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Courtesy Change.org
McKenna Pope prepares to enter Hasbro headquarters holding a box containing some of the 44,000 electronically signed petitions.
Hasbro plans to unveil a new black-and-silver Easy-Bake Oven in February, following an online petition urging the toy company to market the product in a way that appeals to both boys and girls.
Hasbro, which said it already had the new color scheme in the works, on Monday invited 13-year-old McKenna Pope of Garfield, N.J., and her family to check out the new design at the company's Pawtucket, R.I., headquarters. Pope's Change.org petition, asking Hasbro to make an Easy-Bake Oven in colors other than the "gender-role specific" pink and purple and to feature boys on the packaging and in its marketing materials, garnered 44,000-plus signatures, including celebrity chefs. She started the petition after noticing her 4-year-old brother Gavyn Boscio's interest in cooking. When she went to shop for an Easy-Bake Oven for him, she was bothered that the design and box seemed to focus solely on girls.
"I feel that this sends a clear message: women cook, men work," Pope wrote in her petition description.
Courtesy Change.org
McKenna Pope, right, with her mother, Erica Boscio, and (from left) brothers Gavyn and Matthew at Hasbro headquarters in Pawtucket, R.I.
"We value input from our consumers and given the widespread interest in McKenna Pope’s story, we extended an invitation to McKenna and her family to visit Hasbro and meet with our EASY-BAKE team," Hasbro's vice president of global brands and publicity, Julie Duffy, told TODAY. During the visit, Duffy said Hasbro showed Pope and her family the new black-and-silver Easy-Bake Oven design the company has had in development for the past 18 months. The design is set to be revealed for the first time at the New York Toy Fair in February 2013.
When asked whether Hasbro would feature boys in the marketing for the toy, Duffy told TODAY that all of the 2013 marketing plans for all its brands are still in development.
Pope told the Associated Press that her younger brother pronounced the new design "awesome." She could not be reached directly for comment, as she in school.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Teenager McKenna Pope's YouTube video in which she and her little brother ask Hasbro to make a gender-neutral Easy-Bake Oven.
Leave a Comment:
Just teach your kids to cook for real. As long as you supervise them and help them they will have more fun and learn more then using some toy that makes crappy tasting cakes.
I had one ages ago (back when it looked like an oven and not a microwave), and most of my time was spent creating my own recipes- mom wouldn't waste money on packets. I definately learned what's NOT a good combination. :)
This is what we concern ourselves with??? How sad, America.
@Shipwrecked
Yep this is exactly what I would want my 13 year old and her little brother to worry about. It means their worries are small and they are still kids.
I agree that this is SILLY!! Champion the changing of the color of a toy??? What are these parents teaching their kids?? Life is about the color of an easy bake oven??? REALLY??? Boy is the future of this country and its young in trouble!!
Oh, that's not gay at all. Sheesh.
If we're going to produce a toy cooking product for boys, it should reflect what so many boys grow up to be. Or, at least what the commercials tell us that men are like! It should be a toy microwave oven/mini-fridge combo. Stocked with play Red Bull and Swanson or Hungry Man TV dinners.
Economy killer I SO agree! Kids as young as 3 can operate a mixer, make cookies and cakes and have a great time doing it. Boys do just as well as girls. It amazes me that people still buy this junkie item. Kids in our family had it. The packets taste awful and the oven is not warm enough to really bake. So the kid uses it once and it goes in the garbage. Changing the colors won't help this product at all.
I wonder if the new black & silver one will still melt little army men.
My sisters and I also used it to turn crayons into candles.
Good for her getting them to make the change. Bravo.
The kids don't care about the box. What about an oven makes it appeal more to one gender than another ?
Good work Mckenna! While I skipped straight to teaching my 6 year old son to cook (with help and supervision as needed), we can do without teaching kids that cooking your own food is 'women's work'.
Now for a non-gender specific Barbie.
There is a transgender Barbie, created by the The Blonds, a gay couple. I own the doll:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/08/16/article-2189428-1493981F000005DC-307_306x724.jpg
It's not a toy, however; it's for adult collectors.
I don't know, isn't that what the Ken doll was?
I'm all for gender equality, but I'd love to be a fly on the wall when this boy tells his friends at school that he loves his Easy Bake Oven he received for Christmas.
Wait...since when is purple a "girls-only" color? I know several little boys that have purple bedrooms or purple comforters. Purple is a color that both boys and girls can like. Do we not see men wearing pink or purple shirts often enough to realize that anyone can like these colors?
And let's not forget the gay purple telle-tubbie. And we all know "Barney" was gender neutral
But you live in MIAMI !! Where men wear oink and purple shirts. How nice...
Camo - the REAL gender-neutral color! :)
Does anyone else think it's dumb that Easy-Bake ovens are marketed mostly to girls, but that most famous chefs are men?
yep, double standards abound.
Does it come with a chicken fried steak recipe that works with a 100 watt light bulb? Can you cook with a fluorescent bulb?
Kudos to Mckenna Pope! I hope her little brother goes to bat for her some day.
O brother.
So if something is pink it is impossible for boys to play with it? I mean, couldn't boys use the Easy Bake before?
Yep. I remember slow roasting Barbie's head once.
Oboy...............dont worry son , your sisters cloths look good on you just make sure the heels arent to high .....................................................Oh! son, its ok to put your head in the oven too
I thought the government paid for all kinds of studies that showed little girls and little boys just naturally gravitated to different kinds of toys? This is silly. Hasbro should have just closed up shop and said "the he## with it all". If little boys wanted a girl toy, then another company would have started up long ago making little boy ovens. No more frisbee things for me. Im a boycottin' Hasbro.
Because only women should ever cook anything? Ovens are feminine?
Are outdoor grills acceptable? Does it have to be charcoal to be masculine. Is cooking with gas too feminine?
Are there exceptions for barbecue and steak? Is it always ok for men to cook as long as they only cook meat, but not vegetables?
Being a right wing nut job is confusing, isn't it?
Frisbee is made by Wham-O.
Are girls allowed to throw Frisbees? Are boys allowed to hula hoop? Are Slinkys boy toys or girl toys? Silly Putty seems kind of sissy to me.
Let's go back to toy guns for boys, and dolls for girls, and let's change colleges back to a place for males to be educated, like God intended. You can see what letting women vote has done to this once great nation.
You are right... wham-0. Sorry. If little boys want an oven, or little girls want a Tonka construction set... then fine. What they are really doing is starting to make us all gender nutral. Sorry, but males and females are different. It doesn't mean they can't both be successful in the workplace or should have different rights, but they are different as much as you would like to deny it.
I suspect it's less about what the little boy himself thinks, and more about what his parents think. My husband, sad to say, wouldn't let my son wear pastels, much less anything pink. Our kids are both twenty-somethings now, but it was a big deal for hubby at the time.
Wickeddoll: so, what are their husbands names: steve, pat, tony ?
jk :)
spare me...
Enough already.... Really...
I respect gender neutrality when it comes to vocations. Good for this girl.
OK... Let's move on...
Lets all cut our hair off and wander in gray pajamas. Now thats neutral.
Hasbro should be embarassed! Is this really worthy of anyone's time? With all that is going on around the country with the"fiscal cliff", shootings, and international unrest, we get 44,000+ people to support this mindless proposal. Society is certainly circling the drain.
Hasbro Easy Bake oven - Feminist Edition
I bet the price tag will be higher for the Feminist Edition.
You'd think that it would be a male that would be asking for a gender neutral oven. But no, it's a budding Feminist.
Much attention is given to the Swedes for a handful of their gender neutral schools. One such school got rid of all of their toy cars because boys preferred to play with them more.
Parents should allow their kids to watch them cook and help do simple things like mix stuff in a bowl. When they're old enough, they can be taught how to cook easy things (obviously with supervision, and rules restricting them from using the oven when parents are not there). Also, kids can be taught to safely use a microwave at a fairly young age. Cooking is not rocket science, it's just about being careful and paying attention, which are two things people should learn when they are young.
I've been cooking with my son since he was 2 - and I'm a guy. His mother did so as well. Now the kid is 17, and he's a halfway decent cook. He won't have to depend on a woman (or anyone else) to cook for him, and he just got a scholarship to culinary arts school. And no, to the best of my knowledge all that time in the kitchen didn't make him gay.
A 'gender-neutral Easy Bake oven' - stupidest fukin thing I've ever heard!
How gay.
It seems a good idea. Everyone has to know how to cook. I wouldn't mind getting my son an easy bake oven, but I wouldn't get him a pink one.
More parents screwing up the lives of their sons. Some of these kids will go off the deep end some day because they're so confused.
I don't think this is a good idea, either. I also don't think it's going to sell. As you can probably tell from my name, I am male. My parents tried to involve me in cooking and baking at an early age (we're talking mid- to late 70's here), and I used the real thing. Though the safety of the Easy Bake Oven is a good thing for kids, with adult supervision, it is possible to use conventional methods to bake and or cook.
Though I don't cook now as much as I should, I love to do it when I do.
Nothing more than clever marketing. As is said, any publicity is good publicity. Hasbro is simply taking advantage of this girl's online campaign. It is easy for Hasbro to issue different colors of the oven. It is also easy to change the outer packaging - just a new box. All for relatively low production costs.
Maybe they could promote it as a special collector's edition. Hasbro should market it as the Easy Bake Oven "Celebrity Chef" edition, with special "Androgynous Commercial Finish", and charge a higher price for it. They can still sell the pink version that some girls prefer.