The Village Toy Shop: Toys and Playthings Essay

When someone mentions the word toy, what comes to mind is who love these toys. Toys are mainly associated with children. When an individual wants to have a piece of mind at home without being disturbed by children, then such a person should look no further but just ensure that the kids have enough toys for playing. Toys always take children attention and time hence reducing the chances of these children causing disturbances at home (Horton, 2018). Thus, this paper examines The Village Toy Shop and responds to some of the questions posted concerning this store through a written report.

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As mentioned above, the name of this store is The Village Toy Shop. It is located at Easton Village Shoppes in Houston city. They are fully committed to ensuring that all the kids live a happy life. According to Horton (2018), they have a slogan called we believe in our communities and kids. The first thing one sees on this company's website is drawing of various toys on the wall. In this case, this company's name is clearly indicated on top of the building. Besides the name, there are two pictures of a swinging toy on both sides. When one walks in, it can be easily seen how the toys have been arranged. Different types of toys have been separated and clearly indicated and can easily be seen from the entrance of the building. Thus, this enables to avoid time wasting when looking for customer's preference and choice.

These toys have been categorized differently. They have been categorized by age and color. In this case, there are toys for kids between 0-1, 1-2, 2-3, 3-4, 4-5...over 13 years. When it comes to categorization by color, there are pink toys and blue toys; the pink in color belongs to girls while the blue ones belong to boys. By doing this, the company saves time for serving one customer. The company is fully committed to ensuring that they promote healthy play and create lasting memories for those who visit this toy store.

Additionally, this categorization of toys based on specific gender plays an important role in the firm's marketing strategy. Many psychologists believe that this type of marketing strategy reinforces the traditional gender stereotypes (Newson, 2017). Ideally, this is because the kids are denied the opportunity to choose the toy of their type but rather than just get these toys already categorized. Hence, this adversely affects the career a kid may opt take in future and subsequently the role such a child will play when he/she grows into an adult. These toys promote gender biases. In this case, there are duties which must just be performed by women alone and the same applies to men. The brighter color (pink) represents the characteristics of girls; that always wants to be in the limelight. The dull color (blue) represents boys' characteristics which are always trying to maintain cool.

It is in reality easy for one to know which type of toys belongs to girls and which one belongs to boys. In many instances, girls are known to be associated with brighter color while boys associated with dull colors. Girls' colors include white, yellow and pink. The boys on the other side are known to be in love with dark colors such as blue, brown and black toys. From this store, one can easily deduce that the pink color represents the girls' toys and the dull color which is blue represents boys' toys.

Scientific research has proven that babies are partially color blind and they do develop their ability to distinguish colors as their eyes mature. Newborns' eyes are not even sensitive to light and therefore a baby does not need the lights to be switched off for them to fall asleep. In consideration of this fact, many parents will buy their kids toys with bright and vibrant color schemes. Since children develop their eye sights as they grow up, then most parents will choose only toes with brighter color schemes because of the role the color plays in kid's eyesight development. The color may differ as kids grow but from 0-3 years, the color is the same.

Most of these toys do not have messages inscribed on them but have cartoon drawings. The cartons drawing on these toys may be interpreted differently depending on who is doing the interpretation; but for kids, this drawing just shows a kid holding a toy with two hands supported by the stomach. Some of these toys remind people of gender stereotypes which were prevalent in the past. Primarily, this is because these toys are already separated.

It is essentially hard to tell what these toys say about masculine and feminine but an individual may claim that from the observation of the two genders playing with the toys, there is a weaker gender who will always cry whenever someone takes the toy away. In reality, this character is predominant in girls. Therefore, this means that most boys are strong because they seldom cry whenever the toys are taken away from them. The social classes which come into the illustration are those who have and those that do not posses them. Some people associated with particular social classes will find it hard to do such a shopping. Mostly, these toys are associated with the white people and not the people of color.

These toys portray a lot on gender. Girls love different type of toys while boys are satisfied even with one provided such a toy is either a gun or a car. Consequently, this implies that boys are likely to be more violent when they grow up than women and at the same time they do not like materialism. Loving brighter toys alone and wanting variety portray woman as those who really value fashion and weaker sex.

Conclusion

To conclude, many children love toys. Girls love brighter colors while boys love dull colors. Separating toys according to gender can lead to traditional gender stereotype because kids do not have the right to choose toys from the opposite sex side. Different studies have shown that toys can predict the individual characteristics for children when they grow up.

References

Horton, J. (2018). For the love of cuddly toys. Children's Geographies, 1-9.

Newson, E. (2017). Toys and playthings: In development and remediation. Routledge.