“It’s time to change
We deserve to see a range
Because all our toys look just the same
And we would like to use our brains
We are all more than princess maids …”
It’s the rallying cry of a viral video set to the tune of the Beastie Boys rap hit, Girls, that has had more than a million hits in the past few days and is helping to dramatically boost the sales of GoldieBlox, the product it features.
I’d recommend checking out the video yourself. Just plug GoldieBlox into your search engine and you’ll get the link.
GoldieBlox is the creation of Stanford engineering grad Debbie Sterling, who has made it her mission to narrow the gender gap in science, technology, engineering and math careers.
I first heard about Stirling and her GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine toy from another video, in which she made a plea for enough people to commit to purchasing her product to get her the $150,000 she needed to put it into mass production.
I was instantly swayed by her drive to not simply try and feminize a “boys” toy by making it pink. Instead, she did her research and discovered that while boys show a preference for building things, little girls have a strong affinity for reading.
So to encourage girls to participate in the building process, she added a storybook to the equation.
The toy set includes the story of its heroine, GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine, five characters who are Goldie’s friends and a building kit that includes plastic knobs, pins and ribbon. As Goldie’s story unfolds, she builds different devices that help her accomplish certain tasks and the girls build along with her.
Now this was a toy I could really embrace. As Stirling’s marketing slogan also points out, I want both my daughters to know they are “more than just a princess.”
So we decided to take a leap of faith, put down our money and order the as-yet unproduced product. Time and Christmas went by and we forgot we’d even ordered it until the day it arrived, as promised. Stirling had attracted enough investors and put her toy into production. We had one of the very first models. GoldieBlox has been a big hit at my house, with my daughter getting a lot of satisfaction at creating the simple spinning machines while she reads along. We’re now excited to add GoldieBlox’s next adventure to our set.
I am sure with the wild success of this two-minute commercial, thousands of little girls now will get the chance to experience something a little bit different than they might get in the “pink aisle” of the toy store.
“Girls to build the spaceships
Girls to code the new app
Girls to grow up knowing that they can engineer that…”
That’s a powerful message – I hope that goes viral too.
