A few days ago I wrote about an ad in a Toys R Us flier that was alarmingly sexist:
This is all over the science blogs, but I think I first saw it on Pharyngula.
Note that the pink (girl's) microscope version is 600x, and the boy's is 1200x. The telescopes are 90x for girls vs. 250x or 525x for boys.
UPDATE______________
From the Millikan Daily Blog, maybe the Toys R Us corporation isn't as inherently sexist as their ad book made them appear. I'm still waiting for the weaker girl's version to either disappear entirely or default to a choice only in the high-end professional university lab-ready models.
I wanted to give them the benefit of doubt. So I went to the Toys-R-Us website and looked at their entire selection of microscopes and telescopes. They are all part of a Toys-R-Us exclusive line called “Edu-Science” which is listed under the categories of “Learning” and “Science and Discovery”. Using screen shots from the website, I put together these image clusters so you can get a better idea of where the pink products fall in the line-up.
Here we see that while the pink telescope has the lowest magnification offered, it has a black counterpart. It’s not like the lowest-end model ONLY comes in pink. That would would have looked really bad for Toys-R-Us — as bad as it did in their advertisement.
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Nikki Stern
Greg Correll
Amanda Gulledge
marytkelly
Indiana_Joe
Lainey
Salon.com
Comments
"US-based toy retailer Toys"R"Us has been reprimanded for gender discrimination following a complaint filed by a group of Swedish sixth graders about the store’s 2008 Christmas catalogue."
http://www.thelocal.se/22504/20091006/
Yep, kids see and understand....
Unfortunately, according to your link, I wasn't entirely off-base.