On Monday, January 8, 2024 at 11:30:59 PM UTC-8, Irrellius Spamticon wrote:
> Your toy aisles have had gender neutral sections for decades, they just weren't labeled. Nobody has to get rid of gender specific areas, and stores
> have been trying to cross sell cross gender lines anyway.

I found an example of a 1984 attempt by a grocery store to cross sell GI Joe, My Little Pony, and Transformers all together in one newspaper flyer ad. They called the segment 'Action Toys From Hasbro' and pictured were a boxed Cobra Rattler, Sunlight the Rainbow Pony from MLP, and Wheeljack. I did a recreation of it:

https://www.instagram.com/p/C2qL_phyayE/

I'm not sure how ponies were marketed back then but this one struck me as interesting because of how the text states that any boy or girl will love ponies. Which is actually true, but not what Hasbro seemed to have been going for. I think if Hasbro of the 80s wanted ponies in the action figure aisle they probably would have packed guns with them. Or conversely, they'd have given Transformers little cute rubbery mascot animal pack ins or something like that.

On Monday, February 19, 2024 at 12:39:38 PM UTC-7, Evil King Macrocranios wrote:

> I'm not sure how ponies were marketed back then but this one struck me as interesting because of how the text states that any boy or girl will love ponies. Which is actually true, but not what Hasbro seemed to have been going for. I think if Hasbro of the 80s wanted ponies in the action figure aisle they probably would have packed guns with them. Or conversely, they'd have given Transformers little cute rubbery mascot animal pack ins or something like that.

There are a lot of toy lines I was utterly unaware of as a kid because they were merchandised in aisles I didn't ever go down. I was interested in the action figure aisle (and, later, the video games) and that was it. It's the reason I was completely unaware of the My First Transformer toy assortment until I was an adult (though it's likely I would never have bought them as a kid anyway).

The marketing was very gender-specific back in the day. All the toy commercials on TV for He-Man and GoBots and such had jingles sung by deep-voiced men, and the toy commercials for My Little Pony and Barbie had flowery, light jingles with an all-woman cast. Transformers actually straddled the line because it used both male and female voices in the theme song, plus the robotic flanging which sort of removed the gendered, human-quality to a degree. But, it was always little toys in the commercials playing with the toys. Never little girls.

Zob (I'm not saying that little girls *must* shop on the "girls' toys" aisles, but it does sort of make sense to merchandise all that stuff together in one spot)