Shopkins Commerical
Observations
This commercial is geared toward girls with its colorful pink tones and colorful pink and girly bubble type lettering. The only gender represented is female. The girl in the commercial is age appropriate for the product. Shopkins are listed for ages 5+ on the packaging. The girl in the commercial is wearing an outfit which is complimentary to the colors which are used throughout the commercial. Her outfit doesn’t distract from the product but compliments the coloring. She has a happy expression throughout the commercial as you would imagine a child would be playing with their favorite toy. The camera pans in and out to show the 148 toys that that can be collected.
Assumptions the ad makes
The commercial and the product are assuming
that girls will be interested in collecting shopkins since they are female and
since women are the traditional grocery shoppers in the family. The assumption is that girls will want to
emulate their mothers and will be interested in this type of toy. The commercial for this product continues
to maintain many of the stereotypes that are prevalent in girl’s products
today. The toys are bright pink and the commercial is in pastel and candy
colors. The logo is in a big bubbly
font. The commercial only features a
female and the products are all grocery store items. The accessories are pink shopping carts and
pastel blue shopping bags.
Possible Consequences
Unfortunately we as parents buy items that
we may not always agree with. As a
parent to a little girl I have always been very gender aware when buying
toys. I’m not a fan of buying the pink
colored blocks or the pink telescope. Unfortunately
as the years have gone by and many Christmas and birthdays have past my
daughter has received many of those items along with a whole arsenal of
princess attire. We have tried to do our
best to buy “boys” toys for her on each holiday and to make sure that our home
has an equal number of gender neutral items such as trains, trucks, cars, army
men. Reality is that as great as that is
she still is drawn to pink and pretty girly things and loves to collect
things. Shopkins for her are fun and something
she can relate too because she goes grocery shopping with both of her parents
and actually enjoys shopping. She is at
an age where belonging is important and since these toys are the “hot toy” she
feels like she is special. The ad
creates unrealistic expectations in that your child is never going to collect
148 items and the commercial shows them as a close up so that when the child
sees the commercial they get more excited seeing what they could collect. At 4.99 each (for a set of 2) that’s an
expensive collectable that will probably only last a few months.
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