Several months ago I watched a Kickstarter video for a product called GoldieBlox. It was a great video. If you aren’t familiar with GoldieBlox, it it’s a building set geared towards young girls that is supposed to inspire them to become engineers.
Ya know, if I lived in any other town than Huntsville I’d probably be impressed by that notion but since here every other person you meet is an engineer, it kind of gives me a case of the ‘mehs.’
Meh: The equivalent of a shoulder shrug of indifference.
But, I’m all for female empowerment and what not so when I saw it at Target I bought a set for the four year old. There were several to choose from but since GoldieBlox and the Parade Float was was the cheapest, I went with it – plus it was about parades and Stella loves parades.
We got it home and opened it up together because what I do know about GoldieBlox is that unless little Suzy can read it’s a toy that you have to play with your kid. Dum, dum, dum….DUM! That was supposed to be the scary music you here in movies.
So, it’s more like a board game then a toy. That’s fine, no problem. I actually love board games.
And then we opened it up:
Pa…Pa…Pa…Pageant Day? The book and the building projects are about THE LITTLE MISS PRINCESS PAGEANT?
Are you freaking kidding me? What. The. Word Mom Would Yell At Me if I Used On My Blog.
The self proclaimed ‘disrupting the pink aisle’ toy is about a pageant. A Little Miss Princess Pageant? I can’t even…I mean…y’all…Guess who doesn’t know what a pageant is?
This girl:
And now, thanks to GoldieBlox, I am having to explain what a pageant is.
Now, maybe you’re a pageant girl. And that’s fine. I never was so maybe I’m speaking from ignorance here but…I don’t like it. I just don’t like it. I hear pageant and think Toddler’s and Tiaras.
MOTHER OF PEARL, IT’S ABOUT A PAGEANT! I thought GoldieBlox was about girls learning to love math and science! Should I have just bought a dang Barbie?
At this point, I’m prepared to absolutely hate this toy.
However, I gotta say…Stella liked it.
She liked building the set. She wasn’t super interested in the story and she did keept wanting to feed the little characters it comes with and put them down for naps but she did like the building part of it.
It was a little much for her – ability wise. This particular set is for 4 – 9 year olds. She’s four and doesn’t have great motor skills yet but she thought it was fun to do.
All in all, it was a cute activity. And even though, she has now asked me to pretend she’s in a pageant about eleven hundred times we’ll play with it again. I guess. Even though…flipping pageant! FALSE ADVERTISING, people. Sheesh.
I don’t know. Lego is taking a lot of heat right now for their female oriented ‘Friends’ collection and I know people don’t like Princesses so Lego is also taking heat for their Duplo Princesses collection but…let me give you a little example of how it went down at our house.
Last Monday we bought the GoldiBlox, brought them home, played with them together for 30 minutes, and put them up on a shelf because I can’t risk her losing the pieces. That’s because since you are building super specific things if you lose a piece the toy is basically worthless.
Tuesday we bought Disney Princess Legos (there’s a reason for all this buying but it’s 8:53 and I don’t have the time to explain it – just trust me, it was fine), brought them home, she played with them for TWO HOURS ALONE (alone, alleluia, alone!) and has since played with them, with and without her brothers, several times – maybe even every day. They can be left in a bucket within her reach because if we lose pieces it’s no big deal. The towers and things she builds just aren’t quite as high.
