The first rule of toy marketing: if you want to sell something to girls, make it pink! And in the case of the Fisher-Price TRIO building blocks set on Amazon, make the girls’ product cost $8.50 more than the “standard” product, for no clear reason. Even though it contains fewer blocks.

Reader JC, shopping for toys on Amazon, discovered this weird discrepancy, and wrote in:

Why is Amazon selling this “boy version” of the same toy for $9 less than the identical (in fact slightly smaller) “girl version”?

We were gonna get a set for our daughter’s birthday, but now don’t know what to do.

Wait, except one of Fisher-Price’s promotional images shows a girl playing with the boys’ set. She must be stopped!

Our guess is there’s some kind of pricing algorithm at work here. However, the blocks in primary colors have a broader appeal and probably sell more units, so wouldn’t retail logic cause Amazon to price the pink set lower?

Toys R Us takes a more egalitarian approach to the product, calling the pink set simply “Pink,” and putting the same price on both products. Both sets are still cheaper at Amazon, but hey, egalitarianism! Maybe Toys R Us learned their lesson after the pink microscope controversy.

Fisher-Price TRIO Building Set with Storage [Amazon]
Fisher-Price TRIO Girls Building Set with storage [Amazon]
Fisher-Price TRIO Preschool Set – Building Set with Tub [Toys R Us]
Fisher-Price TRIO Pink Building Set with Storage [Toys R Us]

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