The latest episode of the Strange Assembly podcast is now available for download! Hey, look, it’s a nice, round episode number! Chris, Jay and Mike talk about the story results of Kotei season, the Coils environment, and what’s going down with L5R at GenCon. And, as a special treat for Episode 100, you get to listen to Chris bemoan sex segregation in children’s toys.
It’s all about money. If you, as a marketer, could convince people that boys wear blue and can’t wear pink, and that girls wear pink and can’t wear blue, well, then you’ve just considerably increased the amount of clothing the population as a whole will purchase. It’s similar with many products (toys etc), if you can make them obsolete quickly, without reducing initial sales, you’re going to clean up.
Also, pretend I said something really mean about comic books. Something like “they are noxious body-image poison”.
Well, as a first-level analysis, yes, companies color and market toys in the ways they do because they think it will maximize profits. But there are some “whys” to follow that up, right? And possibly some “what does one do about this, if anything?” I don’t claim any insight here. Just wanted to stir the pot/gripe pointlessly.
The book “Cinderella Ate My Daughter” is a decent rundown of much of what you’re talking about.
Episode 100. This is great news, because every one works in base ten and loves nice, round numbers!
I keep meaning to do this in an episode, and keep forgetting, so let me at least note a correction/update here – while doing more thorough holiday shopping I learned that the Imaginext DC Super Friends/Justice League line includes quite a few more figures than were featured on the Target display I had looked at, including several female characters (Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, and Catwoman).