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CREATABLE WORLD� Deluxe Character Kit - DC-619

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Creatable World re-imagines the Barbie doll for the modern world. The dolls are more childlike in appearance (similar to Lottie dolls which are based on the proportions of a nine year-old child) and come with a range of clothes and hair options. My children are now eleven and seven. When I brought the dolls home I wasn’t sure if my eleven year old would still be interested in dolls, or if my seven year old had learnt enough of the world’s expectations for boys to reject dolls altogether. a b Salam, Maya. "Mattel, Maker of Barbie, Debuts Gender-Neutral Dolls". The New York Times . Retrieved 31 January 2020. Personally, I don't think they look that bad next to a Barbie. They're definitely not quite in scale, but Lena's head looks to be a bit on the smaller side, so they might look better with a larger-headed Barbie, or one of the Disney dolls perhaps. Plus, as a kid, I had a variety of dolls this size that definitely didn't all match stylistically, and it never bothered me. There's something really endearing about that picture of Riley and Lena. I can see a definite family resemblance, and that combined with their natural, affectionate pose really makes them look like siblings. I love the neutrality of these dolls, too. They are truly fluid, which is the natural state of young kiddos. Puberty has a magical way of redirecting that fluidity, and thankfully it seems like each generation affixes those changes with more of a reposition-able adhesive rather than permanent, if not within the self then definitely as it relates to the preference of others. You do you.

I was pleasantly surprised. There were gasps of excitement as the dolls were unveiled and a fight soon broke out over who would play with which doll. My path into art school was not easy. Like many Asian Americans, pursuing a career in the creative field is uncommon. My parents sacrificed nearly everything they had to immigrate to America for the future of their children, and becoming a designer wasn’t what they had envisioned for me. I constantly fought with my parents, pleading to let me go to art school. They eventually supported me going to art school when they saw how passionate and serious I was about becoming a designer. Mattel is at the forefront of evolution. In the past five years, Mattel has committed to a journey of racial, gender, and non-ableist inclusion. There are Mattel dolls with different body types, heights, skin tones, and dolls with wheelchairs and prosthetics. a b Asmelash, Leah. "Mattel just launched a gender-inclusive doll line". CNN . Retrieved 4 October 2019. Since expressing myself through words wasn't something I was comfortable doing, I loved dressing up to express myself. Even as a kid, I would always put on something that made me feel good about myself or matched my mood. Whether it was wearing dresses, a matching sweat suit, or jeans with patches - I wouldn’t leave the house unless I was wearing something that expressed myself. It’s something I still do, to this day! Expressing myself through fashion was my first gateway into wanting to pursue a creative path in life. I’ve always loved design. Through toys, I can design something with purpose and meaning.My biggest hurdle working on Creatable World was trying to open existing perceptions of feminine and masculine styles. Deep-ingrained societal gender signifiers such as color and hairstyle were particularly challenging. For too long a time, the color pink has been associated with girls, and blue for boys. Society has dictated that long hair signifies “feminine.” Even clothing isn’t sold by categories such as “pants” or “shirts,” but by gender. As a society, we are still at the early stages of breaking gender social constructs. Meyers, Alex. "The Alarming Message of Mattel's "Gender-Neutral" Dolls". Slate . Retrieved 13 May 2022. The 11-inch dolls present themselves in short hair and simple outfits. This blank canvas is the perfect starting point to let children's imaginations run wild and create whoever they wish. Create Unlimited Scenes Growing up as a first generation Asian American, my first language was Mandarin. I learned to speak English when I started attending elementary school, and it was difficult connecting to other kids in my grade due to language and cultural barriers. My parents didn’t raise my sisters and me to conform to gender stereotypes and beauty standards - this is something we didn’t realize until we were adults and I deeply appreciate my parents for that. Picchi, Aimee. "Mattel's gender-neutral dolls are ready for the holidays, but shoppers may not be so sure". USA Today.

Elks, Sonia. "Barbie toymaker Mattel creates gender-neutral dolls". Reuters . Retrieved 16 May 2022. Perhaps it’s surprising, then, that nobody has beaten Mattel to creating a gender-neutral doll. A deep Google search for such a toy turns up baby dolls or strange-looking plush creatures that don’t resemble any human who ever walked this earth. Nothing comes close to the Creatable World doll that Mattel has conjured up over the past two years. After the session, Dreger analyzed the parental response. “Adults get so tied up in the descriptions and definitions,” she said. “They jump to this idea of sexuality. They make themselves more anxious about it. For kids it’s much more intuitive.” There were two waves of Creatable World dolls, and the second wave had a lot of repeats from the first wave.

Other than my mom, I was not surrounded by many artists during my upbringing. A majority of my peers and their parents were involved with science, engineering, mathematics, or physics. My dad is an engineer, so this is where I get my practical & analytical side from. My mom is very creative and very clever, she always had ingenious solutions to enhancing a product to better suit her needs. She forever inspires me and encourages me to think critically and creatively. When Let Toys Be Toys first started out in 2012 we targeted toy retailers to great success; UK retailers no longer explicitly signpost toys to boys or girls in-store and there has been a 70% drop in web navigation by gender. Thanks for doing this review. I had suspicions that the wigs were gong to have issues, and you confirmed them; that said, I really like their gentle faces and expressions. The more that I look at them, the more i see, well, as an adult, that the wigs are kind of superfluous. I get the sales end and the “kids like to play with hair” angle, but right now, at least In some circles*, gender is so non-specific, that anyone can wear any type of hairstyle or length, and Almost any kind of clothes. The clothing is not really gender specific, nor are the hairstyles. I think they are a very nice product that is open for all manner of play. Well done to the design team...well, let’s work a bit on the articulation!

But the evolution within Mattel is obvious once visitors make their way past the entryway and into the designers’ cubicles. Inspiration boards are covered with pictures of boys in skirts and girls in athletic gear. The most striking images are mashups of popular teen stars: the features of Camila Mendes and Cole Sprouse, who play Veronica and Jughead on Riverdale, combine to create one androgynous face, and Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard, who play the main characters on Stranger Things, blend into a single floppy-haired, genderless person with sharp cheekbones. During my last year of high school, I embraced that a creative career was my calling, so I seriously and actively pursued a way to go to art & design school. I am forever grateful to Lee Akamichi, my studio art teacher who helped me put together my portfolio so I could apply to an art & design school. Through creating art for my portfolio, I realized I enjoyed creating things with purpose. They eventually supported me going to art school when they saw how passionate and serious I was about becoming a designer.

On a basic level, the doll falls far short of actually embodying or even representing a nonbinary identity. “Gender-neutral,” the term Mattel uses in its marketing of the doll, is not, in fact, a term that many—any?—people use to describe themselves. They use “gender-fluid,” or genderqueer, or nonbinary, or nonconforming. These dolls reinforce the idea that gender is “playful” and easy to switch around, accusations often leveled at trans youths. [10] See also [ edit ] Mattel has taken risks before. Most recently, in 2016, it added three new body types to the Barbie doll: tall, petite and, most radically, curvy. It was the first time the company had made a major change to one of the most recognizable brands—and bodies—in the world in the doll’s almost-60-year history. The change helped propel Barbie from a retrograde doll lambasted by feminists for her impossible shape to a modern toy. She is now on the rise. Her sales have been up for the past eight quarters, and she saw a 14% sales bump in the past year alone, according to Mattel. At Let Toys Be Toys we know that boys and girls are more alike than they are different, but it takes an inclusively-marketed toy like this to make that really apparent. Gender and the toy industry The set comes with a doll, clothing, accessories and a wig. These can be combined to create over 100 different character styles. Start with a Blank Canvas If I could sum up the vision of Creatable World in one statement, it would be these words from Chella Man: “If I exist in this world, then I deserve to be represented.”

A child opens a box. He starts jumping and screaming with joy—not an unusual sound in the halls of Mattel’s headquarters where researchers test new toys. But this particular toy is a doll, and it’s rare for parents to bring boys into these research groups to play with dolls. It’s rarer still for a boy to immediately attach himself to one the way Shi’a just did. I would have sworn that I'd donated my Creatable World sets to the Goodwill when we moved last year. In the blurred flurry of clearing out the house, I let go of a lot of things that I never thought I would be able to part with. But when I was sorting through some moving boxes a few months ago, I found both of the sets! I guess they made the cut. It was extra-fun to find these dolls because I couldn't remember exactly which ones I'd chosen, and I love a good surprise! The dolls are sold in kits, and 6 different kits are currently part of the doll line. The kits offer several customization options, including different hairstyles, clothes and accessories that are intended to offer a variety of both feminine- and masculine-presenting play options. [5] The dolls are designed to be versatile: with wigs to change hairstyles, and a variety of clothing options. [2] According to Kim Culmone, the senior-vice president of Mattel Doll Design, Creatable World is "an opportunity for us to open up that dialogue around what dolls are for and who dolls are for". [5] Michelle Condoni, a spokeswoman for Mattel, has stated that "we see this is as something that's all about play and not about politics". [3] Reception [ edit ] As a parent that ambivalence continued. My daughter received a cluster of Barbies for her fourth birthday which she adored with all her heart. I felt torn. I didn’t want to be the parent to deny my child a toy they clearly got so much enjoyment from, but equally the highly made-up, scantily clad, anatomically-impossible dolls could not have been further from my scruffy four year-old in grubby playclothes. Even though there is no scientific evidence to prove that this is the case, there will be customers who say that even exposing their children to a gender-nonbinary doll through commercials or in a play group would threaten to change their child’s identity. This debate will spin out into sociopolitical questions about whether the types of toys children play with affect their sense of identity and gender.

Creative Play

Never heard of this line before, but I really appreciate its existence as a nonbinary and genderfluid person myself. Toys can be so obsessively gendered, and this has always bothered me even as a kid. I would have loved to grow up with several dolls like this. Not to mention, the fashions that come with the dolls are fun and colorful, which is great to see when a lot of clothes today that are branded as "gender-neutral" are just plain brown or beige. I also think the potential for play is really great here, because kids can make many characters out of one doll to fit a variety of stories, regardless of gender. It's such a shame that the wigs do not fit right and are just plain bad in some cases, because I really like the idea of having dolls with rooted hair under wigs so that you can choose whether to give the dolls bangs or not, and you don't have bald dolls lying around like you mentioned about the Liv dolls. Still, these dolls will now have a special place in my heart, as I wish I could have grown up with a toy that treated gender-neutrality with such normalcy as these dolls do, if only the wigs were better lol. Creatable World was praised by Jess Day, a campaigner for Let Toys Be Toys, who hoped that more toy manufacturers would follow suit in the future and avoid gender stereotypes. Day stated that "Toy companies have been quite slow to take on board that the world has changed. Most parents don't really want to see their children's interests limited." [8] Madeline Schulz, writing for the Washington Examiner, criticized the doll line. Schulz argued that the doll line went beyond Mattel "trying to break down stereotypes" and was " woke capitalism", since the dolls were "more than three times the price of the average Barbie doll." Schulz also argued that Mattel was alienating a substantial portion of their target customers. [9] Hi Spiral! I know what you mean about the theme. Lammily got slammed for that, especially with the first release. I'm in the process of reviewing another little doll whose charm is *greatly* enhanced by the available themes, so I've been thinking a lot about this issue. I LOVE your princess/knight/dragon idea! It's brilliantly creative and would also allow a child to be free from pre-assigned gender roles. I think even dragon characters are often portrayed as male--especially if they're evil. That doesn't seem fair! Your idea would mix everything up! You should write to Mattel. ;) Creatable World is a customizable doll line that serves as a blank canvas for kids to create their own characters with endless combinations, all in one box. Every piece in a Creatable World deluxe kit allows a child open play, and could represent anyone. One child’s doll could look completely different than somebody else’s, while still representing themselves or someone the child could have in their everyday life. The sculpt is the foundation of a doll. It is what the face designers, hair designers, and sewers use as a foundation on which to create. The doll’s proportions and size should make it easy for kids to hold and to dress. I worked closely with my sculptor, Kittaya Wongchinda, to study the human body. We looked at many different faces to create a harmonious blend of features.

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