[May 17, 2008. Fairfax, Virginia. Image thanks to Jose!]
Does that mean there’s another sign boasting: Girls! Girls! Girls!?
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@ptrix: Putting aside the underlying sexist nature of different toys specified for boys and girls, here’s the easy answer:
“Sorry, we are out of boy’s toys.”
Dealing with the underlying sexist nature, a quick check at the current promotion’s video makes it clear that children have two options: a “speedy vehicle” or a “fashion accessory”. For that, an even easier answer:
“Sorry, we are out of speedy vehicle toys.”
@unravel: Oh my. My eyes seriously want to kick your ass right now. That was physically painful.
Aren’t we past the whole “girl toy”/”boy toy” thing?
Aha, McDonald’s is the cause of my love life problems!
@Elle Rayne: far from it, the entire mainstream toy industry is oriented around boy&girl toys because they figure it sells more toys.
Boys and girls have different “play patterns,” which drives toy design and marketing. There’s an entire science built up behind it that’s really quite ridiculous if you step back for a minute.
Cars and racing are boys, while dress up and pretend are girls. Combine that corporate inertia with the Speed Racer promotion, and you end up with a cool boy toy and a lame girl toy, which is why they ran out. Maybe a few more gender-biased toy shortages, and they’ll start getting the picture. Viva la Revolucion!
It’s funny because it’s an unintentionally sexually oriented posting at a McDonald’s.
It’s amazing to me how this can lead to arguments.
My 2 cents: As a society we’re too hung up on gender roles. Boys must have trucks and girls must have dolls. But, that’s reality. McDonald’s is pretty popular with the kid set. They like the toys. McDonald’s, rightly, cares more about pleasing their customers than taking responsibility for an unfortunate societal reality. Nothing more to see here.
@humphrmi, actually probably most of the parents are thinking “Great, in other words the McDonald’s is out of all the cool toys that actually DO something, and all they have left are crappy, boring little dolls that do nothing or weird-looking Beanie Baby type toys that shed.”
@mythago: Exactly. They’re probably out of the boys’ toys because more kids — boys and girls — pick them.
@Daniel Alderman: @Daniel Alderman: totally agree with the “uhh, are we missing what WAS a joke here?”
My sister was totally mad (rightfully) so at the whole “is your child a boy or a girl” thang a few years ago. Who’s to say a girl couldn’t like a hot wheel.
But that said, my parents have a great story of trying to nurture early-70s-girl-baby (me) to be gender-bias free – they gave me a dump truck. a few minutes later, they came in the room, and I had said dump truck swaddled in a blanket and was feeding it a bottle. I was about three. Could it have STILL been the environment? maybe. or maybe this girl at least actually preferred “girl toys.”
Back to Daniel and co’s points: the sign IS funny.
@Daniel Alderman: Tsk, tsk. I see no reason why a topic cannot expand beyond the narrow and have a logical discourse flow from it. Especially in light of the fact that there have been many realities that existed once but were altered or abolished by dissent. I think if you read carefully here you will note that many of us don’t fit the reality you speak of and therein lies the reason for our dissent…in spite of how fruitless or pointless or irrelevant our notions may be.
@Lambasted:
I, honestly, hadn’t read down to your posts when I posted mine.
I completely agree with you on the state of childhood options of gender specific toys. I’ve shaken my head sadly in the direction of the Bratz dolls since I first saw them. It’s disgusting, really. You are also correct that child molesters don’t need to have dolls available to them that represent children as little sex pots.
A quick, albeit stomach churning, trip to bratz.com shows that they now have Lil Angels and Bratz Babies. So…sexualized representations of toddlers. The company is apparently owned by Satan.
But hey…their toys are lead free, so…thats not evil.
But the reality is that parents buy these things for their kids. They outsell Barbie. Supply and demand.
I don’t like it, and have to avoid making harsh judgments against those who would purchase them for their children. But there are a lot of those parents. Sad state of society..
@Corporate-Shill: God, I hate people who employ disingenuous appeal for sympathy, like loan shark apologists who cry “But what about the poor??!?!?”
No Happy McFinish, I guess?
@spinachdip: The genius part is the mistake he, himself, made in that comment. Where someone gets the idea that minimum wage workers and kids are just naturally stupid and poorly educated is something I just don’t know. But I do know you should not make errors while trying to make that point.
Of course they are out of “boy toys”! Contrary to the sexist belief that girls like dolls best and boys like cars, EVERY CHILD loves cars! I would play with them way more than my dolls as a child. Perhaps McDonald’s should get out of the stone age and abandon their sexist child-targeted marketing for something more universal.
@HRHKingFriday: Fairfax doesn’t have as many immigrants as the surrounding areas, it’s one of the classier areas in the DC Metro area, it costs 1600 for a one bedroom apartment there. I’m even surprised that someone can live there on a McDonalds wage!
Wow. I’m not going to even bother counting all those comments, and there was only one or two that actually pointed out the truth: foremost, the term “boy toy” -HISTORICALLY- described a toy for a ‘boy’ child, such as at an elementary school Christmas function.
That is history folks, that’s what the term MEANS. “Boy toy” as in, not a Barbie. So, for the those of you with panties/undies in a bunch, step off…you’re the misinformed bunch.
Madonna started this whole Boy Toy/Girl Toy craze, or at least popularized it, with the now infamous belt buckle and t-shirt ensemble she wore in the late 80′s or early 90′s. Clearly, although she has since seemed to indicate some lesbian tendencies (or, rather, multisexual tendencies), she was using the HISTORICAL definition as she had positioned herself as quite the heterosexual sex object. In that parlance, an attractive (some may say slutty) girl was, in fact, a big “Boy Toy”. As in, for the high schooler + crowd, they’d be having a happier meal if Madonna had been included in a clear plastic wrapper.
As for the gay aspect of the term, well, I’d bet an etymological search would find that the term entered the gay world after Madonna (a gay icon) started to popularize it. Which would make that usage slang, at best. Either way, considering that I’d seen the term in use regularly for many years in the US public school system more than 30 years ago, I’d bet the slang wasn’t at least as popular as the heterosexual usage at that time. If we’d give up our culture in America for every term that the gays “adopted”, we’d have a pretty small vocab.
I even see a lot of MISUSE of the term to mean a younger man for older women (cougars, to those not in the know)…usually around the crowd too young to have children in elementary school 30 years ago and too old to grok gay culture. So I guess the term can mean anything to anyone, such is life without updated dictionaries.
Finally, for those “the USA is soooo not progressive, ‘kid toy’ dolts”: get over yourself. For thousands of years, even millions, there have been differences between “boys” and “girls”. Surprise. We’ve made it this far dealing with those differences. Personally, having been a “boy” I’m mighty happy that I wasn’t force-fed purty pink unicorns or intellect-draining Bratz-Whorz. I’m glad I got guns, and trucks, and gremlins, and stuff. Nobody ever said that a parent can’t ask for any gender of toy they’d like to hand over to their child; McD’s doesn’t care…obviously they just want the parent to be informed of stock levels. No amount of gender-blending is going to fix America’s or even the world’s problems, sorry. Maybe you need to go back to college, I mean a good one, and study the science before you blather on about such things.
Thanks, McDonalds. And thanks to all the “boy toys” I’ve had fun with. Hey, thanks to the “boy toys” I wouldn’t have (the six-pack ones) too…this is America; i realize that ultimately others have different tastes–just as long as everybody understands it is the RECIPIENT of the gift that the etymology is describing.
They’re out of (good) food, too.