Goldie Blox

~ Laura

The holidays are coming up. I’m starting to assemble ideas for Apt. 11D’s annual gift guides as I window shop at the mall and flip through catalogs. I’ve had my eye on GoldieBlox, after I saw an interview with the CEO a few years back.

What do you think? Would your girls play with them?

Published by Laura

16 thoughts on “Goldie Blox”

  1. My girls would be more interested in LittleBits vs. GoldieBLox. There just isn’t enough choice on the goldieblox site and the choices are remarkably “girly” for an anti “girly” ad campaign. My girls are 7.5 and would rather build a starwars/harry potter lego set than a parade float.

    Like

      1. I was expecting neutral color packaging, NOT boxes with big blonde hair caricature drawings and girl themed projects. Obviously, they thought having a slick ad campaign would make people forget they use girly packaging and purple. The two things, ad/product, didn’t even have a synergy.

        Like

    1. Ninjago, fine, at least it makes sense and I can understand the appeal for young boys. But Chima? My boys were super into as soon as it started but I’m sure if I asked them to describe it, it would be something like, “there are these animals, and this floating rock where they get their food, and sometimes they fight about the food?”

      Like

  3. I’m torn on these “boy” toys that are pinkified up so that they can be marketed to girls. I’m glad that girls have a wider variety of toys to choose from but it depresses me that we think that girls will only play with a toy if it is sufficiently girly.

    Like

  4. My daughter was the one asking for a snap it circuits kit when a tween and got her own soldering gun in high school. She was always devising these kinds of inventions so this kind of thing would have been up her alley.

    Like

  5. This is the kind of thing I would have gotten for my kid, and that she wouldn’t have played with. She’s investing a lot of time in building a “rig” for her school’s engineering event, and is learning the relevant skills now. But, as a 5,6,7,8 year old, she was a storyteller, and all her games rotated around stories of some sort. Yes, with dolls, but also with people (writing/performing plays, making movies).

    Neither of my kids really played with legos, either, though they have about a gazillion. They both can, but it was never a toy they drifted towards. The girl, because she detests having to build things to directions. The boy, because he’s ultimately social and will only do things with other people, preferably something that involves talking. Both my kids have ultimately rejected snap circuits on the same grounds — they just don’t like building things to directions. My daughter really won’t; my son will, but only if there’s lots of social interaction, too.

    So, my personal experience is that you can make opportunities available, but that colors of toys will only go a very small distance in producing interest. Peer interest (including parental interest) would probably go a lot further (i.e. if your best friend likes to play with legos, or your mom does). And, kids actually have interests (I’m not going to associate them with gender, because we don’t need to). As parents, we can make available the toys our individual children are interested in.

    Like

  6. We got Goldieblox last spring for my then-6-year-old. She really liked it, but it was already a little young for her. I think that it’s a good gift for a slightly younger kid — maybe 4-5. At first they’d need help, but pretty soon they could be making stuff on their own.

    bj’s post opens up a bigger question that I’ve been puzzling over. It’s a big leap from building-to-instructions to building-whatever-you-can-dream-up, and a lot of the building toys emphasize the first while they (or we) seem to hope they’ll provide an occasion for the latter. (I have the same issue with Legos.) With all of these things, many kids need someone — an adult, a babysitter, best of all an older kid — to break down that barrier.

    I also think that the kid’s nature matters. My older daughter has basically no interest in building things; she’d rather have her nose in a book. When she builds, it’s in the service of a play or other pretend game, and it’s pretty basic. The younger one LOVES building, including the careful and systematic following of instructions. I agree that we need to focus on the kinds of interests and brains our kids seem to have and foster that — but I think that we need to also think about how peer pressure, etc. shapes the expression of those interests. I’m pretty sure that if my younger daughter had had an older brother she would be obsessed with Legos . ..

    Like

  7. I got these for my daughters. The older one liked it but she ran through the examples pretty quickly and didn’t play with it again. I think its time to try with the 4.5 year old, she is very girly and would like it. The older one likes to build things but neither of them liked legos until they got a lego friends set and then they spent two days building it! I hated those things but it totally worked for my kid (the surfer girl set). I’m not against girly-ing up…some girls need that. I know that some women just hate that shit but they don’t have my daughter! These are just too easy for a 9 year old. She might like snap circuits. We tried buying marble runs: those are more popular. Best toy ever: magnatiles. Every kid adores those, they are worth the money. The marketing for this is amazing but mostly aimed at gen x women who know the beastie boys are hot, sensitive middle age new age guys now and grandmas who want their daughters to like science…not the girls themselves, in my opinion.

    Like

  8. would boys play with them? I hate the idea that toys even need to be divided by gender and made pink because otherwise girls can’t cope. my girls have lots of lego and lots of playmobil, but I still wish it was easier to get gender neutral toys.

    Like

  10. There are many really cool building sets. This isn’t one of them, in my opinion.

    For about the same price, we would have bought: http://thewoodenwagon.com/woodentoy/haba/GHB2382.html.

    I love this: http://thewoodenwagon.com/woodentoy/202/CSH10216.html. Looking at that website, I won’t sort out and give away the wooden toys we’ve accumulated. They’re holding their value.

    For my daughter, this would have been too scripted. I think a toy should be appealing to the recipient, and I prefer toys which are open-ended. I find it condescending. So, no, we wouldn’t have.

    Like

  11. In related news, there’s an interesting project going on right now called the “Hour of Code.” There are a number of computer science tutorials available, and the idea is to encourage (and indeed bribe) schools to do one hour tutorials.

    http://csedweek.org/

    My husband is trying to schedule one for our kids’ school and we are currently using our 6th grade daughter as a guinea pig to test out one of the tutorials. She is not thrilled about this, but we are waving in front of her the carrot that Minecraft allows you the freedom to program certain things for yourself, so that she may be able to produce the Minecraft dragon that she wants so badly if she learns a little programming.

    Like

Comments are closed.