Toy commercials through the years

Posted by Marie Ingram

When walking through a toy store, ever notice that there is distinctively a ‘girl’ isle and a ‘boy’ isle? The girl isle is bright pink and contains toys such as, mommy and baby, barbie, fashion, and cooking. The boy isle is full of fighting toys, toy guns, cars and dinosaurs. Advertising for these toys is just as bad. Whether on the T.V or in newspapers, girls are shown playing with ‘home making’ toys and boys are shown playing with ‘construction/destruction’ toys. Here are a few T.V ads from the past to the present, and as you can see not much has changed over the years.

This is a link to Barbie's first Dream House from 1962. (Mattel blocked the 'embed' option).

http://www.youtube.com/user/MattelShop#p/u/25/fHSnKxO9u7c

Here is a video of Barbie's most recent Dream House

These two videos are basically the same. Even forty years later only girls are shown playing with a doll house. And today, the house is exploding with bright pink. This screams 'only girls can play with this!'

Here is a commercial I put in the category "mommy and baby" from the early 80's. (The embed option is blocked).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KPVVYLonKg

And here is a recent commercial from the "mommy and baby" category.

Girls are influenced from a very early to play mommy and baby games. This seems natural as women are the sex who produce children. However, what is interesting is that boys are never shown in these type of commercials. Being a good dad is a very important characteristic and it seems that society neglects this side of human nature. Boys are not raised with the idea that one day they will be a father to a child. Boys should be encouraged to play with baby dolls so they have a chance to show their caring nature. It is not only girls who are caring, boys are too and as we see in the next set of commercials boys are strongly encouraged to show their aggressive side instead.

Here is a 1960's G.I Joe commercial. It shows young boys aggressively playing soldier; it is a huge contrast to the girl commercials.

And here is a 1990's commercial of G.I Joe featuring Sergeant Slaughter.

Both commercials are very aggressive and show that children are being influenced by fighting toys over the generations, compounding the idea that boys should be aggressive and hide their soft, caring nature.

An ad I saw in the latest Toys R Us ad in the weekend newspaper, shows a young boy shooting a Nerf rapid fire gun.

The way he is holding the gun looks like he could easily be holding a real weapon. And girls are NEVER shown playing with these types of toys.

In the article, "Content analysis of gender difference in children's advertising" by Louis J. Smith (1995), he wrote that in a study of Saturday morning commercials, Doolittle and Pepper (1975) found that 84% of single-gender ads were male-only. The ads that used only female models were for girl-oriented products such as dolls. Verna's (1975) analysis of children's advertisements found that female-dominant ads constituted less than one seventh of all ads, while male-dominant ads constituted over one half of all ads. In a more recent study, Macklin and Kolbe (1984) still found almost three times as many male- as female-oriented advertisements aimed at children". Boys like to do what they see boys doing on the T.V, and girls want to be like the girls they see on the T.V.

Toys play a big part in gendering children. Girls are brought up to be home makers. They are taught to care for the baby, cook and look after the house from a very early age through the toys they are influenced to play with.

Boys are not encouraged not to play these games (the post below addresses this issue).

As the commercials illustrate, time has not changed the ideas of adults. The adults who make the toys and produce the commercials have not changed their point of view and obviously still believe that women belong in the home.