This is a question that's been on my mind a lot recently and I wanted to bring it out to the public. As most of us well know, race in the toy industry is a big issue. American girl and barbie face the same criticisms of their ethnicity choices, which are often lacking. Now of course things have gotten better. For example Barbie now has plenty of friends from different ethnicity and AG still at least has darker skinned dolls. But the question I'm posing today is very different, do toys without race have less controversy, and do they sell better.
By "without race"I am basically talking about any toy line that doesn't deal with natural skin tones. Everything from Legos to monster high dolls. I do feel that the Lego friends line is great at incorporating girls of all races into their play sets. Monster high dolls aren't really human, so they're a great example of this as well.
Let's just say that researching this post was NOT easy at all. Everything I googled came up with nothing relevant until finally I found some information. From one Huffington post article that I've seen often floating around, Barbie sales have been plummeting. Another thing I found was a chart on toyassociation.org which has sales data for 2013-2014. You'll have to look at the link yourself because there's no way form me to post it on the blog. It's interesting because as you see here, dolls rank just below infant/preschool and outdoor sports and toys.
So what do you think? Are toys without natural skin tones free of controversy and better selling? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
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