iBesties Use Gendered Toy Marketing Powers for Good to Get Girls Into STEM
Tea parties AND hackathons.
Sisters Jenae and Gina Heitkamp are “disrupting the doll aisle” with iBesties, a series of dolls, books, and “edutainment” that promote entrepreneurship and technology to young girls. iBesties’ goal is to creates dolls as smart and diverse (and cute!) as the girls who play with them. I know I definitely would have loved a Sunny doll (she has a pet iguana and loves coding) growing up.
The iBesties Kickstarter describes the story behind the 6 middle school girls:
The book follows the adventures of six friends, turned internet moguls, after their friendship blog goes viral. The dolls are based off of the main characters in the book, who each have a special business or tech power.
Each girl has her own distinctive personality and skills, which you can read about on the iBesties website. There are also games and other fun features. Although they haven’t yet met their Kickstarter goal, iBesties was the winner of GeekGirl San Diego and are close to finishing their prototypes!
It’s nice to see toys explicitly working to empower girls. While we might have a Dr. Barbie or other similar dolls, iBesties sets out to be inclusive, diverse, and more realistic. There’s a girl with foster parents, another with a single-parent household, and one with a military family.
To learn more or pre-order your iBesties, go to the iBesties Kickstarter!
(via The Daily Dot)
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