I've got a Super Soaker made by Nerf. I originally ordered it because I needed some way to spray my new puppy with water to deter him from peeing or pooping on the carpet. What I got was far more than expected.
Since they're made by Nerf, that means Super Soakers are way cooler than the blue plastic space-gun my parents bought me in the 90s. The Super Soaker Thunderstorm looks like a Tec-9 smg crossed with something out of Mass Effect. It's battery-powered which means no pumping required. It's also impressively accurate so I can hit a moving target at a distance with no problem. Lastly, instead of a big, plastic bottle on top it reloads with a refillable "magazine" that snaps in and out of the gun quickly and tightly without having to screw it on.
Oh and it has a tactical rail and other Nerf-branded attachments which means you can do this:
Hopefully they're the same awesome dart-guns only with a hot pink color-scheme. That'd be neat.
If they cover them in happy clouds and hearts and have them fire special lower-impact ammo or something we'll have a problem but I see that as less-likely.
enforcing gender binaries with toys is p dumb, yeah, i concur
but on a spectrum of dumb things, from what i've seen thus far it's pretty inoffensive
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#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
But I mean I'm guilty of it too
I've designed clothing for department stores and when the packaging said "boys socks" those socks had some motherfuckin footballs and skateboards and stars and lightning on them, and they were blue and black and red and green
and when the packaging said "Girls' socks" they had ponies and hearts and stripes and polkadots and they were pink and purple and white
Because hey guess what that's what sells. I wasn't trying to reinforce gender roles, I was trying to sell some fuckin socks.
If a parent wants to buy black or white gender neutral socks then go for it. If a little boy wants to wear some socks with a pony and some flowers more power to him.
But it's going to take a long damn time for that to not be a thing anymore.
It's not as offensive as LEGO FOR GIRLS, seeing as it's still actual nerf guns that fire darts and not nerf handbags that fire makeup
but it's still "this is FOR BOYS" and "this is FOR GIRLS" which is dumb and annoying
Annoying to you, maybe but there are some girls who want to have angel-wings and hearts stenciled on their toy guns and bows. These are for them and I don't see this as really being offensive beyond acknowledging that girls sometimes prefer things that are pink.
Did they learn nothing from the recent EZ Bake Oven fiasco? Cripes
I'd say this is evidence that they've learned a whole lot from that. These weapons are awesome, unique and are more "rocker chick" than "fairy princess" from the looks of it, which is empowering. It removes some of the stigma from girls who would otherwise love Nerf guns but society tells them that Nerf is "for boys" and therefore they will be acting too butch if they play with them. These toys say "hey, here's your own cool thing that nobody will question the femininity of and yet you can use it to kick the boys' asses too!"
It's the best possible way to approach this kind of product. In the society of social pressures we live in just telling girls to disregard their attachment to traditionally-feminine color schemes and play with the "boy" toys is an oversimplified idealism. Children can have options with this line and the thread is already demonstrating that males think these new Rebelle toys look badass and would use them themselves which is an outcome all toy companies should strive to emulate with their more gender-specific products.
so i'm doing some poking around and other than the prevalence of pink-ass pink in the color scheme I'm not seeing much about these new guns that seem to infer they're "for girls"
like yes, that is how they are going to be marketed, sure
but like, a person can argue that Barbies and EZ bake ovens reinforce gender roles, not just a separation of boys and girls into binary categories but that girls ought to be doing certain things and ought to fit into certain roles and ought to aspire to particular standards of behavior or appearance
and i buy that argument, it makes sense
but i don't know how applicable it is to these Nerf guns, because they don't come in a like, make me a sandwich playset pack, and they don't have happy little bears on them
they're pink, sure, but aside from that there's no much genderizing going on there
like this is an actual quote from some Hasbro rep:
“I think if anything, we went into this without any stereotypes and instead talked to young girls, found out what they wanted, and then designed a line of products that addressed that opportunity.”
What girls wanted, he said, was Nerf toys that boast both high performance and a design made especially for them. “Just to be clear, we could have taken some of our Nerf blasters and just made them pink and put them in pink packages — but that’s not what we did,” Frascotti explained. Trying to encourage girls to buy existing Nerf toys or easing up the gendered overtones of those products was never really on the table: “This is an entirely ground-up effort.”
Thanks to all that research, Rebelle differs from other Nerf lines in several key ways. The Heartbreaker bow comes with collectable darts bearing different colors and designs; there’s a Rebelle app that allows girls to play collaboratively and encourages teamwork; the bow’s size and ergonomics have been tweaked so that girls as young as 6 can activate it easily.
The product’s main philosophy, though, is in line with that of the Nerf toys that came before it. “Nothing is really addressing this big opportunity for girls to be active and play,” Frascotti said. “Parents are concerned about the amount of time kids are spending in sedentary activities, in front of a screen of some sort.” By contrast, Rebelle promotes exercise and socialization in a way that will hopefully appeal to girls who have no interest in sports as well as budding athletes.
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AntimatterDevo Was RightGates of SteelRegistered Userregular
the guns do look kinda badass, i just take issue with the marketing
it is certainly the least bad targeting towards gender, true
reading that quote and looking at the gun pics that are online
the whole black/pink/white "punk" aesthetic really does seem like it was the product of market research into what young girls want
as opposed to the sort of narrative of what young girls want that companies like Mattel and Hasbro have tried to maintain over the years, with the hearts and the teddy bears and the whatnot
and i'm okay with this?
like at the end of the day, we do not live in a culture where complete erasure of the concept of gender is something that exists. gender exists. gender values exist. different genders of children and teenagers and even young adults want vastly different things. you can say "Well, that's only 'cause society told 'em so!" and you'd be right, but the fact remains that is how it is
and rather than just upturning the whole applecart in anger and not trying to tweak the social process and just giving up in a huff and saying "WELL IT IS DUMB TO MARKET TO BOYS AND GIRLS SEPARATELY ANYWAY", i think it's good to say "okay, we're going to do this, but... we're going to try to reflect what the girls actually want instead of reinforcing what we're telling them they should want"
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#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
Annoying to you, maybe but there are some girls who want to have angel-wings and hearts stenciled on their toy guns and bows. These are for them and I don't see this as really being offensive beyond acknowledging that girls sometimes prefer things that are pink.
I totally get that
but some boys prefer things that are pink and have wings and shit, too! My nephew's favourite colour is pink.
Some girls like blue and orange!
It bugs me that my nephew could see one of those Rebelle blasters and think it was awesome, but then see that it was "for girls" so not want to get it anymore.
Annoying to you, maybe but there are some girls who want to have angel-wings and hearts stenciled on their toy guns and bows. These are for them and I don't see this as really being offensive beyond acknowledging that girls sometimes prefer things that are pink.
I totally get that
but some boys prefer things that are pink and have wings and shit, too! My nephew's favourite colour is pink.
Some girls like blue and orange!
It bugs me that my nephew could see one of those Rebelle blasters and think it was awesome, but then see that it was "for girls" so not want to get it anymore.
but what is going to indicate that it's for girls though
aside from the pink, obviously, which isn't an issue for your nephew as he likes pink
oh, sure, girls will be on the packaging, no doubt about that
but i doubt these things are going to be stuck in the section with the Barbies, they're going to end up in the same part of stores as other Nerf guns i'd be willing to wager (this is a retail practicality issue as much as anything else)
and I doubt that it's going to say FOR GIRLS, BOYS NOT ALLOWED on them
they'll have the Rebelle brand on them, yes
but if a feminized spelling of the word "Rebel" and having a girl on the box is enough to dissuade your pink-loving nephew from buying a sweet Nerf bow uh
i dunno man
don't think the problem's with the product at that point
might wanna talk to your sibling about how they're raising their kid
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Annoying to you, maybe but there are some girls who want to have angel-wings and hearts stenciled on their toy guns and bows. These are for them and I don't see this as really being offensive beyond acknowledging that girls sometimes prefer things that are pink.
I totally get that
but some boys prefer things that are pink and have wings and shit, too! My nephew's favourite colour is pink.
Some girls like blue and orange!
It bugs me that my nephew could see one of those Rebelle blasters and think it was awesome, but then see that it was "for girls" so not want to get it anymore.
but i doubt these things are going to be stuck in the section with the Barbies, they're going to end up in the same part of stores as other Nerf guns i'd be willing to wager (this is a retail practicality issue as much as anything else)
I agree with you for the most part, but right here, this I am not so sure about.
My local Target, at very least, segregates the LEGO Friends line into the same section as the Barbies, rather than the massive LEGO (and Megablok and whatever else) aisle.
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
like this is an actual quote from some Hasbro rep:
“I think if anything, we went into this without any stereotypes and instead talked to young girls, found out what they wanted, and then designed a line of products that addressed that opportunity.”
What girls wanted, he said, was Nerf toys that boast both high performance and a design made especially for them. “Just to be clear, we could have taken some of our Nerf blasters and just made them pink and put them in pink packages — but that’s not what we did,” Frascotti explained. Trying to encourage girls to buy existing Nerf toys or easing up the gendered overtones of those products was never really on the table: “This is an entirely ground-up effort.”
Thanks to all that research, Rebelle differs from other Nerf lines in several key ways. The Heartbreaker bow comes with collectable darts bearing different colors and designs; there’s a Rebelle app that allows girls to play collaboratively and encourages teamwork; the bow’s size and ergonomics have been tweaked so that girls as young as 6 can activate it easily.
The product’s main philosophy, though, is in line with that of the Nerf toys that came before it. “Nothing is really addressing this big opportunity for girls to be active and play,” Frascotti said. “Parents are concerned about the amount of time kids are spending in sedentary activities, in front of a screen of some sort.” By contrast, Rebelle promotes exercise and socialization in a way that will hopefully appeal to girls who have no interest in sports as well as budding athletes.
LEGO did the exact same thing with the Friends line, though. Many millions of dollars worth of market research with all the focus groups and shit that that entails.
Then they designed and released a range of toys specifically to appeal to what girls told them they wanted in a LEGO product.
Then the internet threw a shit fit.
It's almost becoming a "can't win" situation for some markets. You can't keep doing what you've always done, because you must grow and improve yourself to survive in a changing marketplace. So you do what you can to give the new demographic you're trying to break into (or reclaim, in LEGO's case) what they want, and that somehow makes your company an archaic misogynist relic.
Most of us here have or know of women who buck societal stereotypes regarding gender, but unfortunately I don't think they are the majority yet, not by a long shot.
I'm really hoping for a good replacement or rerelease of it.
Also those "girl nerf" blasters look pretty sweet, and I totally second that one looks like Deckards gun. Which means someone, somewhere will mod it to look more like it, so that I can copy their design, and shoot those robot sheep in their sleepy heads.
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Don't buy this thing it's a clunky hunk of junk
Since they're made by Nerf, that means Super Soakers are way cooler than the blue plastic space-gun my parents bought me in the 90s. The Super Soaker Thunderstorm looks like a Tec-9 smg crossed with something out of Mass Effect. It's battery-powered which means no pumping required. It's also impressively accurate so I can hit a moving target at a distance with no problem. Lastly, instead of a big, plastic bottle on top it reloads with a refillable "magazine" that snaps in and out of the gun quickly and tightly without having to screw it on.
Oh and it has a tactical rail and other Nerf-branded attachments which means you can do this:
or this:
or this:
(actually the Lightningstorm but close-enough)
It's pretty cool.
new Nerf guns announced at the New York Toy Fair oh dear
The Everdeen Heartbreaker
If they cover them in happy clouds and hearts and have them fire special lower-impact ammo or something we'll have a problem but I see that as less-likely.
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
EDIT: it seems they will also have special collectible darts with different designs
like
teenage girls would buy that
Dang that Rebelle line has a crossbow too. I'd have no problem buying some of those.
but it's still "this is FOR BOYS" and "this is FOR GIRLS" which is dumb and annoying
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
but on a spectrum of dumb things, from what i've seen thus far it's pretty inoffensive
I've designed clothing for department stores and when the packaging said "boys socks" those socks had some motherfuckin footballs and skateboards and stars and lightning on them, and they were blue and black and red and green
and when the packaging said "Girls' socks" they had ponies and hearts and stripes and polkadots and they were pink and purple and white
Because hey guess what that's what sells. I wasn't trying to reinforce gender roles, I was trying to sell some fuckin socks.
If a parent wants to buy black or white gender neutral socks then go for it. If a little boy wants to wear some socks with a pony and some flowers more power to him.
But it's going to take a long damn time for that to not be a thing anymore.
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
Annoying to you, maybe but there are some girls who want to have angel-wings and hearts stenciled on their toy guns and bows. These are for them and I don't see this as really being offensive beyond acknowledging that girls sometimes prefer things that are pink.
I'd say this is evidence that they've learned a whole lot from that. These weapons are awesome, unique and are more "rocker chick" than "fairy princess" from the looks of it, which is empowering. It removes some of the stigma from girls who would otherwise love Nerf guns but society tells them that Nerf is "for boys" and therefore they will be acting too butch if they play with them. These toys say "hey, here's your own cool thing that nobody will question the femininity of and yet you can use it to kick the boys' asses too!"
It's the best possible way to approach this kind of product. In the society of social pressures we live in just telling girls to disregard their attachment to traditionally-feminine color schemes and play with the "boy" toys is an oversimplified idealism. Children can have options with this line and the thread is already demonstrating that males think these new Rebelle toys look badass and would use them themselves which is an outcome all toy companies should strive to emulate with their more gender-specific products.
like yes, that is how they are going to be marketed, sure
but like, a person can argue that Barbies and EZ bake ovens reinforce gender roles, not just a separation of boys and girls into binary categories but that girls ought to be doing certain things and ought to fit into certain roles and ought to aspire to particular standards of behavior or appearance
and i buy that argument, it makes sense
but i don't know how applicable it is to these Nerf guns, because they don't come in a like, make me a sandwich playset pack, and they don't have happy little bears on them
they're pink, sure, but aside from that there's no much genderizing going on there
That looks like Deckard's Blaster from BladeRunner.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
I kinda wanted to say something like this, but then I thought how the fuck would I know what is empowering for girls?
it is certainly the least bad targeting towards gender, true
I'd prefer it shot the full-size missile-arrows but this is still pretty rockin'.
I've also discovered that "Rebelle" is apparently the French title for Disney-Pixar's movie Brave.
the whole black/pink/white "punk" aesthetic really does seem like it was the product of market research into what young girls want
as opposed to the sort of narrative of what young girls want that companies like Mattel and Hasbro have tried to maintain over the years, with the hearts and the teddy bears and the whatnot
and i'm okay with this?
like at the end of the day, we do not live in a culture where complete erasure of the concept of gender is something that exists. gender exists. gender values exist. different genders of children and teenagers and even young adults want vastly different things. you can say "Well, that's only 'cause society told 'em so!" and you'd be right, but the fact remains that is how it is
and rather than just upturning the whole applecart in anger and not trying to tweak the social process and just giving up in a huff and saying "WELL IT IS DUMB TO MARKET TO BOYS AND GIRLS SEPARATELY ANYWAY", i think it's good to say "okay, we're going to do this, but... we're going to try to reflect what the girls actually want instead of reinforcing what we're telling them they should want"
I totally get that
but some boys prefer things that are pink and have wings and shit, too! My nephew's favourite colour is pink.
Some girls like blue and orange!
It bugs me that my nephew could see one of those Rebelle blasters and think it was awesome, but then see that it was "for girls" so not want to get it anymore.
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
but what is going to indicate that it's for girls though
aside from the pink, obviously, which isn't an issue for your nephew as he likes pink
oh, sure, girls will be on the packaging, no doubt about that
but i doubt these things are going to be stuck in the section with the Barbies, they're going to end up in the same part of stores as other Nerf guns i'd be willing to wager (this is a retail practicality issue as much as anything else)
and I doubt that it's going to say FOR GIRLS, BOYS NOT ALLOWED on them
they'll have the Rebelle brand on them, yes
but if a feminized spelling of the word "Rebel" and having a girl on the box is enough to dissuade your pink-loving nephew from buying a sweet Nerf bow uh
i dunno man
don't think the problem's with the product at that point
might wanna talk to your sibling about how they're raising their kid
I agree with you for the most part, but right here, this I am not so sure about.
My local Target, at very least, segregates the LEGO Friends line into the same section as the Barbies, rather than the massive LEGO (and Megablok and whatever else) aisle.
LEGO did the exact same thing with the Friends line, though. Many millions of dollars worth of market research with all the focus groups and shit that that entails.
Then they designed and released a range of toys specifically to appeal to what girls told them they wanted in a LEGO product.
Then the internet threw a shit fit.
It's almost becoming a "can't win" situation for some markets. You can't keep doing what you've always done, because you must grow and improve yourself to survive in a changing marketplace. So you do what you can to give the new demographic you're trying to break into (or reclaim, in LEGO's case) what they want, and that somehow makes your company an archaic misogynist relic.
Most of us here have or know of women who buck societal stereotypes regarding gender, but unfortunately I don't think they are the majority yet, not by a long shot.
It should have a pink angel-wing bayonette.
Yep. Hell, I got my 34 year old sister a Vulcan for Christmas.
She took it to work and laid waste to her entire office.
Also those "girl nerf" blasters look pretty sweet, and I totally second that one looks like Deckards gun. Which means someone, somewhere will mod it to look more like it, so that I can copy their design, and shoot those robot sheep in their sleepy heads.
I like the curved design. Sorta like an ipod gun.
Make a god damn bayonet already.