to be so angry at Kinder Eggs!

What a very strange thing for them to do. It cannot be because of lack of sales!

Also, what has happened to good old Lego - gone pink!! We have kept masses of Lego. Will our 2 DGDs want to play with it, when the time comes? It's not pink! X

With you there Penstemmon.

The first baby cardi I knitted whilst pregnant with DD1 was apple green. My DM thought I should have waited to find out if I was having a boy or a girl! Can't possibly put green on a newborn. Neither did she like that I let both DD's play about dressed in dungarees. They should have been wearing a 'nice' dress

I have no time for the blue/pink thing. Just let them be children.

Have you tried to buy toy kitchen equipment? Dustpan and brushes, cups and saucers all in pink. It took some time to find a cookery set in suitable colours for my GS yet when the older GC's were toddlers I easily found things in red, yellow and orange. It would seem we are going backwards.

Get this lot after them.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Let-Toys-Be-Toys-For-Girls-and-Boys/104658933034521?fref=ts

They have been campaigning heavily and with some success to get major retailers to stop advertising toys as being for girls or boys and toys and equipment etc being promoted as in pink or blue.

This link could be shared on your Facebook page.

Yes the pink lego has annoyed me too and I have also found difficulty finding non pink kitchen equipment. I agree Liz things seem to have started to go backwards. I bought my daughter a garage rather than a doll when her brother was born 30 years ago!

Pink lego is a good marketing ploy. Whilst I agree children should not be led towards stereotypes, the fact remains that little girls do like pink and are more likely to buy a set in pink. However when I asked my DGS (11years old) what colour he would like me to make an item for him, he replied ' Pink please.' He now has a very nice pink place mat.

i do not mind children liking what is considered sterotypical items to play with or wear..I just want them to have real choice and not feel pressured to 'like' pink or 'like' cars etc. My nephew, now in his early 20s is gay and he says it made his childhood even more difficult as he felt he had to like football etc. behave in certain 'boy' ways. if we were less dragooned into gender sterotypes we could all be they way we really prefer! might be pink and fluffy or not!

Apparently the Kinder Egg gender thing is just for a short period only. If everyone writes to them they may not do it again. On the other hand I bought some pink ones (not realising they were different from the usual ones) and they both contained little balls to make - enjoyed by boys and girls.

It must be an up and coming trend because our local toyshop has a section labelled girls and another section labelled boys. Are 'they' trying to tell us something?

Funnily enough, I bought a box of three pink Kinder eggs on Monday to take with me, as I was going out for a meal with ds and family.
Littlest dgd two loves playing with the plastic containers and toys.
They only had pink ones in store.

Inside was a padlock and key, a spinning top, and a little 'pony'.

Pony was ignored but padlock and top were well used!
Absolutely no point being in a pink box!

I haven't explained that too well but you get the gist!

There was a discussion on Newsnight last night and one of the people interviewed said she thought that feminism was now fairly ridiculous as it had achieved its key objectives. I think this sort of blatantly sexist marketing demonstrates that she was way off the mark.

Pink/blue toys not only stereotype girls but also boys, and ultimately affect the way in which men and women see themselves and behave.

Perhaps retailers think they'll make more money this way since parents may be nagged to buy separate toys for boys and girls even if the toy is, apart from colour, identical.

Eloethan, so glad I missed Newsnight, i'd have been chucking things at the tv. I do believe things have gone downhill on the toy front. The gender stereotyping is frankly shocking and its impact is evident. This old fear of feminism just doesn't go away does it.

I'm so glad that I only have grandsons and we don't have to drown in a sea of pink. I have photo's of myself as a three year old and you would never know I was a girl. My own daughter had to be forced into dresses practically at gun point, and we both have a deep hatred of the colour pink.

my dissertation, years ago, was about gender stereotyping so i feel really frustrated to see things still, in marketing, as they were then!

My daughters had a real mix of toys: dolls and many accessories, garages /cars . Lego (no pink!), art/craft etc etc. One loved dolls etc the other did not. One asked for a complete pink bedroom when we redecorated the other preferred green!
Took the DGDs out today to buy boots: one chose red patent Doc Martens and the other some brown knee length. They had the choice of girlier /pinky but that is what they chose.

Im so confused about gender stereotyping but I don't know how to explain it apart from saying - pink for girls and blue for boys, is it really a problem?

And red Doc Martens and brown knee length boots - why is it worthy of mentioning?

Could it just be that some things are overthought and this topic is just one of them?

Little girls are now taught to like pink. Boys are taught to dislike it. There is a slight inclination of females to like pink/red colours. But all this pink crap is marketing, marketing, marketing.
My nomination for one of the crappiest : ELC easel in pink or blue. It's an easel FFS. Sorry, I was wrong, its a plot to ensure that big sister's easel is no good for little brother, so you have to buy another one.
Most repulsive item: in Dunelm. A "little girls dressing table" in the style of 18th C French furniture. In bubble gum pink plastic. Plus a little chest of drawers and bedside table to match.
Irritating leakage of this into the adult world includes the pink branding of breast cancer research.
Most irritating grownup pinkness: mother's day card display (huge) in Sainsbury's. About 40 sq metres of pastel pink with the odd touch of lavender.
AAAArrrrgggghhhhhhhh

It is not overthought and we need to make more noise about what marketing cr*p it is. I wold put money on very few of us bringing up our DDs or DSs in a Pink or Blue environment. We have 3 Dwho played with - primary coloured toys,wore dungarees and jeans (more practical) with occasional pinafore dresses and matching tights for "best" before they were old enough to rebel and insist on the jeans. Pefectly feminine independent young women with a stong sense of their own worth. I am relieved that (so far) I have DGSs as the pink question does not raise its ugly head, but I would do my best to circumvent the issue should DGDs arrive in the future.

Far from going backwards [towards stereotyping the genders]I think it is in fact much worse now than it ever was.The very worst now are the clothes for little girls going about dolled up like little Lolitas in short tight pink clothing, what does this say about our society; and the parents?They should be dressed as children not teenagers.
The toy industry is never slow to spot a trend, so we drown in a sea of pink and purple plastic for girls.Fluffy and sentimental stuff, while boys get scary looking military lookalike guns, and any toy that flashes lights and noises.Sure, some toys are pretty good, but a heck of a lot are not.
The pink Lego is vile, but Lego also now produce most of their stuff to be made as ONE item therefore reducing the play and imagination[also it takes a Dad to be able to put it together, or me a Grandma, or an adult anyway.]If parents were not weak and stopped buying all the tat, then things would change.

I have never looked at my granddaughters and attributed their 'all colours of the rainbow' clothing to anything more than a wardrobe full of clothes in all colours of the rainbow bought because they were comfy and practical as well as nice. And I doubt very much my daughter has ever hung the clothes on the line and congratulated herself on making a feminist statement. She would however be very happy about getting rid of a stubborn stain.

And yesterday when I bought my soon to arrive second grandsons coming home from the hospital outfit I bought it in lemon because I loved it and not because the version in blue was gender stereotyping. If I'd preferred the blue I would have bought it because all it would have been is a nice outfit that happened to be blue.

It really can be that simple. However, if I did have granddaughters who were into pink and who grew up to be women who were into pink I would like to think that other women could see them for the independent and very able young women they will undoubtedly be, rather than looking at them and thinking they are anything but because they are in pink.

Sometimes we women are each others harshest critics.

AS I read it, it is the whole pink for girls, blue (or primarie for boys )marketing brainwashing strategy that we are criticising, not mothers or grandmothers of little girls.
However I do have one thought regarding one reason for pink/blue baby clothes - it helps you to say the "right" things regarding a new baby when you don't know which sex it is. Some mums really do not like being told their little boy is "pretty" - "gorgeous, lovely, sweet, happy" OK! "pretty" NO !
DD was a little bit unchuffed to be asked when DGS2 (dressed entirely in dark blue/white/green trousers etc ) was aged about 1, "What is your little girl called?"

Hanoona, we are all free to make our own choices [as adults] but children are constantly got at by advertisers, and it takes a strong Mother to say the word NO. Any grown woman that I knew who wore pink outfits a lot, well, they may not be the full shilling, to coin a phrase.However, hopefully, girls will have grown out of the pink fairy phase by age 10.Whatever we would like to believe about our society, no man or woman would view a pink clad adult as either able or independent [what we would like doesn't come into it.]Obviously I am not talking about wearing a pink top, or pink jeans or now and then a pink dress [away from the workplace].
The world is not a perfect place, which is why we have to adapt, and why it is not feminism [but misplaced faith in human nature]that allows girls to stagger drunkenly though our towns at midnight wearing hardly anything at all, [pink or otherwise.]When my own daughters were young, thankfully there wasn't the sea of pink/purple tatty stuff about.

Indeed, all the colours of the rainbow means that they are healthily clad in whatever took their fancy at the moment of buying.

To have a few toys in pink is the luck of the draw. To have ALL (or many of) the toys in a toyshop in pink or blue, colour-coded for whether they are suitable for girls or boys is not healthy - it leads girls to think that the only things that should interest them are pink and frilly, and that only boys have things in strong colours, because they are stronger. It aint so.