toy is a boring toy” so they promote learning and development, that’s the point of play, there’s not an outcome other than its intuitive…so being a boy’s toy or a girl’s toy shouldn’t matter.
“good toys make good people” – Cas Holman
Bibliography
Argos. (Spring 2020). Argos catalogue. Milton Keynes : Argos . p000-p 000.
BBC Stories. (2017). Girl toys vs boy toys: The experiment - BBC Stories [YouTube video]. Available:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWu44AqF0iI .Last accessed: 19th June 2020.
Beer, T. (2020). Busting Gender Stereotypes: The Pink Versus Blue Phenomenon Busting Gender Stereotypes: The Pink Versus Blue Phenomenon. Available: https://www.forbes.com/sites/shelleyzalis/2019/09/05/busting-gender-stereotypes-the-pink-versus-blue-phenomenon/#76030432764a. Last accessed 19th June 2020.
Dadich, S, Reagan, J. (2019). Abstract the Art of Design [Netflix series]. Season 2 episode 4, Design for play. Holman, C. Los Gatos, CA: Netflix.
Drysdale, K, Norton, Z – The Checkout. (2014). Gender Marketing [YouTube video]. Available:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JDmb_f3E2c . Last accessed: 19th June 2020.
EIGE. (2017). EIGE. Education is key for breaking gender stereotypes. Available: https://eige.europa.eu/news/education-key-breaking-gender-stereotypes. Last accessed 19th June 2020.
Earnshaw infant’s department. (June 1918). “Pink, being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy. While blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl”.
European Institute for Gender Equality. (2017). Gender stereotypes and education [YouTube video]. Available:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrZ21nD9I-0 .Last accessed: 19th June 2020.
Fickenscher, L. (2016). Barbie sales strong for toymaker Mattel. Available: https://nypost.com/2016/02/01/barbie-sales-strong-for-toymaker-mattel/. Last accessed 19th June 2020.
Ford, T. (2016). The History of The Barbie Doll. Available: https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/articles/the-history-of-the-barbie-doll/. Last accessed 20th June 2020.
Guaricci,F. (2017). The future of toy design in six key points. Available: https://www.toy-design.com/future-toy-design-six-key-points/. Last accessed 21st June 2020.
Handler, R. (1959). Barbie. Wisconsin
Holman, C. (2011). Rigamajig. Rhode Island.
Lane, M. (2019). Autism Toys: 17 Developmental Toys for Autistic Children. Available: https://www.merakilane.com/autism-toys-17-developmental-toys-autistic-children/. Last accessed 21st June 2020.
Medicine Man . (2017). How does design affect our lives?. Available: https://medicine-man.net/2017/11/07/how-does-design-effect-our-lives/. Last accessed 21st June 2020.
O'Connell, L. (2020). LEGO Group revenue of the LEGO Group from 2003 to 2019. Available: https://www.statista.com/statistics/282870/lego-group-revenue/. Last accessed 20th June 2020.
Owens, M. (2020). Barbie If She Were Life-Size [Pinterest pin]. Available:https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/209628557628907308/. Last accessed 20th June 2020.
Pratt, C. (1913). Wooden Unit Blocks. Asheville, North Carolina.
Sweet, R. (1983). He-man. USA.
Sutton, P.(2014). “Boys” toy logic [Reddit post]. Available:https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/2efp1u/boys-toy-logic/ . Last accessed 20th June 2020.
Unknown. (2011). Barbie is pregnant?!?. Available: http://hennesseyhits.blogspot.com/2011/12/barbie-is-pregnant.html. Last accessed 20th June 2020.
Barford, V. (2014). Do children's toys influence their career choices?. Available:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25857895. Last accessed 20th June 2020.
Kommentare