I collect dolls and have two daughters who play with their own dolls. I’ve never bought Bratz because they just look…I don’t know, aggressive. Like they want to snark about your outfit, not be your friend. The baby ones are just disturbing, especially when you realize that they’re wearing underwear, not diapers. Why are potty-trained kids being portrayed with no pants?
(The story of the legal battle between Mattel (Barbie) and MGA (Bratz) is fascinating, though. The founder of MGA/creator of Bratz came up with the concept while working for Mattel, but he claimed the non-competition clause didn’t apply because he was on sabbatical.)
I don’t really care if dolls that are supposed to be teenagers are “yassified” - some of the Rainbow High dolls I’ve bought, I bought because they were wearing outfits that reminded me of stuff I wore in high school. When they’re supposed to be little girls, though, I think it’s a bit much.
I agree with all of this. I'm also wondering whether the parents buying the Sad Beige toys are the same ones buying the yassified ones? Because the vibes could not be more different
I had this same exact thought - interesting that the sad beige aesthetic is mostly baby / toddler toys (where children don’t have strong preferences, or at least aren’t capable of voicing those preferences). Makes me imagine that no kid focus group is actively choosing the monotone pikler triangle
My wife and I noticed the same thing, but we talked about in terms of an “attitude” that these toys are giving off. We ended up going the American girl doll route, but also, our daughter loves horses, so Breyer horses is a wellspring of provision!
"Attitude" may be the word I was reaching for but didn't quite find with this. Even in the '90s, there was some noise about "attitude" being injected into US-market versions of Japanese toys, and since then I feel like the "attitude" dials have been steadily notched up. Being generally drawn to a cuter, calmer aesthetic, I find this all a little regrettable. I have memories of shying away from it even when very young.
Either this isn’t happening as much in boy toy world, or my son just isn’t quite in the target demographic yet for toys to get age adjusted up. I have some qualms about modern ninja turtle aesthetics, but it’s generally in line with the rebrand, and doesn’t seem to be nefarious (just sort of ugly in a Ren and Stimpy way)
I was thinking about "what's the boy version of this" while reading the article. In the 80s, legos had a few themes: a city, some space ships, castles. There were no spring-loaded shooters, very little story content, it was really a _construction_ toy.
Now we have Lego themed for Star Wars, Marvel super heros, Minecraft, Ninjago...it seems like it has become more of a _narrative_ toy when targeting boys.
(Also, Lego friends minidolls are clearly yassified minifigs. :-)
Yeah, what I've noticed is that the sets you see in stores contain lots of odd specialized pieces that let you build the New York skyline or Raya and the Last Dragon or whatever, but they can't really be mixed and matched to make new things. Old Lego castle sets could be used to construct precise designs but they were far more modular, you could easily mix two sets and make a bigger castle. You can still buy generic bricks but that isn't really their signature product now.
I'd say it's a double-edged sword...there's a lot of weird specific stuff like Star Wars windscreens and Minecraft heads.
But the generic system is also a lot more flexible than it was in the 80s - there's a complete set of brackets that let you change the "up" direction of building and most sets include at least some of this style of building. It actually makes the system a lot more flexible and adds more potential brick combinations.
I think the worst of "big prebuilt single-use blob" may have been in the early 2000s - sets from back then feel dumbed down. My understanding is that Lego did some anthropology on their own customers and realized (sigh, duh) that kids take pride in building sets that are complex.
I’ve noticed this. There’s an elegant simplicity to little green army men and older-style army dolls (and G.I. Joes used to definitely be dolls) that modern action figure lines don’t capture. It’s not enough to be the brave, proud soldier anymore, you have to be the Elite Alpha Delta Bravo Special Forces Team that brutally eviscerates terrorists.
The SpecOps supremacy in many Americans' minds is a huge topic in its own right with imho a lot of negative effects. Back in my day! it was enough to volunteer and work for your country, be part of the team (army). Now it's all about being an individual agent of death working independently of the team. Where's the civic pride, where's the honor? Sigh.
Have you perceived any variation in say musculature (honestly asking I have no clue)? In terms of popular kid-adjacent representation it kinda feels to me like some Marvel films wrapped back around toward He-Man on that front.
I haven’t really noticed a ton of “body image” type changes, but candidly action figures just aren’t really a thing in my house. Modern hot wheels toys seem much more “action” oriented than previous iterations - less racing more stunts - but I could be stretching to try and find something
I loved this, despite being a "Boy Dad" (is that a thing like "Boy Moms?"). I really abhor the projection of exaggerated adulthood upon children.
And, frankly, I hate it for same reason I have grown to hate the (very 1990s-style) gender-essentialism projected upon adolescents and adults my whole life. Not everything needs to be "manly" or "feminine" in this exaggerated, sexualized, almost drag-type quality of projected gender performance. It's fine if my toothpaste and deodorant isn't for lumberjacks, really. And
this is *especially* weird for for children who are still figuring out themselves.
And, Barbie exempted, that gender-maxxing tendency in toys might have hit boys long before it hit girls, for reasons that are interesting. When 1980s and 90s boys were playing with dolls (sorry, I mean "action figures"), we were playing with these totally crazy, muscled He-Man *MEN.* And the aesthetics were very extra, often with a striking sexualization (He-Man himself was basically naked, in order to show off his rippling pecs and ample "package"). WHO DECIDED THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA? And, like, that's not even addressing all the super-violence and what we now call toxic masculinity being celebrated for young, impressionable brains.
So, yea, Bratz make me uncomfy, but there's a lot about the toys that even Millennial kids were playing with that seem, in retrospect, very problematic.
Polly Pockets didn’t get discontinued in 1998! I had them in the early 00s. They were the taller version and had rubbery clothes that often got chewed on.
The pocket version was discontinued. They re-released the line with a 3” doll with rubber/soft plastic clothes and playsets. No Christmas morning will ever beat when my sisters I opened up the Polly Pocket Cruise Ship playset. This version of the line was discontinued in the early 2010s. The current iteration is actually a combo with both the compact playsets and 3” dolls available.
Littlest pet shop has a crazier history. The 90s version you referenced was relatively short lived, the 2000s bobblehead style became the #1 girl collectible for some years until Hasbro decided to ultra-stylize the figures - https://lpsmerch.com/g4/all/ . I played with these as well, but I aged out before they made the pets look crazy luckily. Another company has recently re-released the line with the classic bobblehead look.
I violently hate everything you showed in this article. Though btw, even your 90s version of stuff was pretty yassified, compared to the 80s and prior. Bring back the terrifying and creepy, entirely non sexually alluring in the slightest manner, weird toys from mid-century!
I was never even allowed to have Barbie Dolls, my mom was fully into Free To Be You and Me women's lib era thinking. All I wanted was the giant Barbie head that you could do her hair and makeup, but there was no way my mom would go for that. I wasn't allowed to have anything to do with the Smurfs either, bc she didn't like how there was only one girl Smurf who was blonde when she was good and black haired when bad. I did have an American Girl doll. While I chafed against these restrictions as a child, the conditioning worked because I now find all this stuff even more nauseating and horrific than I think any of y'all do.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought something was a little odd about Bratz! I hope I'm not projecting feelings onto my childhood self, but I vaguely remember being kind of mystified when they started showing up, like something just seemed DIFFERENT about them, something a little aggressive and maybe even almost subcultural? A little cold and aloof for children's toys? Definitely not even the tiniest bit humble. It's kind of like the vibe of my brother's Street Sharks was creeping into the world of dolls just a bit, I don't know.
The products you've brought up here really put it into focus and now my mind is churning on Bratz as signifiers of some kind of cultural inflection point. Speaking of subculture, I think this was also around the time things like tattoos and body piercings started drifting from badges of alt identity to something nearly everybody does, but now my mind is really wandering...
I vividly remember when my friends started getting Bratz and I was very weirded out by them. So I don’t think you’re projecting. I felt like I was doing something wrong when I played with them! They just gave off intense mean girl vibes to me and their clothes were just… too much. I didn’t like it when I was 8 and I still don’t!
I felt validated seeing that someone you know was _just as baffled as I was_ regarding the terminology. I looked up a lot of things on Google today, and I am definitely sadder for what I learned.
I remember finding the troll dolls at my grandmas house and thereafter learning about my mother’s disdain for how “pretty” girls toys had to be. Getting her to see Barbie was a slight uphill battle but very rewarding for her.
I think in the same way Olympic athletes are doing stuff you couldn’t have imagined back in the day, we’re slowly distilling aesthetics to some Platonic form. Eventually the ideal children’s toy will just be colorful noises which directly tap into “protect what is cute” brain via Bluetooth
There’s a lot about buzzfeed era feminism that is disdained now, but seeing what the kids are into I sometimes feel like ragging on Barbie etc didn’t go far enough
As a 31 year old, the yassified versions are the ones I remember the most fondly from the tail-end of my doll-playing years. I loved the Fashion Polly evolution of Polly Pocket and the revamped Littlest Pet Shop. But that may be because even as a younger child I did not like baby dolls. Only Barbie and other fashion dolls. I remember being embarrassed that my mom wouldn’t let me have Bratz though “because they look like sluts” lol
Just as an aside, Legos took over the kids' part of our house for a good while. It was kind of nice because my brother and I could both "play Legos" together, with him going wild on space stations and pirate ships while I used them as an endlessly customizable dollhouse (at the same time, I was constantly begging my mom for magazines about interior decorating and floor plans). The one time he threw a fit and smashed up my house is probably the angriest I've ever been at him in my entire life, though!
I'm still fond of Legos, and I'm sad to hear friends with kids telling me they're too expensive to buy new these days. One couple combined their old buckets of bricks to give to their daughter, though, which I think is really lovely and probably the best way for someone to approach them. For me the freeform nature of it was always the most appealing thing.
They're not a cheap toy, but there's also real price difference based on the theme. Licensed themes (Star Wars, Minecraft, Marvel) are all above average price-wise and not a great deal. The "creator" (build-centric, not theme centric) and "friends" lines both offer better price-per-piece.
Good to know! My childhood motives may reveal my bias here, but I never thought the themed kits were all that interesting, anyway. The magic was always in their function as a blank slate to do what you want.
Btw, I don't know if this is useful to anybody but I live in the UK and searched far and wide for a decent American Girl
alternative for my daughter and the "Our Generation" doll line is very cute. And they're the same size as American Girl so any clothes/accessories etc made for AG should still work on them
I collect dolls and have two daughters who play with their own dolls. I’ve never bought Bratz because they just look…I don’t know, aggressive. Like they want to snark about your outfit, not be your friend. The baby ones are just disturbing, especially when you realize that they’re wearing underwear, not diapers. Why are potty-trained kids being portrayed with no pants?
(The story of the legal battle between Mattel (Barbie) and MGA (Bratz) is fascinating, though. The founder of MGA/creator of Bratz came up with the concept while working for Mattel, but he claimed the non-competition clause didn’t apply because he was on sabbatical.)
I don’t really care if dolls that are supposed to be teenagers are “yassified” - some of the Rainbow High dolls I’ve bought, I bought because they were wearing outfits that reminded me of stuff I wore in high school. When they’re supposed to be little girls, though, I think it’s a bit much.
I agree with all of this. I'm also wondering whether the parents buying the Sad Beige toys are the same ones buying the yassified ones? Because the vibes could not be more different
I had this same exact thought - interesting that the sad beige aesthetic is mostly baby / toddler toys (where children don’t have strong preferences, or at least aren’t capable of voicing those preferences). Makes me imagine that no kid focus group is actively choosing the monotone pikler triangle
I have to say I think Sad Beige is a bigger problem than Yassified
Sad Beige is something parents want for their kids; yassified dolls are something kids want for themselves.
My wife and I noticed the same thing, but we talked about in terms of an “attitude” that these toys are giving off. We ended up going the American girl doll route, but also, our daughter loves horses, so Breyer horses is a wellspring of provision!
The toys are *serving.* They’re *giving*. What have we done
"Attitude" may be the word I was reaching for but didn't quite find with this. Even in the '90s, there was some noise about "attitude" being injected into US-market versions of Japanese toys, and since then I feel like the "attitude" dials have been steadily notched up. Being generally drawn to a cuter, calmer aesthetic, I find this all a little regrettable. I have memories of shying away from it even when very young.
I really enjoyed reading this despite the topic having no direct relevance to my life as a single childless man.
Either this isn’t happening as much in boy toy world, or my son just isn’t quite in the target demographic yet for toys to get age adjusted up. I have some qualms about modern ninja turtle aesthetics, but it’s generally in line with the rebrand, and doesn’t seem to be nefarious (just sort of ugly in a Ren and Stimpy way)
I was thinking about "what's the boy version of this" while reading the article. In the 80s, legos had a few themes: a city, some space ships, castles. There were no spring-loaded shooters, very little story content, it was really a _construction_ toy.
Now we have Lego themed for Star Wars, Marvel super heros, Minecraft, Ninjago...it seems like it has become more of a _narrative_ toy when targeting boys.
(Also, Lego friends minidolls are clearly yassified minifigs. :-)
Yeah, what I've noticed is that the sets you see in stores contain lots of odd specialized pieces that let you build the New York skyline or Raya and the Last Dragon or whatever, but they can't really be mixed and matched to make new things. Old Lego castle sets could be used to construct precise designs but they were far more modular, you could easily mix two sets and make a bigger castle. You can still buy generic bricks but that isn't really their signature product now.
I'd say it's a double-edged sword...there's a lot of weird specific stuff like Star Wars windscreens and Minecraft heads.
But the generic system is also a lot more flexible than it was in the 80s - there's a complete set of brackets that let you change the "up" direction of building and most sets include at least some of this style of building. It actually makes the system a lot more flexible and adds more potential brick combinations.
I think the worst of "big prebuilt single-use blob" may have been in the early 2000s - sets from back then feel dumbed down. My understanding is that Lego did some anthropology on their own customers and realized (sigh, duh) that kids take pride in building sets that are complex.
Kinda more tacticool too
I’ve noticed this. There’s an elegant simplicity to little green army men and older-style army dolls (and G.I. Joes used to definitely be dolls) that modern action figure lines don’t capture. It’s not enough to be the brave, proud soldier anymore, you have to be the Elite Alpha Delta Bravo Special Forces Team that brutally eviscerates terrorists.
The SpecOps supremacy in many Americans' minds is a huge topic in its own right with imho a lot of negative effects. Back in my day! it was enough to volunteer and work for your country, be part of the team (army). Now it's all about being an individual agent of death working independently of the team. Where's the civic pride, where's the honor? Sigh.
Have you perceived any variation in say musculature (honestly asking I have no clue)? In terms of popular kid-adjacent representation it kinda feels to me like some Marvel films wrapped back around toward He-Man on that front.
I haven’t really noticed a ton of “body image” type changes, but candidly action figures just aren’t really a thing in my house. Modern hot wheels toys seem much more “action” oriented than previous iterations - less racing more stunts - but I could be stretching to try and find something
There are entire worlds I am only aware of thanks to this substack. Love the variety!
Thank you!
I loved this, despite being a "Boy Dad" (is that a thing like "Boy Moms?"). I really abhor the projection of exaggerated adulthood upon children.
And, frankly, I hate it for same reason I have grown to hate the (very 1990s-style) gender-essentialism projected upon adolescents and adults my whole life. Not everything needs to be "manly" or "feminine" in this exaggerated, sexualized, almost drag-type quality of projected gender performance. It's fine if my toothpaste and deodorant isn't for lumberjacks, really. And
this is *especially* weird for for children who are still figuring out themselves.
And, Barbie exempted, that gender-maxxing tendency in toys might have hit boys long before it hit girls, for reasons that are interesting. When 1980s and 90s boys were playing with dolls (sorry, I mean "action figures"), we were playing with these totally crazy, muscled He-Man *MEN.* And the aesthetics were very extra, often with a striking sexualization (He-Man himself was basically naked, in order to show off his rippling pecs and ample "package"). WHO DECIDED THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA? And, like, that's not even addressing all the super-violence and what we now call toxic masculinity being celebrated for young, impressionable brains.
So, yea, Bratz make me uncomfy, but there's a lot about the toys that even Millennial kids were playing with that seem, in retrospect, very problematic.
Polly Pockets didn’t get discontinued in 1998! I had them in the early 00s. They were the taller version and had rubbery clothes that often got chewed on.
Ohhh I guess my research needs work! I read that somewhere.
The pocket version was discontinued. They re-released the line with a 3” doll with rubber/soft plastic clothes and playsets. No Christmas morning will ever beat when my sisters I opened up the Polly Pocket Cruise Ship playset. This version of the line was discontinued in the early 2010s. The current iteration is actually a combo with both the compact playsets and 3” dolls available.
Littlest pet shop has a crazier history. The 90s version you referenced was relatively short lived, the 2000s bobblehead style became the #1 girl collectible for some years until Hasbro decided to ultra-stylize the figures - https://lpsmerch.com/g4/all/ . I played with these as well, but I aged out before they made the pets look crazy luckily. Another company has recently re-released the line with the classic bobblehead look.
I violently hate everything you showed in this article. Though btw, even your 90s version of stuff was pretty yassified, compared to the 80s and prior. Bring back the terrifying and creepy, entirely non sexually alluring in the slightest manner, weird toys from mid-century!
I was never even allowed to have Barbie Dolls, my mom was fully into Free To Be You and Me women's lib era thinking. All I wanted was the giant Barbie head that you could do her hair and makeup, but there was no way my mom would go for that. I wasn't allowed to have anything to do with the Smurfs either, bc she didn't like how there was only one girl Smurf who was blonde when she was good and black haired when bad. I did have an American Girl doll. While I chafed against these restrictions as a child, the conditioning worked because I now find all this stuff even more nauseating and horrific than I think any of y'all do.
My mom wouldn’t buy me Barbies, but she’d let me keep them if I got them as gifts. It totally backfired and now I collect them. 😈
The wellie wishers are much better for kids who like to play with their dolls IMO
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought something was a little odd about Bratz! I hope I'm not projecting feelings onto my childhood self, but I vaguely remember being kind of mystified when they started showing up, like something just seemed DIFFERENT about them, something a little aggressive and maybe even almost subcultural? A little cold and aloof for children's toys? Definitely not even the tiniest bit humble. It's kind of like the vibe of my brother's Street Sharks was creeping into the world of dolls just a bit, I don't know.
The products you've brought up here really put it into focus and now my mind is churning on Bratz as signifiers of some kind of cultural inflection point. Speaking of subculture, I think this was also around the time things like tattoos and body piercings started drifting from badges of alt identity to something nearly everybody does, but now my mind is really wandering...
Oh my god the Bratz Babies though, I had no idea
I vividly remember when my friends started getting Bratz and I was very weirded out by them. So I don’t think you’re projecting. I felt like I was doing something wrong when I played with them! They just gave off intense mean girl vibes to me and their clothes were just… too much. I didn’t like it when I was 8 and I still don’t!
Right, I didn't want to be a mean girl!
That text screenshot worries me - are you focus-grouping your content?! 😱
I mean I have a FEW a friends and I talk to them about my articles lmao
I felt validated seeing that someone you know was _just as baffled as I was_ regarding the terminology. I looked up a lot of things on Google today, and I am definitely sadder for what I learned.
I want to see version before they water it down to “it’s giving cunty Voldemort” 😂
I have to take full credit for that line!
I like the implication that Voldemort isn’t already a bit cunty
Assorted thoughts:
I remember finding the troll dolls at my grandmas house and thereafter learning about my mother’s disdain for how “pretty” girls toys had to be. Getting her to see Barbie was a slight uphill battle but very rewarding for her.
I think in the same way Olympic athletes are doing stuff you couldn’t have imagined back in the day, we’re slowly distilling aesthetics to some Platonic form. Eventually the ideal children’s toy will just be colorful noises which directly tap into “protect what is cute” brain via Bluetooth
There’s a lot about buzzfeed era feminism that is disdained now, but seeing what the kids are into I sometimes feel like ragging on Barbie etc didn’t go far enough
As a 31 year old, the yassified versions are the ones I remember the most fondly from the tail-end of my doll-playing years. I loved the Fashion Polly evolution of Polly Pocket and the revamped Littlest Pet Shop. But that may be because even as a younger child I did not like baby dolls. Only Barbie and other fashion dolls. I remember being embarrassed that my mom wouldn’t let me have Bratz though “because they look like sluts” lol
Just as an aside, Legos took over the kids' part of our house for a good while. It was kind of nice because my brother and I could both "play Legos" together, with him going wild on space stations and pirate ships while I used them as an endlessly customizable dollhouse (at the same time, I was constantly begging my mom for magazines about interior decorating and floor plans). The one time he threw a fit and smashed up my house is probably the angriest I've ever been at him in my entire life, though!
I'm still fond of Legos, and I'm sad to hear friends with kids telling me they're too expensive to buy new these days. One couple combined their old buckets of bricks to give to their daughter, though, which I think is really lovely and probably the best way for someone to approach them. For me the freeform nature of it was always the most appealing thing.
They're not a cheap toy, but there's also real price difference based on the theme. Licensed themes (Star Wars, Minecraft, Marvel) are all above average price-wise and not a great deal. The "creator" (build-centric, not theme centric) and "friends" lines both offer better price-per-piece.
Good to know! My childhood motives may reveal my bias here, but I never thought the themed kits were all that interesting, anyway. The magic was always in their function as a blank slate to do what you want.
Btw, I don't know if this is useful to anybody but I live in the UK and searched far and wide for a decent American Girl
alternative for my daughter and the "Our Generation" doll line is very cute. And they're the same size as American Girl so any clothes/accessories etc made for AG should still work on them