After a meeting with the 13-year-old girl who started the petition for a less gender specific Easy-Bake Oven the toy company made it official.
According to CNN, the toy company Hasbro announced Monday that they will be unveiling a new, gender neutral Easy-Bake Oven. This announcement came after a meeting with McKenna Pope, the 13-year-old New Jersey girl who made headlines when she started a campaign asking that the toy maker offer the Easy-Bake Oven in a less gendered fashion. CNN reports,
McKenna Pope’s Change.org petition earned more than 40,000 signatures and the support of celebrity chefs who backed her request to change the Easy-Bake Ultimate Oven’s girl-centric pink and purple packaging to include boys, too. She also asked Hasbro offer the product in different ‘non-gender-specific’ colors that appeal to boys and girls.
This announcement is great news, not only for McKenna and her 4-year-old brother, who was the reason for the petition, but also for our own Joanna Schroeder’s sons. Both of who wanted the Easy-Bake Oven but as she explained had to overcome some inner turmoil about purchasing the quite obviously gendered toy. Joanna writes,
Because we wanted them to save up to buy it, it took a few weeks before we were finally able to purchase said appliance. During that time, there were many discussions among them about whether it would be a good purchase. They both wanted it, but… well… they also kept hearing that the Easy-Bake was for girls.
In the statement made by Hasbro on Monday the company said,
The black and silver design has been in development for 18 months …We value input from our consumers and given the widespread interest in McKenna Pope’s story, we extended an invitation to McKenna and her family to visit Hasbro and meet with our Easy-Bake team … The new design will be unveiled at the New York Toy Fair in February with the rest of Hasbro’s new products for the year.
With more and more consumers voicing their desire for gender neutral toys for children it is encouraging to see a company as large and influential as Hasbro taking heed and, although a bit slowly changing their marketing and packaging to reflect the evolving attitude in society.
Picture: girl_named_fred/Flickr
Read the full article by Joanna Schroeder:
My Sons’ Easy-Bake Oven Shame