CREATABLE WORLD� Deluxe Character Kit - DC-619

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Across all cultures, to play is fundamental to a child’s growth and development. We make emotional connections to our favorite toys from our childhood. Through play, we learn to make decisions, to be social, and exercise creativity. We act out stories and imagine the world from different perspectives. We practice communication, problem solving, and empathy. Toys allow kids to build emotional skills, and toys shape their ability to interpret the increasingly diverse world around them. It’s important for me, as a doll designer, to provide options in the mainstream market for children to easily identify with, in terms of race or gender. 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 designing Creatable World, I designed with inclusion and diversity in mind at every step of the process. Every decision was made with care, thoughtfulness, and empathy. We’re surrounded by beauty every day and it comes in many different faces and forms. I want Creatable World to celebrate that beauty. There were two waves of Creatable World dolls, and the second wave had a lot of repeats from the first wave. 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.

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. a b Salam, Maya. "Mattel, Maker of Barbie, Debuts Gender-Neutral Dolls". The New York Times . Retrieved 31 January 2020. Creatable World is the first line of gender-neutral dolls produced by Mattel. Creatable World dolls differ in design from other dolls produced by Mattel. The design of the doll is unique and is noticeably different from both Barbie and Ken; there are no curves or broad shoulders present on the dolls. [1] The doll does not have breasts like Barbie does and has other features that do not display an obvious gender. The dolls are designed to be versatile: with wigs to change hairstyles and a variety of clothing options. [2] Research and design for the doll line's development took 18 months. [3] Mattel tested the product with focus groups that included children with a variety of gender identities. [4] Overview [ edit ] 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.” I do wonder whether these dolls would make okay siblings for the Ever After High line...? After seeing your comparison photo for the eye paint, I definitely think their facial screening would work for that, but I wonder if Creatable World's more realistic proportions would be prohibitive...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

And yet creating a doll to appeal to all kids, regardless of gender, remains risky. “There are children who are willing to cross those gender boundaries that society places on toys, but there’s often a cost that comes with crossing those boundaries,” Dinella says. “That cost seems to be bigger for boys than it is for girls.” Some of those social repercussions no doubt can be traced to parental attitudes. In Los Angeles, the majority of the seven parents in an early testing group for Creatable World complained the doll “feels political,” as one mom put it.

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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] Being creative requires a focus on your end goal, which in my case, would be the outcome of a project. In a world where ideas are a hot commodity, what is equally (if not more) important is the execution of that idea. If your idea is amazing but the execution is poor, then its intended audience will reject your idea. Staying true to yourself also means being open to adapting and evolving your vision to make the best and biggest impact. Elks, Sonia. "Barbie toymaker Mattel creates gender-neutral dolls". Reuters . Retrieved 16 May 2022.

Meyers, Alex. "The Alarming Message of Mattel's "Gender-Neutral" Dolls". Slate . Retrieved 13 May 2022. 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. 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.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 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.” The journey in the research, design, development, and launch of Creatable World took about two years.

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. 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.Imaginative language and motifs – stereotyped symbols and language are often used to target toys by gender, but the boxes steer clear of both. 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.