Boys and Their Toys

Our A loves to make us "food" with his toys.  A block becomes wetet (milk), a car, injera.  The other night, while I was visiting with my friend and her sweet boy, A and Bill cooked a Thai meal for us.  He loved helping.  I read the article below this morning and it makes me sad.  Even Bill said he used to wish he could have an easy bake oven.  Shame on you, sexist, profit-driven, couldn't care less about our children toy companies!

Cooking toys not geared for boys By MARIA SCIULLO, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Wednesday, January 13, 2010 Recently, a group of boys in Carrie Hackett's second-grade class were out on the playground discussing Easy-Bake Ovens. They were mad there weren't any ovens for boys. "I told them there's a blue-and-white one, but they said, 'No, there's a girl on the box.''' Too bad, because the boys in Hackett's class at St. Margaret of Scotland school in Green Tree, Pa., love watching Duff Goldman as he and his team perform on Food Network's "Ace of Cakes." And representatives for cooking reality shows including "Top Chef" on the Bravo network and "Cake Boss" on TLC said their stars are mobbed by youngsters at public appearances. And more often than not, those kids are boys. "Look at the 'Ace of Cakes,' '' said Cait Poynor, an assistant professor of marketing in the University of Pittsburgh's Katz Graduate School of Business. Regular-guy role models make such shows more kid-friendly, she noted. With such a growing young demographic, toymakers might be expected to jump at the chance to market food-related toys for boys. But with few exceptions, it's still all about thinking pink. Hasbro manufactures the iconic tabletop Easy-Bake Oven but has no plans to market a "boys" version. It's somewhat of a paradox: The culinary world is dominated by men, yet cooking and baking "are for girls." This may be changing on both fronts. "To me, it's completely infuriating that all of these 'women's crafts' are professionalized by men. It's so wrong." said Kathy M. Newman, an English professor at Carnegie Mellon University whose classes have included the literature of gender studies and pop culture. It's hard to find a gender-neutral toy kitchen. Fisher-Price offers a "Play My Way" plastic setup that is mostly yellow with primary color accents. But its ads all show little girls using it. On its Web site, a basic kitchen from Fisher-Price shows a girl and the script "Visit our other girls sites" beneath the photo. An elaborate Pottery Barn Kids kitchen is dominated by pale pink walls. Goldman had Easy-Bake Ovens when he was a kid. Toy manufacturer JAKKS Pacific teamed with Goldman to help develop its "Girl Gourmet" line of Cake Bakery products. A tiny two-tiered cake can be microwaved, then decorated with rolled fondant and an air-powered frosting gun. He asked the company if it might market the baking sets to both boys and girls. "They said if they have to market to boys and girls, it wouldn't do nearly as well." "We have cops who watch our show, we have guys in the military, people who watch football, people who watch NASCAR," Goldman added. "I think in some ways that's why kids really can relate to it." Copyright © 1995 - 2010 Evening Post Publishing Co..