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From Dolls to Kids to Fashionistas
Toys markets to young girls have changed a lot. I do not mean that the type of toys marketed have changed, but that the messages within those toys have. Despite the fact that girls in the US are being encouraged now more than ever to expand their interests, reach for their dreams, and think less of marriage, the cultural consensus is still usually that girls like certain things and boys like others. Girls toys are branded in pink and boys toys are branded in blue, although that was not always the case. While gendered toys are harmful to girls, as they promote nurturing rather than learning, I would argue that within the world of pink toys there can still be good lessons taught. Unfortunately, I think that the push towards independence for girls has been accompanied by the continuous growth in popularity of Barbies and other toys emphasizing fashion, beauty, talent, and a brilliant and alluring smile.
My purpose is not to say that fashion is bad. I quite enjoy shopping, trying things on, buying new clothes, and accessorizing. What I do want to point out is that emphasizing those sorts of things in children's lives means they will begin to judge themselves at younger and younger ages. I remember a time when my body was not my concern because it was nobody's concern. Then you get a little closer to puberty, and as your hormones, or other people's, start to flow everyone becomes more critical. By showing children what they should be doing with fashion, hair, and makeup, we are bringing these anxieties onto children earlier. They become more aware of what models and older women are doing, what it means to be attractive and, therefore, worthy of attention.
So, is this the fault of the pink and blue marketing problem? Yes, to some extent. While giving a girl a baby doll or a pink horse to play with may give them early expectations that those are the more acceptable items for them to be interested in, those toys do not set up any sort of model for the girl to follow in terms of her own person. A baby doll can teach a girl to mother her baby. A toy horse can inspire an interest in riding. They make a girl think about herself as a person, about her possible interests and hobbies in the future. A Barbie doll, on the other hand, is a model for a young girl to compare herself to. She will want to look like Barbie when she gets older, and she might even expect it, inevitably to be disappointed when the impossibly tiny waist and long legs are not obtained the teenage years. Only a small group of girls will win that genetic lottery and have the money necessary to have such a large wardrobe of high fashion outfits.
For a while Barbie was the only doll for kids with such a sexy appearance, but other companies and toy creators caught on that young girls like dressing up their dolls and that the vast array of clothing available to Barbie was enjoyable to them as well as profitable to Mattel, and Barbie's grownup figure meant she could wear anything from swimsuits to ballgowns to a McDonald's uniform. Bratz dolls and other toys similar to Barbie have sprung up continuously over the years, with similarly prominent makeup and stylish hair, along with breasts. There are also toys like Polly Pockets that have changed from little worlds in the palm of your hand to full Barbie Dream House complexes of plastic girls in rubber dresses. I completely understand all of this and why it was so successful. I was a big fan of my Barbies and Bratz dolls when I was young because it was a such a joy to dress them up. It is a bit like having a coloring book made of a fabric; you can color in the lines or deviate a bit, although the company always makes the main decisions about what the shapes are.
So what does the title of this post mean? "Dolls to kids to fashionistas?" It means that I have noticed that this fashion model sort of toy is no longer constrained to dolls that were designed to play to that market demand. Now there are other toys you might consider more "wholesome" that are starting to join the fashion bandwagon. I first noticed this when I did a search for Strawberry Shortcake and discovered that the cartoon character has been redrawn not once but 3+ times in recent years. I will focus on the three main designs of the animated character rather than examine all the versions of the dolls.
To those who do not know, Strawberry Shortcake is a doll and cartoon character originating in the 1970's as a postcard drawing. Back then she looked something like a Raggedy Anne doll with a big fluffy had, a fluffy dress, huge pantaloons, and little brown shoes. Her hair was drawn like yarn and she had big rosy cheeks. Eventually she became a TV character too. In the early 2000's, she was redesigned for TV to look more like a modern girl, reminiscent of an American Girl Doll that there to be a friend to young girls. In a way, she was also a role model, having strong friendships with the other dessert-flavored characters of her world and having outdoor adventures. This new design got rid of the doll-like dress, instead putting Strawberry Shortcake in jeans, a striped shirt, brown Mary Jane shoes, and a sweater casually tied around her waist. The artists kept her red hair, but made it shorter and more wild. Just by looking at drawings of the character you can get a feel for her carefree, fun-loving personality. She really looks like a ten-year-old girl ready to take on the world. Now jump forward a little farther and you see that she has been redrawn again so that she looks like more of a child model or child star, which is a different sort of carefree than she was previously: the wealthy sort of carefree. While the overall theme of the character has stayed the same or even stayed closer to the original than the previous redesign—pink polka dot hat and dress, red hair, freckly cheeks, green and white striped leggings, fluffy white sleeves—something about her seems a little too perfect now. No longer is she a doll to own or a friend to have, but a cute girl to aspire to be. Even her posture has changed! You could say that her first 2000's redesign made her into something of a tomboy, but I think that is a good thing. She looked ready to run around in the park or hop on a bike. The newest version looks better suited to the mall. Although they both look like they popped out of a catalog, one offers no judgement while the other makes you wish you could be like her. To top it all off, she no longer has naturally red hair, but a perfect pink, doing away with the wild curls of the first two designs. Strawberry Shortcake dolls now have hairsprayed waves and look like child stars ready to be rock stars or princesses, not normal kids.
Are there other examples of dolls turning into girls we want to be friends with or admire? Yes. Next, let's turn our attention to My Little Pony. This is another toy that appeared in the last century and became a popular girls' TV show. It was a lot like Care Bears in terms of audience, pastel colors, and magical creatures falling into our world where they meet children who help them on their adventures. Like Strawberry Shortcake, the Pony characters have seen many changes over the years, going all the way back to the early 1980's. Back then the horse characters had round bodies, heads, and legs that were well suited to making plastic and rubber dolls with combable hair. They were drawn in bright fantasy colors and had beautiful brands or spots on their haunches. Some even had pegasus wings or unicorn horns! This phase of chubby cheeks lasted into the early 1990's. Next came the Friendship Garden series, and the horses began to look a little more streamlined and cartoon-ish. Their round bellies disappeared, their legs and necks got longer, and their manes became even more colorful. This is when more accessories and even home and furniture options became available for the toys. (These were the ones I had growing up, along with a few of the older ones from GoodWill.) Their heads could turn, you could get them as prizes at McDonald's, some had jewels for eyes—they were great! In the early 2000's, we saw yet another version of the toys, which referred back to the original designs with big heads and bodies, but added sparkly plastic and even brighter colors. And finally, in 2010, the toys and TV show were revamped again as My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
This latest version of My Little Pony was meant to appeal to young girls, so I have been told, so I am not going to focus on its huge following of adults and men. Instead I will focus on the way the horses have gone from being toys with cartoons to a cartoon with a huge amount of merchandise fueling its popularity. The most obvious change to the animation style is the eyes, which have grown to huge proportions reminiscent of the Powerpuff Girls or Japanese anime. This is no surprise, as the same trend can be seen in lots of other revamped cartoons. However, this emphasis on the eyes along with the de-emphasis of the horses' snouts make the characters look a bit more like people with long, flowing hair that just happen to walk on four legs and have tails. Like the 1990's rendition, the new designs have thin bodies and long legs. Well, what is so bad about all that? It would not necessarily be bad except that (1) we can see some of the same trends being followed that we observed with Strawberry Shortcake, such as the hair becoming less wild over time, and (2) the horse characters are no longer just animal friends on screen. The influence of Barbie, Bratz, Monster High, and Ever After High can be seen in the fact that there are now dolls called Equestria Girls, anthropomorphic horse girls who have cute hair, wear cute shoes, and have lots of accessories. Once again young girls have images of thin teenagers with immaculate hair and perfect smiles put in front of them. They have their own show and movies now too.
Surely there can't be more? There can! Let's launch into the evolution of troll dolls. These are the original "not sexy, not cool, not cute" toy. In fact, they are so odd that most people find them downright repulsive, or even scary. They are almost like clowns in terms of people not wanting to see the figurines and toys around the house, although they have yet to be played up in a horror movie (see Poltergeist). So, let's launch into another Wikipedia history. The dolls first became popular in Europe in the 1960's under the name Good Luck Trolls, along with imitations. Next they were the Norfin Trolls ("Adopt a Norfin Troll") in the 80's, then various other themed lines of dolls in the 90's, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Trolls. There were so many versions of troll dolls that there was even a court battle over who the rights belonged to. Most recently DIC Entertainment had the rights to trolls and tried to make a new show and toy line called Trollz, but it never took off in popularity. Even more recently, the new Trolls movie by Dreamworks has become pretty recognizable, although the characters do not really look like the original dolls. Then again, the Trollz character didn't either.
So, where is the evolution in all that mess? As an amateur troll collector, I can track some of it. There are so many types and rip-offs of troll dolls that it can be a little hard to say whose fault it is, but I think I can narrow it down. To start with, trolls have for the longest time been little woodland creatures that didn't really fit into any beauty standards. The whole point was that they had goofy little smiles, round brown eyes, and crazy hair like flowers. You could imagine them hanging out in the forest, surrounded by toadstools. Did they represent kids? Not really, but they sparked children's imaginations. Their hair could be any color. They could be any size. They could have different faces, or they could have jeweled belly buttons. Their little outfits, part of what have made them more collectible over the years, helped that along. They went from being mythical creatures to being dress-up dolls. Cowboys, gymnasts, grandmas, princesses, Christmas elves, sports fans... The two most unusual dolls I personally own are: the Grim Reaper with white skin, a scythe, and green hair, and a green-skinned alien with a silver costume. (I found some more information here: https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/troll-dolls-history-collecting-4083334.) I think most of my dolls were made by Russ. They definitely saturated the market and you can find at least one in almost any Goodwill.
Speaking of my collection, what else do I have? Most notably I have a set of three Russ dolls who are taller than the others, have movable arms (a first!), and actually have feminine figures with both hips and breast lumps! There were also male versions of these dolls made to go with them. It makes sense that Russ started making such a thing, since they worked so hard to pump the market full of trolls and troll doll outfits. Why not try to make more money by essentially turning the trolls into Barbie dolls? They probably didn't catch on as much as the other versions because they were so hard to dress. Unlike Barbie, their arms stuck out rather than straight down, so getting the dresses over their heads was a real pain. Anyway, the point is that the trolls went from simple dolls, to dress-up dolls, to teenagers. What next?
As I mentioned before, Trollz came out. Well, it came out for a short while and never gained any footing. Nevertheless, you can see where the designers' minds were at. They redesigned the troll aesthetic to go with the emerging style of cute girls in cute fashions with fun hair. There were toys to go with the TV show that had interchangeable body parts, kind of like Bratz dolls, so that you could change the outfits on their teeny-tiny bodies. Unlike the teenage version Russ made, these dolls were dinky, but these ones are more than awkward teenagers in costumes: they are fashionists. The Trollz no longer look like woodland creatures now that their legs are longer and is a metropolis of malls and cafes. Unfortunately they are also not that unique; their color scheme and character types are like something out of a magical girl anime: pink-haired main character, blue-haired bookworm, red-haired spunky best friend, dark-haired mysterious girl, and yellow-haired energetic friend. On top of that, they had little animal friends and boyfriends, which is a lot like either Barbie or magical girls, or other trendy teenage TV shows.
Can I name another one? How about Polly Pocket? What started out as tiny worlds in makeup compacts turned into a huge section in the Walmart toy aisle dedicated to small dolls dressing in cloth, then rubber, outfits. It is yet another toy line that started in the last century (1980's) and has continued into the twenty-tens. What started out as a tiny doll house transformed into a minature Barbie. Polly became a little bigger with a more distinct, youthful style, solidifying the change form "toy" to "kid" in the 90's. Then compacts got bigger, and were eventually switched out for full size dolls houses with small but dressable dolls. They were officially fashionists now. This is the version I grew up knowing. For years I thought she was called Polly Pocket because she was little compared to other dress-up dolls, but it was actually because there was a time when her whole house fit in your pocket!
What about a classic brand of toys and childhood images like Disney? Well, the princesses may not be getting sexier or more trendy, but they have evolved over time. When it comes to making new toys, costumes, and company imagery, their dresses have gotten more sparkly and more elaborate. In other words, they are sending the message (perhaps inadvertently) that the original weren't good enough; they could be better. So, they are following the same pattern by marketing in a way that promotes more toys, more expensive outfits, etc. You can see more of this in Wreck It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet. All the most profitable (see Film Theory on YouTube) Disney princesses appear in the movie not only in their classic dresses, but also in specialty pajamas that young girls can ask their parents for and probably buy.
So, how can toy lines avoid being corrupted by the need to merchandise? Well, perhaps it has to be a conscious choice, or the toy design itself has to be somewhat ill-suited to the upgrade. Groovy Girls and Rainbow Brite are two toy lines I would like to look at. To start with, I will admit that Rainbow Brite may be headed in the same direction as the rest, just a little slower. The original character designs were sort of short and round, almost like human Care Bears in terms of overall appearance and color. The show was short, but there have been many generations of toys and even a short followup miniseries in 2014. That 2014 series had updated designs that I think elevated the characters from looking like dolls to looking like kids. While that is not a bad thing, especially since no merchandise was ever made (according to Wikipedia), the trend is there. So what about now? Interestingly, another Rainbow Brite toy line came out not too long after the miniseries, but the toys were small, almost beanbag-like items made to look like the characters rather than any sort of dress-up dolls. For the moment, Rainbow Brite is just a magical kid. Perhaps her iconic rainbow fluffy alien Stay Puft outfit has proven less tempting as a money grab than other TV show characters.
And what are Goovy Girls? In my opinion, they are the right way to go about making a fashionista doll. From 1998 to 2016, the Groovy Girls line included characters of different heights and colors wearing any number of outfits. As with Barbies, there were mermaids and fairies and other themes, but they seemed so happy without needing a bunch of makeup or perfectly straight hair or heigh heels. Even when the girls did wear high heels, their shoes were soft like the rest of their bodies and they were never more than a basic Mary Jane shoe heel. Those attached shoes and the fact that some of the girls had non-removable leggings were the downside to the dolls, but that didn't hold them back from being able to wear all sorts of cool stuff. And the fashion was all over the place, from hippie to bohemian to sundresses... It was great! The boys were nice too. They looked almost exactly like the girls aside from their hair. Groovy Girls always looked happy and comfortable and not at all self-conscious.
Is there anything else? What will the next trend look like? Granted I have not discussed every single version of all these toys, but the trends exist (largely within Mattel), so is there hope for the future? Well, I think it is already beginning to emerge as of this year 2018. I have two main examples: Polly pocket and Strawberry Shortcake. For a while Polly Pocket was discontinued, but this year it was announced that yet another version will appear! Although she no longer looks like Barbie, I have to say that she still wears very marketable fashion and is very on trend, but it is a more comfortable sort of look. She also appears to be of a younger age than the previous Fashion Polly dolls, or at least looks more casual. (The one obvious downside might be that the new show looks like it falls into the typical attempt at diversity: a blonde girl, a redhead, and a black girl.) And the same is true for the new Strawberry Shortcake design of 2018. She now is much younger, more tomboyish in stance despite her cute dress, and just looks more free. The confidence in her stance comes less from looking like a child model, and more from being able to do as she pleases. She actually looks a lot like Venelope from Wreck-It Ralph, so perhaps this trend is also wrapped up in that same Disney movie marketing its pajamas to kids. In that one scene they see two things: teen idols and a young girl with a free spirit. They wear sneakers. They do what they want with their hair. They don't really have makeup on. There are always going to be things to pick apart—lacking diversity, overly skinny, money grubbing—but in terms of girls feeling good about themselves even if they don't look like a child actress, we might be headed in the right direction. I think the popularity of Steven Universe and the adventures of Ladybug and Cat Noir have really helped this along.
All pictures found on Google Images.
