madkat_kelsey

As some of you might now, I've applied to my college's art school in the hopes of becoming a visual communications major with a minor in marketing at the business school. I love designing things, coming up with ideas, imagining up products, etc and I would love to do these things for Disney/Pixar one day. I plan to get this dream going by doing both the Disney College Program, and Disney's Professional Internship program later on and working my way up as others have done before me.

That said, I've been thinking lately about the way companies like Disney market toys and other products for children, especially now that it's the holiday season. I'm always annoyed when I see bright pink things with the Disney Princesses slapped on them right next to a similar blue display covered with Pixar characters. This completely ignores the fact that many boys enjoy the Princess movies too (although, unfortunately, they tend to keep it a secret from their friends), and that plenty of girls love Toy Story and other Pixar movies. I thought of all this again as I was flipping through a Toys R Us catalog, and of course, bright pink pages were filled with girls playing house, dressing up dolls, and pretending to cook or clean while the boys got action figures, swords, hero role play, and science kits. Then I had an idea:

What if instead of organizing these catalogs by sex, they were organized by type of toy, movie, and franchise? And what if they included girls AND boys playing with toys for each? I thought of a hypothetical Disney catalog and in my head it went something like this...

( details under the cut )

These are just some of the ideas that came to me. In my head I can see the whole catalog, and I really really want it to be a reality. If I do get to work with Disney some day, I am totally proposing something like this.
If you want to read more about gender and marketing to kids,