Fisher-Price® - 30 Years Later Same Old, Same Old

So I am soon going to be the lovely owner of two baby rats and as a good mother would do, I was toy shopping for my little ones. While surfing the net I came across a picture of a rat playing inside a small child's toy house and just knew I had to get one for my rats and that is how I came across the Fisher-Price® advertisements that I'll be analyzing today.

So this advertisement is for the "Little People® Peek' n Discover Backyard" toy. It features a 2 year old little girl whose race is black (African American) and you can clearly see the toy in its entirety.

 Then we have this advertisement:

When I clicked on the first advertisement this came up along with other views of the same toy. We can still see as much of the toy here as we did before the only difference is the little girl in this ad is white (Caucasian).

Fisher-Price® has multiple toys being advertised by different children the majority of them being white, and when the child advertising the toy is of a different race they felt the need to include a second advertisement with a child that is white. The message this is sending is: "Even though you see a black child playing with the toy, white children can play with it too." Now this may seem like I'm harshly critiquing Fisher-Price®, but how are non-white communities supposed to feel when they see white children in advertisements with toys and there isn't a second advertisement with a child of a different race, but when the main advertisement features a non-white child suddenly there needs to be a second advertisement with a white child?

To further analyze this ad the toy itself had extra features that the child could play with. In order to bring attention to these features the website included close-ups of a child's hand touching the movable parts of the toy:

Looking at these pictures we see that the child's hand most likely belongs to the second little girl (the Caucasian one). Why didn't Fisher-Price® alternate the race of the hand of the child advertised? The message I personally take away from this is, the non-white communities should be happy with any type of representation, and it seems to be more of a second thought than a necessity to include them in these advertisements.

On the subject of representation and to go along with the previous advertisement I did find at least one Fisher-Price® advertisement featuring a non-white child and there was no second advertisement with a white child:

I will also include two other parts of the advertisement to make this point more clear:

The toy is "My First Dollhouse™", and as we can see from the additional close-ups of the ad provided, the family (the image on the left), that is included in this version of the toy, is black (African American). We can also see that the race of the child holding the up one of the family members is also black, (and mostly likely belongs to the little girl we saw in the main ad). So conclusions to draw from this advertisement are: Fisher-Price® is somewhat consciously thinking about how these ad are made, appear, and the audience they are targeting. Did you ever notice how when the toys appear to be a different race (other than white) the child advertising it tends to be the same race? The close up of the little girl holding the mom doesn't even serve a purpose, which further leads me to questions what's the point of even showing her hand here? In the first ad, the little girl was demonstrating the different movable parts of the "Little People® Peek' n Discover Backyard" toy, whereas here we just see a hand showing us what the ad on the left has already shown us.

To take things a step further why is it I've never seen a white child advertising a toy with the race of the toy family being, non-white? And why is it that the family set has to be the same race all around? Are we still that backwards about interracial dating/interracial families that the toys can't even reflect what true families are like? And don't even get me started on the lack of LGBT representation in toys because that would be an entire analysis by itself. Basically the point I'm trying to make is the world itself has come along way, and still has a long way to go, but despite us moving forwarding the toys we give our children seem to still be stuck in a never changing, black and white (no pun intended) zone. I only hope that one day children's toys can reflect the real society we live in, instead of the close-minded ideals of a few individuals.

As for the title of this analysis, there was another Fisher-Price® advertisement I wanted to critique, because it included a 1972 advertisement of a toy:


So here we see the current advertisement on the left and the ad from 1972 on the right for the Fisher-Price® "Little People® Happy Houseboat". Notice anything similar. Yes the child's gender has changed, but what about their race? The 1972 advertisement stated, "The original Little People House Boat from 1972. Do you remember?" And all I could think is yeah I remember very few (if any) non-white children appearing in toys ads. Let's make a change shall we? Just because we remember our history doesn't mean we have to continue to repeat it.

Resources: 
Pictures
http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=10&e=lpproduct&pid=52504
http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=5851&e=product&prodcat=dollhouse-thumb&pid=55342
http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=10&e=lpproduct&pid=52965

**Disclaimer: All photos are property of Fisher-Price® and I do not claim to own any of them.**