A visit to the ToysRUs™ store

by the Women and Technology 2002 class

Seeking some insight into possible reasons why males tend to flock to computer science classes while females shy away, we turned to the computer games aisle at the nearby Toys 'R' Us store. By looking at the packaging of the games, we tried to identify whether or not the marketers targeted a specific gender. This involved, however, subjectivity influenced by our own preconceived notions of gender stereotypes.

We categorized the games as either marketed specifically towards girls, boys, or neither. It was easy to determine the games marketed to girls. The boxes were pink and had princesses or Barbies on them. They were also grouped together on one end of the games shelves. However, the distinction between games marketed to neither gender nor those specifically marketed to boys was more ambiguous. If the box featured both genders it was placed into the "neither" category. The "boys" category consisted of boxes with trucks and men operating vehicles as well as action games with a male warrior or knight, and sports games featuring a male professional player. Games that were just about sports without a male on the front were categorized as "both."

The quantitative results from the games aisle were as follows:

Girls	Boys	Neither
28	74	63

Therefore we see that the fewest games were targeted just at girls while the largest number were targeted just at boys. There were also a large number considered targeted at both.

In the Toys 'R' Us store there was another, separate section of educational games targeted to younger children. Using the same criterion as above we discovered the following breakdown:

Girls	Boys	Neither
14	14	70

These results are different from the ones found in the strictly pleasure games aisle for older children. There is not an evident gender bias in the analysis of educational games. It was found that more of these boxes contained animals and cartoons, which were gender-neutral. The advertisers of this computer software also made an attempt to break gender stereotypes by having, for example, girls operating trucks.

We found that the data we gathered showed that younger children's educational games do not have a gender bias. Also, strictly recreationally geared computer games for older people are marketed mostly towards boys with games marketed toward both girls and "neither" a close second.

Toddler and Infant Toys

For the gender study of children's toys, we picked one row in an aisle and marked down the gender to which the toy would most appeal. The categories were "girl," "boy," or "neutral." We also recorded what sexes were represented on the box of the toy.

In the toddler section, most of the toys were gender-neutral. There were 7 gender "neutral" toys, five "boys' toys," and one "girl" toy. The gender-neutral toys included: Rock and Scoot Zebra, Rocking Horse, Toddle Tots School Bus, Easy Store Activity Zoo, and a number of musical instruments. Most of these toys had at least one boy and girl pictured interacting with the toy or no children on the box at all. There were a couple of toys that we concluded were marketed more just towards boys or just towards girls. I thought that the Discover Sounds Kitchen should be put in the "girls" category. However, there was both a girl and boy pictured on the box. There were more toys geared for boys and they only had boys pictured on the box and these toys seemed to be marketed to their sex. These included: Discover Sounds Workshop, Little Handiworker, Cast 'n Count Fishing Set, Choo-Choo Train, Racin' Rider RC cycle. Interestingly, the "girl" toy included both sexes but the more traditional boy toys still only had a boy depicted on the box.

A count of girls or boys depicted on the packaging of each toy was as follows:

Girls' Toys	# of girls	# of boys
Discover Sounds Kitchen	1	1
Boys' Toys
Discover Sounds Workshop	0	3
Little Handiworker	0	1
Cast 'n Fishing Set	0	1
Choo-Choo Train	0	1
Racin' Rider RC Cycle	0	1
Neutral Toys
Rock and Scoot Zebra	1	2
Easy Store Activity Zoo	1	2
Rocking Horse	1	1
Music (Piano,Drum,Xylophone,Rhythm Maker)	1	1
Toddle Tots School Bus	0	1
Electronic Project Workshop	1	1
Piggy Bank	0	0

We picked one more row of toddler toys that only had Little People vehicles. We thought that there was a good representation of female and male drivers for these vehicles. There was a girl driver for the cement mixer, firetruck, bulldozer, and musical zoo train. There was a boy driver for the school bus, garbage truck, circus train, big top train, and zoo animals. The dumptruck driver was gender neutral because we could not infer what the sex was and there were both boy and girl traffic controllers.

Vehicle	Girl	Boy	Neutral
Cement Mixer	x
Firetruck	x
Bull Dozer	x
Musical Train	x
Traffic Controller	x	x
School Bus		x
Garbage Truck		x
Circus Train		x
Big Top Train		x
Baby Zoo Animals		x
Dumptruck			x

In the infant section, all the toys were gender-neutral. Most toys did not even have pictures of babies on the boxes, but even the babies on the boxes could not be identified as boy or girl. The babies also tended to be dressed in neutral colors such as green, red, and yellow. The toys mostly played music or said words when a button was pressed. There were also a couple of shape sorters. The toys were in a variety of colors, not just pink and blue. The list of toys included: Jungle Pal Music Mirror, Attach 'n Play Monkey, Jungle Sounds Shape Sorter, Peaceful Planet Aquarium, Mouse's Word House, Cookie Shape Surprise, First Words Phone, Alphabet Nest-a-mals, Turn and Learn, Speech and Teach Phone, Nursery Rhymes Activity Center, Dancin' Jitterbug, Sparkling Symphony Mirror, Sparkling Star Beads, Sparkling Carousel, and Sparkling Symphony Soother.

Overall, we thought that the toy manufacturers did a good job making gender-neutral toys and marketing them to both sexes. The infant toys were obviously the most gender-neutral. We would still say there are some gender stereotypes in the toddler toys but progress has been made in this regard over the last 70 years.

Bikes, Trikes, and Sports

Interestingly, bicycles were mostly extremely gender-specific, with designations explicitly stated: "16 inch Boy's Storm," "16 inch Girls Cos Bike," "14 inch Girls 24 Karat Bike," and "16 inch Boys OverDrive." There were a few, styled apparently for boys, with names like "12 inch B Air Maxx," and "16 inch DH-16 Thruster." In olden days, boys' bikes would have a horizontal top bar and girls' bikes would have a diagonal; most of the current bikes had neither option, but something in-between. So the gender designations are now mostly for marketing purposes, it would seem.

We counted two girls' tricycles and two boys' tricycles, with one (a European brand) with no obvious gender cues. So, as with other baby and toddler items, the gendering seems somewhat balanced.

Plastic motorized cars, however, were very different. On the photos above or on the box of each car was pictured a boy driving the car, with a girl in the passenger seat next to him (usually talking on a walky-talky). The only time girls were shown driving the cars is when it was a pink Barbie car, with another girl in the passenger seat. Motorized cars resembling construction equipment were pictured only with boys.

Gendered packaging of roller blades broke down as follows: 7 girls' blades, 3 boys' blades, and 3 neutral (no boys or girls pictured). The names given to the helmets were suggestive of strong gender divisions: "Allure" and "Sparkle" helmets were pictured with girls and were pink or purple (one came with a "built-in ponytail port"); "Cobalt," "Mongoose," and "Blast" helmets were pictures with boys and were blue, black, or orange. There were also some with no human figures pictured: "Quest," "Mongrel," and "Turbo 400."

Skateboards were all styled with boys in mind, and most pictured boys on the packaging. Names included "Stryker" and "Dragonball," after video game heroes.

Plastic basketball hoops showed 3 with girls pictured, 8 with boys pictured, and none lacking human figures. Usually there was also pictured a mom, easily folding up and transporting the product.

Board Games

One would think that board games would not be a gender-specific. For the most part, the data we collected supported this theory. We took a look at roughly forty board games on the shelf and determined whether or not, judging by the cover, the games were geared towards males, females, or neutral. The results were not terribly surprising and were just as we had expected, with the exception of only a few specific games.

During our survey we noticed that there were a few games that were marketed specifically towards the female audience. Pretty, Pretty, Princess had a princess on the front cover, and on the back were three girls playing the game. Powerpuff Girls is another example of a game marketed towards females, with three tough looking girls on the cover. Girl Talk and Telephone pictured only girls on the cover, so obviously these games, too, are targeted towards the female audience.

The more mature games, Monopoly, Pictionary, Stratego, Othello, and the like are all gender-neutral. The boxes generally had a picture of the game but no pictures of anyone playing the game. Thus both sexes were equally encouraged to purchase and play the game. Most games, however, featured both a boy and a girl on the cover. This allowed for people buying the game to see that it was meant for both boys and girls. Interestingly enough, Bob the Builder, a game dealing with construction and large machines, featured a girl on the cover (in addition to a boy), even though construction is frequently stereotyped as male. However, one interesting note is that there were never, on any game, more girls than boys on the cover. Often there would be one boy and one girl, and sometimes two boys and one girl, but never two girls and one boy.

This relates back to the situation with the power cars, how there were specific cars targeted towards females, but the 'other' cars, supposedly for males, were actually for both genders. At earlier ages, the trend seems to be that females are more likely to try masculine things than males trying feminine things, and marketers and advertisers have picked up on this fact. Thus, while one gender (females) have a set of toys targeted specifically towards them, the males have to settle with 'sharing' with the females.

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last updated 5/18/02