Essay On Ethnic Diversity In Toys

On the twenty-fourth of August, I spent some time in the Toys “R” Us of Douglasville. I walked every aisle of the store and examined every toy I saw. While looking at the toys I paid the most attention to how diverse they were. I wanted to know if these toys had a great deal of ethnic diversity, especially dolls and action figures. My second focus was how many of these toys are obviously created for one gender over the other. My third thought was to what economic class does Toys “R” Us target. As I walked around and examined toys I was surprised at the lack of diversity in the dolls, figurines, and the pictures of children playing with the products on the box that were available at the store. Barbie Dolls lacked a great deal of ethnic diversity in their aisle; Barbie essentially had Barbie Dolls of two colors, the two colors being white and black. I only saw two dolls that could be considered not white or black, which is shocking considering all the steps the Mattel company has taken to create a more ethnically diverse Barbie. One box included six …show more content…
In Toys “R” Us, horses and horses with riders were obviously created for girls. The horse figurines had stereotypically feminine colors, along with hearts, on the blankets and bridles of the horses. The horse with riders were all girls, except the warriors on horseback who wielded a huge sword and were hyper-masculine. In the aisles that featured dress up items, the girls had princess costumes and the military and S.W.A.T. costumes were in bags that had photos of only boys wearing those outfits. In the section that housed trains, only one box had a girl on it and that train set had a pink train, pink castle, pink horse, pink carriage, and a princess dressed in a pink ball gown. Toys still favor a more stereotypical toy for boys and girls; girls have the pink and princess, while boys get heroes and blue and gray