Locked diaries and sewing kits may stock the shelves of the pink aisle, but cryptography and soldering are deemed less marketable.

Yet the line between what is deemed appropriate for girls and what is deemed appropriate for boys remains a blurry one. “If you have objects that signal to a kid that it’s not for them, either explicit or implicit, you reduce that opportunity to learn through manipulation.” “Children use the objects in their world to think through ideas,” she says. “We have to add ‘for girls.’” With over a decade of experience working in children’s media at Northeastern, Sesame Workshop and Nick Jr., Alper emphasizes the importance of representation and diversity in characters and storylines.

“STEM toys are by default for boys,” says Meryl Alper, professor of communication studies at Northeastern University. A December report by the Institution of Engineering and Technology showed that boys were almost three times more likely to receive a STEM-themed toy for Christmas. They often fail to encourage little girls to grow up to be engineers and scientists. It’s an all-too-common marketing assumption that continues to plague the “pink aisle” of girls’ toys. You can try out the original typewriter’s encoding scheme in our app below. Even the latest model, produced in 2015, omitted this novel feature. The four encryption modes - each featuring a simple alphabet substitution cipher (or 1-to-1 encoding) - were left out of Mattel's instruction manuals and advertisements. Because girls would never be interested in writing secret messages - right? But there’s a catch - the secret messaging feature was completely pinkwashed - never revealed as a capability of the new Barbie typewriter. That’s right - none other than Barbie herself. Slathered in pink, it was soon headed to market to appeal 'to girls.' Can you guess what brand was behind the refresh? In 1998, Slovenian toy company Mehano designed a line of children’s electronic typewriter toys with the ability to write secret messages.Įventually, the company licensed the typewriter to another company that had something altogether different in mind for the toys.

Download the new Barbie 2017 Memory