Oh Toys R Us, say it isn't so. Tell me that when I click on your gift guide, that the first question you ask me is NOT if I am buying for a girl or a boy; not today, not in 2009.

Kate Harding described why we should care if toys are gendered in her recent Salon article:

I'm not saying, of course, that gendered toys by themselves will automatically turn kids into gender-policing adults, or that every kid should only play with wooden blocks and chemistry sets, or that pink toys should be outlawed; I was a dress-wearing, unicorn-loving girly-girl who grew up to be a humorless feminist blogger, and I don't think a Barbie will necessarily make a girl self-loathing and submissive any more than my Easy Bake Oven made me a good cook. (And yes, by the way, I've heard the "boys will make a stick into a gun and girls will make a rock into a baby doll" argument about 5 million times.) Toys are only one element of gender socialization, and there are plenty of more disturbing ones out there. But I am saying that well over 30 years after William had to beg his sexist parents for a doll in "Free to Be... You and Me," it seems like we should have made a little more progress.

It also seems with all the emphasis on women in STEM, we should have made a little more progress there as well. Yet when Lisa Wade at Sociolgoical Images used the Toys R Us guide to find for toys for a 12-14 year old boy interested in "techie" and "building" and for a 12-14 year old girl interested in "techie" and "building" she found that:
for boys there were there were 13 building/engineering games (like Lego and KNEX), 3 Ipod accessories, 4 portable DVD players, 2 MP3 players, and a few other things.
for girls, there seven Ipod accessories, 5 portable DVD players, 4 MP3 players, 3 laptop computers, 3 cameras, and one building/engineering game.

Are you not happy about this? Well the Toys R Us CEO is Gerald Storch and while I can't find a good e-mail, their corporate headquarters is located at:
1 Geoffrey Way
Wayne, NJ 07470.

And hey the post office needs your business.