CREATABLE WORLD� Deluxe Character Kit - DC-619

Product Information

A child opens a box. He starts jumping and screaming with joy—not an unusual sound in the halls of Mattel’s headquarters where researchers test new toys. But this particular toy is a doll, and it’s rare for parents to bring boys into these research groups to play with dolls. It’s rarer still for a boy to immediately attach himself to one the way Shi’a just did. 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. When designing Creatable World, I designed with inclusion and diversity in mind at every step of the process. Every decision was made with care, thoughtfulness, and empathy. We’re surrounded by beauty every day and it comes in many different faces and forms. I want Creatable World to celebrate that beauty.

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.)

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 only dad in the group shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “My daughter is friends with a boy who wears dresses. I used to be against that type of thing, but now I’m O.K. with it.” The sculpt is the foundation of a doll. It is what the face designers, hair designers, and sewers use as a foundation on which to create. The doll’s proportions and size should make it easy for kids to hold and to dress. I worked closely with my sculptor, Kittaya Wongchinda, to study the human body. We looked at many different faces to create a harmonious blend of features.

Across all cultures, to play is fundamental to a child’s growth and development. We make emotional connections to our favorite toys from our childhood. Through play, we learn to make decisions, to be social, and exercise creativity. We act out stories and imagine the world from different perspectives. We practice communication, problem solving, and empathy. Toys allow kids to build emotional skills, and toys shape their ability to interpret the increasingly diverse world around them. It’s important for me, as a doll designer, to provide options in the mainstream market for children to easily identify with, in terms of race or gender. Other than my mom, I was not surrounded by many artists during my upbringing. A majority of my peers and their parents were involved with science, engineering, mathematics, or physics. My dad is an engineer, so this is where I get my practical & analytical side from. My mom is very creative and very clever, she always had ingenious solutions to enhancing a product to better suit her needs. She forever inspires me and encourages me to think critically and creatively. Creatable World was praised by Jess Day, a campaigner for Let Toys Be Toys, who hoped that more toy manufacturers would follow suit in the future and avoid gender stereotypes. Day stated that "Toy companies have been quite slow to take on board that the world has changed. Most parents don't really want to see their children's interests limited." [8] Madeline Schulz, writing for the Washington Examiner, criticized the doll line. Schulz argued that the doll line went beyond Mattel "trying to break down stereotypes" and was " woke capitalism", since the dolls were "more than three times the price of the average Barbie doll." Schulz also argued that Mattel was alienating a substantial portion of their target customers. [9] 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.

The kids’ response to the Creatable World dolls

I was pleasantly surprised. There were gasps of excitement as the dolls were unveiled and a fight soon broke out over who would play with which doll. Picchi, Aimee. "Mattel's gender-neutral dolls are ready for the holidays, but shoppers may not be so sure". USA Today. 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.

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. Interestingly, both children wanted a doll that looked like them; then as they began to play they became more imaginative. They played together for the first time in a while, sharing the clothes and accessories, and commenting on the different combinations each other made. They tried plenty of different options with both long and short hair. There were two waves of Creatable World dolls, and the second wave had a lot of repeats from the first wave. Perhaps it’s surprising, then, that nobody has beaten Mattel to creating a gender-neutral doll. A deep Google search for such a toy turns up baby dolls or strange-looking plush creatures that don’t resemble any human who ever walked this earth. Nothing comes close to the Creatable World doll that Mattel has conjured up over the past two years.

Creative Play

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.