GIFTS FOR LITTLE GIRLS
Every year, around this time, I’d highly anticipate the Sears Wish Book as a little girl. Its pages were filled with items I’d hope and wish and pray would be waiting for me under the Christmas tree on December 25th. When I was a young one, I loved dressing up Barbie in her leg warmers (I kid you not), baking pie in my pretend kitchen and building homes, complete with a roof and furniture, for my Lego people to live in.
Tonight, as I sat in my mom’s family room curled up in my thermal underwear and leg warmers, I flipped through Sears’ 2007 Wish Book, curious to see what toys were to be the hot sellers.
Let me simply say that I would be appalled were anyone to ever buy any of the following gifts for my daughter someday:
1. Why buy her a Barbie doll when you can buy the little girl in your life Top Model Barbie? Because unless she’s “girly and fun, sweet and sassy, with a sophisticated style,” then what is she worth?
2. What girl doesn’t love to dress in fun costumes and feel like a princess? Forget the fairytale ballgown and give her a strapless sequin dress. Now your 3-year-old can also be a real-life Bratz doll. Kinda put a whole new twist on “role play.”
3. Radio Flyer wagons are so 1917 and Barbie’s Corvette is a little too pink. Keep up with the Joneses in your child’s very own Cadillac Escalade. Gotta keep rollin’ with the homies.
I’m sure that the shelves at Toys R’ Us are stacked full of other shallow, purposeless toys designed to give kids bad cases of the gimme-gimmes. The truth is, the toy industry will seemingly always target the vanity of little girls and the warriors within little boys. Walk into any dollar store and, even in a day where war and violence are daily headlines, toy machine guns and machetes are still yours for the buying.
All’s not lost though…I did happen to come across one toy that even as an adult is drool-inducing. I simply can’t imagine how lucky I would’ve been had Saint Nick ever delivered this to me.
Photo courtesy of Bratz
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6 Comments
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I remember the black felt marker X’d throughout the catalogue. The marketing of toys hasn’t changed. The onus is on us as parents to choose the right ones.
Toys are not even as cool as they used to be. I wish I still had all my old toys so if I have kids I could pass them down.
I used to love going through the Wish Book every year too. It was a tradition for me to sit down with my Grandma and go through it. I’d star the things I wanted Santa to bring. Ah, how I love talk of Christmas traditions.
I agree with you about the ridiculousness of many of the toys that are out there these days. I think your mom is right about the onus being on the parents.
Sears Wish Book…
That takes me back.
Did you grab a pen and immediately circle all the toys that you wanted?
Toys for little kids are getting too excessive, but I hve to admit there are some things I wish they’d come up with when I was 5.
I’m pissed off about Dora the Explorer. Here was a lovely, intelligent, ethnic role model for young girls… and now they’re making her hock beauty kits and vanity tables with makeup and mirrors for young girls’ christmas gifts. BAH!