The Hasbro marketing department deserves a raise. Hasbro makes the Mr. Potato Head toy that many people remember from childhood. Below is google trends graph for how often people searched for the words “potato head” in the past year. (article continues after the chart)

Looking at that huge spike in searches, one might wonder why? Why did this old toy that many children today might have never heard of suddenly get a huge spike in interest? Did they create some super new version of the toy that blew everyone away and people just had to search for it? Nope, the screen shots from news stories below will provide the answer (article will continue after the screen shots)

You see what happened was that Hasbro announced that Mr. Potato Head was going gender neutral; 1000s of articles were written about this and 1000s of news stories aired all across the country on local and cable news , millions of people shared stories and talked about it on social media. Then the company clarified that they were not going make it gender neutral and just the brand would be called Potato Head and they would still make Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. This is a great case study that shows how easy it is to mess with media, social media, and people in general in 2021. Nostalgia get clicks and views. Controversy related to “the culture wars” get clicks and views; you combine the two like this story, and you get millions of people talking about some old toy that no one cared about a week ago. Now the Mr. Potato Head image was everywhere the past week and all the publicity was 100 percent free! They would have had to pay 10s of millions of dollars to normally get this much publicity for their product, but Hasbro was able to it by a couple of press releases. Society is easily manipulated, and Hasbro did it perfectly this week. You know why I wrote this article, because I know it will get more clicks and shares than other topics I could write about.

This is not to say that how toys are marketed and how they are gendered is not important, it is. This is a topic with a lot of i discussion and research. A NPR article quotes experts saying this: “Researcher Elizabeth Sweet studied toy catalogs and ads over time and found that toys are actually more gender divided than they were half a century ago.

Rebecca Hains, a professor at Salem State University in Massachusetts, has written a book about it: The Princess Problem: Guiding Our Girls Through The Princess-Obsessed Years.

Disney characters, she points out, used to be more diverse: There was Cinderella, sure, but also Pinocchio and Bambi. When 1989's The Little Mermaid made a splash, Hains says, "Disney realized profitability in girls." Enter the juggernaut Disney Princess brand. Plus, marketers now cloak even gender-neutral toys like blocks in both primary and pastel shades in the hope of selling more sets.”

Over a year ago, I did a photo essay that showcased how gendered the toy aisles at Target are.

NAEYC has an interesting article about toys and gender and how they impact children’s play and development.

However, I don’t think this week’s discussion was really about gender or children or toys or anything important; it was just a company knowing how to play the media and the public to talk about their product.

When I was preschool teacher, I often saw how gender impacted children’s play and development and sense of self. Children were often scared to play with toys that they enjoyed because the toy did not fit what society had taught them about gender. I’ve heard plenty of 3 and 4-year olds say a toy was for boys or for girls. It is important for parents, teachers, and any important adult in a child’s life to be able to talk about children about these issues.

I have also observed something else in preschool classrooms, children don’t like the potato head toys all that much. They will play with them for like 2 minutes and then get bored and move onto something better. I am willing to bet that Hasbro’s Potato Head sales went up this past week, and soon there will be children bored with these toys after a few minutes.