As you can probably guess, this was prompted by this thread: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.867644-French-feminists-secretly-plant-pamphlets-in-hundreds-of-childrens-toys-labeling-them-sexist. One of the posters brought up the Nerf Rebelle series. You can look at all of them here: http://www.hasbro.com/rebelle/en_us/.
So while I was strolling around in the mall, I just so happened upon the Nerf area in the department store. It wasn't the first time I had seen these toys, and I always thought "That's sexist as fuck!". I was with my family though, and my sister expressed interest in one of the toys, which she eventually bought and is currently shooting everything with it (I may or may not have tried it myself) So I was thinking, yeah, that's why these toys are sexist, because they entice girls to buy it as now there are Nerf toys are for girls, when in reality there should be no problem with girls using regular Nerf guns. But I remembered that my sister is a girl who asked for, and received, a Nerf shotgun from Santa Claus. I asked her if these toys offended her, and she said no, in fact she said she was glad they thought to make toys for them too. She is by the way 12 years old. Her older sister by one year does find them sexist, but my older sister, who I consider extremely smart and is a Humanities student, also is confused about whether these toys can be considered sexist or not. I mean, isn't it actually kind of in line with feminism? They didn't market Nerf to girls before, but now they do, does that not make it equal? Its not like the toys are inferior or anything, they just have a different background (its supposed to be spy themed, while the male equivalent was like special operations) and paint jobs.
So, what do you guys think?