Abstract

Once children move into the ‘public sphere’ of full time education and begin to interact with others in their own peer group, their experiences of play become defined by their own genders. It is an acknowledged fact that children construct and maintain single-sex play worlds in which they are distinctly ‘boys’ or ‘girls’. One can therefore reasonably expect toy advertisements, as commercial reflections of these play worlds and narratives in which toys become ‘props’ for the re-enactment of certain social roles, to be constructed along the same gendered lines.

The targeting of toy ads at either boys or girls may seem ‘obvious’, but their gendered constructions are deceptively simple. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that it is the smallest of details within toy ads that add up to a convincing and powerful portrait of how children and toys are defined in terms of gender. This paper will seek to move beyond the product as mere entity, to consider how it is pitched at distinctive audience sectors through the careful use of particular production features (both visual and audio).

This paper will refer to two major and enduring toy brands – Action Man (Hasbro) and Barbie (Mattel). These products are similar in many ways (9 inch ‘dolls’ located in distinctive product ranges) but are both marketed specifically in terms of gender. By offering a semiotic analysis of production feature patterns, product ‘themes’ and ‘appeals’, and modes of audience address, this paper will demonstrate how toy ads follows classic gender stereotyped constructs. A clear framework will be presented in which the underlying patterns of gender targeting will be identified and located, and used as the basis for revealing how it is possible to ‘genderise’ children and toys in an unconscious, subtle way.

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This page was last modified 12 Dec 2005