The Marketing of Children’s Toys

This book offers rich critical perspectives on the marketing of a variety of toys, brands, and product categories. Topics include marketing undertaken by specific children’s toy brands such as American Girl, Barbie, Disney, GoldieBlox, Fisher-Price, and LEGO, and marketing trends characterizing broader toy categories such as on-trend grotesque toys; toy firearms; minimalist toys; toyetics; toys meant to offer diverse representation; STEM toys; and unboxing videos. Toy marketing warrants a sustained scholarly critique because of toys’ cultural significance and their roles in children’s lives, as well as the industry’s economic importance. Discourses surrounding toys—including who certain toys are meant for and what various toys and brands can signify about their owners’ identities—have implications for our understandings of adults’ expectations of children and of broader societal norms into which children are being socialized.

• Toys
• Marketing
• Children
• Critical Studies
• Cultural Studies
• Children's Culture
• Children, Youth and Media

“This book offers an exceptional insight into the everyday life of the child through their toys. The volume expertly unpacks the phenomena of our current toy culture are and decodes its hidden marketing messages.” (Dr. Maya Götz, Head of the International Central Institute for Youth and Educational Television at the Bayerischer Rundfunk)

“a diverse collection that critically examines different lines of toys and their role in consumer culture, and how they are intertwined with children’s socialization processes. I am impressed by the diversity of the topics, as well as the diversity of the authors in terms of seniority, gender, institution affiliation and the inclusion of perspectives from outside the US.” (Dafna Lemish, Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University and Founding Editor of the Journal of Children and Media) 

“The Marketing of Children’s Toys is a remarkably comprehensive collection of original essays that shine a bright light on the many ways in whichthe toy industry tactically markets its wares to kids—American, Indonesian, Latinx, and others elsewhere (like Norway). The contributors’ skillful examinations of brands, branders (as well as influencers) range from the macro to the micro, the nursery room to the global marketplace, cultural discourses to digital media play, girlhood to boyhood, toddlers to teenagers, gender stereotyping to grotesque gross-out toys and more. Essays on guns and dolls, among many other topics together employ cultural studies theories and methods of analysis. These skillful interrogations of market categories as well as particular brands, are sure to contribute importantly to scholarships on the commercialization of play, playthings, and children’s cultures, and to the research and teaching of Children’s Studies, Girls’ Studies, Media Studies, and Dolls’ Studies scholars.” (Miriam Forman-Brunell, Emerita Professor of History, Women’s & Gender Studies, University of Missouri-Kansas City, is the author ofMade to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood, 1830-1930 and Deconstructing Dolls: Girlhoods and the Meanings of Play)

• Department of Media & Communication, Salem State University, Salem, USA

  Rebecca C. Hains

• Department of Communication, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, USA

  Nancy A. Jennings

Rebecca Hains, PhD., is Professor of Media and Communication at Salem State University, USA. She is author of Growing Up With Girl Power: Girlhood on Screen and in Everyday Life (2012) and The Princess Problem: Guiding Our Girls Through the Princess-Obsessed Years (2014) and co-editor of Cultural Studies of LEGO: More Than Just Bricks (2019).

Nancy Jennings, PhD., is a Professor in the Department of Communication with affiliate appointments in the Department of Journalism and Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati, USA. She is also Director of the Children’s Education and Entertainment Research (CHEER) Lab.

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