CREATABLE WORLD� Deluxe Character Kit - DC-619

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Creatable World re-imagines the Barbie doll for the modern world. The dolls are more childlike in appearance (similar to Lottie dolls which are based on the proportions of a nine year-old child) and come with a range of clothes and hair options. My biggest hurdle working on Creatable World was trying to open existing perceptions of feminine and masculine styles. Deep-ingrained societal gender signifiers such as color and hairstyle were particularly challenging. For too long a time, the color pink has been associated with girls, and blue for boys. Society has dictated that long hair signifies “feminine.” Even clothing isn’t sold by categories such as “pants” or “shirts,” but by gender. As a society, we are still at the early stages of breaking gender social constructs.

Picchi, Aimee. "Mattel's gender-neutral dolls are ready for the holidays, but shoppers may not be so sure". USA Today. The 11-inch dolls present themselves in short hair and simple outfits. This blank canvas is the perfect starting point to let children's imaginations run wild and create whoever they wish. Create Unlimited Scenes I do wonder whether these dolls would make okay siblings for the Ever After High line...? After seeing your comparison photo for the eye paint, I definitely think their facial screening would work for that, but I wonder if Creatable World's more realistic proportions would be prohibitive...

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Toy giant Mattel is launching a new range of dolls designed and marketed to appeal to boys and girls alike. Let Toys Be Toys campaigner Megan Perryman and her children take a look – has a major manufacturer really dared to rewrite the toy marketing script?

a b Salam, Maya. "Mattel, Maker of Barbie, Debuts Gender-Neutral Dolls". The New York Times . Retrieved 31 January 2020. During my last year of high school, I embraced that a creative career was my calling, so I seriously and actively pursued a way to go to art & design school. I am forever grateful to Lee Akamichi, my studio art teacher who helped me put together my portfolio so I could apply to an art & design school. Through creating art for my portfolio, I realized I enjoyed creating things with purpose. They eventually supported me going to art school when they saw how passionate and serious I was about becoming a designer.

The doll can have long hair or short, wear play clothes or party clothes, and crucially the child gets to decide if it’s a girl or a boy. The dolls are jointed, like an action figure, giving children more options for how to play with them. Never heard of this line before, but I really appreciate its existence as a nonbinary and genderfluid person myself. Toys can be so obsessively gendered, and this has always bothered me even as a kid. I would have loved to grow up with several dolls like this. Not to mention, the fashions that come with the dolls are fun and colorful, which is great to see when a lot of clothes today that are branded as "gender-neutral" are just plain brown or beige. I also think the potential for play is really great here, because kids can make many characters out of one doll to fit a variety of stories, regardless of gender. It's such a shame that the wigs do not fit right and are just plain bad in some cases, because I really like the idea of having dolls with rooted hair under wigs so that you can choose whether to give the dolls bangs or not, and you don't have bald dolls lying around like you mentioned about the Liv dolls. Still, these dolls will now have a special place in my heart, as I wish I could have grown up with a toy that treated gender-neutrality with such normalcy as these dolls do, if only the wigs were better lol. Representation – The dolls themselves aren’t identified as boys or girls and come in a range of skin tones and hair types. There are no images of children on the boxes. (We hope that other marketing material will feature both boys and girls.) At Let Toys Be Toys we know that boys and girls are more alike than they are different, but it takes an inclusively-marketed toy like this to make that really apparent. Gender and the toy industry

The dolls are sold in kits, and 6 different kits are currently part of the doll line. The kits offer several customization options, including different hairstyles, clothes and accessories that are intended to offer a variety of both feminine- and masculine-presenting play options. [5] The dolls are designed to be versatile: with wigs to change hairstyles, and a variety of clothing options. [2] According to Kim Culmone, the senior-vice president of Mattel Doll Design, Creatable World is "an opportunity for us to open up that dialogue around what dolls are for and who dolls are for". [5] Michelle Condoni, a spokeswoman for Mattel, has stated that "we see this is as something that's all about play and not about politics". [3] Reception [ edit ] Mattel is at the forefront of evolution. In the past five years, Mattel has committed to a journey of racial, gender, and non-ableist inclusion. There are Mattel dolls with different body types, heights, skin tones, and dolls with wheelchairs and prosthetics. I spent every waking minute thinking about, researching, and designing for Creatable World. If I was out running errands, I would be people-watching. I’d observe what they wore to find a commonality in how people, regardless of gender, style themselves. I meticulously researched clothing, hair styles, and hair textures. I educated myself, and listened to activists and leading voices in the trans community regarding their lived experience. My biggest hurdle working on Creatable World was trying to open existing perceptions of feminine and masculine styles. If I could sum up the vision of Creatable World in one statement, it would be these words from Chella Man: “If I exist in this world, then I deserve to be represented.” Rodriguez, Adrianna. "The company that created Barbie is introducing a line of gender-neutral dolls". USA Today . Retrieved 4 October 2019.Creatable World is a customizable doll line that serves as a blank canvas for kids to create their own characters with endless combinations, all in one box. Every piece in a Creatable World deluxe kit allows a child open play, and could represent anyone. One child’s doll could look completely different than somebody else’s, while still representing themselves or someone the child could have in their everyday life. But the evolution within Mattel is obvious once visitors make their way past the entryway and into the designers’ cubicles. Inspiration boards are covered with pictures of boys in skirts and girls in athletic gear. The most striking images are mashups of popular teen stars: the features of Camila Mendes and Cole Sprouse, who play Veronica and Jughead on Riverdale, combine to create one androgynous face, and Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard, who play the main characters on Stranger Things, blend into a single floppy-haired, genderless person with sharp cheekbones. Thanks for doing this review. I had suspicions that the wigs were gong to have issues, and you confirmed them; that said, I really like their gentle faces and expressions. The more that I look at them, the more i see, well, as an adult, that the wigs are kind of superfluous. I get the sales end and the “kids like to play with hair” angle, but right now, at least In some circles*, gender is so non-specific, that anyone can wear any type of hairstyle or length, and Almost any kind of clothes. The clothing is not really gender specific, nor are the hairstyles. I think they are a very nice product that is open for all manner of play. Well done to the design team...well, let’s work a bit on the articulation! As a parent that ambivalence continued. My daughter received a cluster of Barbies for her fourth birthday which she adored with all her heart. I felt torn. I didn’t want to be the parent to deny my child a toy they clearly got so much enjoyment from, but equally the highly made-up, scantily clad, anatomically-impossible dolls could not have been further from my scruffy four year-old in grubby playclothes.

My path into art school was not easy. Like many Asian Americans, pursuing a career in the creative field is uncommon. My parents sacrificed nearly everything they had to immigrate to America for the future of their children, and becoming a designer wasn’t what they had envisioned for me. I constantly fought with my parents, pleading to let me go to art school. They eventually supported me going to art school when they saw how passionate and serious I was about becoming a designer.I would have sworn that I'd donated my Creatable World sets to the Goodwill when we moved last year. In the blurred flurry of clearing out the house, I let go of a lot of things that I never thought I would be able to part with. But when I was sorting through some moving boxes a few months ago, I found both of the sets! I guess they made the cut. It was extra-fun to find these dolls because I couldn't remember exactly which ones I'd chosen, and I love a good surprise! A 2017 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that approximately 76% of Americans supported girls pursuing interests perceived as masculine and approximately 64% of Americans supported boys pursuing interests perceived as feminine. There were differences based in responses from different political affiliations: approximately 84% of Democrats supported girls pursuing masculine interests compared to approximately 66% of Republicans. Responses also varied by gender: approximately 58% of Republican women supported boys pursuing feminine interests, in contrast to approximately 38% of Republican men. [6] A 2019 consumer survey of approximately 700 adult shoppers indicated that 25% expressed a positive view of gender-neutral toys and that 5% were interested in purchasing dolls from the Creatable World line as a holiday gift. [7] The journey in the research, design, development, and launch of Creatable World took about two years.