Well, it’s happened. Hasbro, after criticism, is going gender neutral on it’s Easy Bake Oven. As a guy who likes to cook, let me say “bravo”, and may I suggest a line of gender-neutral kid’s cookbooks and cooking utensils. No I’m serious, have you seen how kids are eating?
It appears there’s awareness of gender issues and toy sales, even if attempts are a bit offbeat. Of course geeks like us know that there’s plenty of cases of gender-bent preferences.
- Hasbro, of course, has My Little Pony, which makes the easy-bake over issue look like nothing. If they released a Pinkie Pie Microwave, grown men would buy it.
- There’s “The Transformers,” whose fandom taught me that if your last name is “Prime” there’s no small amount of women who, when younger, thought you were the sexiest thing on two legs or four wheels. Peter Cullen, and that large cast of Rodimi, do you know what you did?
- Huge amounts of anime targeted at men with casts of buff guys punching stuff and bonding attract huge female audiences because it’s buff guys punching stuff and bonding. Yaoi is a kind of cultural alkaheist.
Nothing here really surprises us. The issues of gender-target expectations being off doesn’t surprise us.