toysrus_logoThe Toys R Us’s annual holiday gift guide is a Big Deal to the marketplace, so it’s worth a look at the games on it:

  • Scatterpillar Scramble: A dexterity game from Hasbro where you try to put the marbles into the wiggling caterpillar. The recommended age is 4-6 years old, but the product carries warnings about choking on the balls and the balloons if the child is under 8.
  • Various Bakugan products.
  • Battle Strikers spinning tops.
  • Mindflex, the hot and clunky mind control game that everyone will think is so old-fashioned two years from now.

That’s it. I’m happy to say that they didn’t organize the toys into categories of “boys” and “girls”, instead letting the children choose for themselves. Clicking on the boys and girls links within the games category on the Toys R Us website is also better than expected, with all sorts of strategic games in the girls section – only the overtly violent fare excluded – and not simply games about makeup and girl talk.

This is as opposed to Hasbro, whose game gift recommendations are still stuck in the 1950s.

Nevertheless, a teacher in Sweden is leading his (or her) class of sixth graders to file a complaint against Toys R Us for sexism in their 2008 Christmas catalog (Isn’t that from last year? Why now?). (source)