LET TOYS BE TOYS Agenda Gender


The Let Toys Be Toys campaign caused a serious stir in the toy industry last year, where it managed to convince retail giant Toys R Us to remove gender specific signage. One of the group’s core members, Tricia Lowther, talks to Billy Langsworthy about where it all began


From left to right: Alex Lewis Paul, Leanne Shaw, Megan Perryman, Tricia Lowther, Jess Day, Joanne Watts, Tessa Trabue, Rebecca Brueton


How did Let Toys Be Toys first get started? The first few of us met on a thread on Mumsnet around a year ago. It was just a chat talking about Christmas shopping for toys and how an awful lot of people couldn’t believe how gendered the toy market was. So we decided to set up a campaign and the thread can still be found on the internet. We did a lot of our initial organising on there.


What was people’s initial reaction to the campaign? We were really concerned


www.toynews-online.biz


with this and wanted to do something, but we had no idea that it was going to take off. We were surprised at the amount of support we got.


Although we do have


our sceptics and people that argue against us, I think we find it very easy to deflect those arguments because I don’t think we’re very controversial. A lot of what we’re talking about is just common sense. We’ve had surprisingly little opposition. It’s got a bit more vocal with the more success that we’ve had,


When did the Let Toys Be Toys campaign take off? There have been a few points. When we tweeted the Tesco image and that went viral, that was the first time that Let Toys Be Toys started trending on Twitter. That was exciting to see.


The image was of a


science set and it had the words ‘gender: boys’ next


but we started off garnering support and that support has got stronger and stronger. With success, a few more voices have been raised against us.


to it, and next to a cooker was the word ‘girls’ underneath. It went viral. We had a couple of celebrities tweet it and it just took off from there. We see this every day and it showed the power of social media. You can explain things and talk about things but just one image encapsulated the issue.


How does the process of implementing change in a retailer work for Let Toys Be Toys? We send letters to them. We’re very much led by supporters and what


supporters send us. We try to schedule things but if something comes up, like Kinder for example, and loads of people start sending us images, then we take that up.


How vital has it been that this campaign is happening in an age where social media is as important as it has ever been? We wouldn’t exist without social media. At the end of November, it will be the first time that most of us will be together, and the first time that most of us have actually met.


January/February 39


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