This biggest problem I had with buying toys for my goddaughter is her mother's insistence with buying her dolls. The child loved trucks and stuff, but her mother would still force dolls on her. By the time the child was 4, she had gotten tired of playing with her brothers legos and trucks and stuck to her dolls, since her brother wasn't bought any dolls. To even things out, I had purchased an easy bake oven for my godson, remember when they weren't PINK?! He loved to bake, and I thought, what the hell?! His father thought it would make him gay, but his mother overruled it. With girls almost forcibly conditioned to be turned on by fashion, make-up, hair and shopping, you pretty much have to gear two kinds of enticing products. One for those who aren't turned on by those things, and one for those who are. Nothing shameful about finding ways for a kid to create a vanity mirror or somesuch, but offer a free-thinking girl something like the living woman.

My best idea for those girls in the first category: The video cam robot can be shown with a girl setting it up and watching her room for her little brother and catching him in the act of reading her diary or some such.

For the girls in the second category: Using the Dark Side kit, maybe they could include some of the cuter creatures for the girls to build and have them interact with each other.

I think that packaging is very important. The extreme differences in packaging that Lego chose to use makes me ill. I think its possible to create packaging that could be fun and interesting for both sexes.

One of the things I have noticed about my own experience in the computer world is that the thing that finally truly drew me in (and subsequently subsumed my RL), was narrative, be it interactive chat, role playing (MUDs, MOOs), and BBSs. The one video game that I played so much I dreamt about it was based on Star Wars, and thus had its own auxillary story line. I would hazard a guess that I am not the only one.

When I read the part "my 11yr old neice looked at the instruction booklet, and the pictures on the outside of the box", it made me cringe too. I hate RTFM. I will not do that for play, in most cases. I don't want to be told what to build, what it should look like or result in for playtime. There are enough rules throughout the rest of my life. Maybe girls are just more creative?!!? ;)

Ugh, the more I look at that Clikit thing the more mad it makes me.

For the record, I have a son and he has a wooden oven with food to make. He likes his doll a lot and carried it with him everywhere up until Christmas when Santa gave him a Woody doll (he is getting Jessie for his Bday). I believe in exposing children to different "gender bent" things. We discourage any reference to shooting things in the house.

So...more constructive feedback? I can only speak from my own experience, but if I had been introduced to robotics relating to space exploration when I was younger, I think I would have been into it. It would have offered for me a narrative context aside from robots killing each other. Another thing that would have gotten me going is architectural stuff. Can you make modern houses where the houses actually DO stuff? (Sounds like something I would like to play with right now). What about robots that can make noise or music?

Again, focusing on how this is presented is a key thing I think. Black and white schematics of how to put things together just won't cut it. If it does for boys...well, I won't man bash but its tempting. ;)

Awesome project Heather. Feel free to use my infoz.

sounds like a really interest project heather!
some thoughts and perhaps grist for the mill:
sociological and childhood development studies say girls tend to use and like talking A Lot. whether that is more than boys i am not sure if i agree with, BUT it is true many girls dig communicating. (sterotype of teen young gal on phone forever comes from somewhere in our culture, right?) why not make it a ham radio, or webcam, or walkie talkie-like radio, or digital camera that rolls or moves taking 30 sec .avi's or .jpg's, or something in that genre?

on another note:
when i was a kid i LOVED legos. mostly i got tinker toys because they were cheaper, but i loved legos because they were technical, specific and detailed. when i was about 12 i was given a really intricate electric circuit set. i was stoked but couldnt figure it out for the life of me. unfortunately, i only lived with my mother, who had no technical interest/knowledge whatsoever and didnt really think this kind of toy was for girls (as it might make me 'gay'). so i think i gave it to a kid i knew (boy) who lived down the block. as i am getting older and watching my friends be parents and seeing the school systems that the kids are attending, i realized how important it is to pay attention individually to each child and their particular interests growing up regardingless of gender and societal specifications of 'norms'. my friends kids are blessed as they have fantastic aware parents, but there are many children out there that dont, especially the lower classes. because the encouragement and help to any child,of any interest that they have, but especially scientific, is going to help them explore their fascinations with life. in the long run when they become biologists, doctors, and engineers they are going to contribute to the human endevour. i feel science is almost unbalanced right now, like when you only build one arm's muscles; it is very masculine and i think it needs the feminine side to be balanced to be all we can be as a human race. in this country i sometimes feel we should be making a bigger effort to girls technical programs in schools.
on a humourous note, i am now still interested in geeky things such as the recent mars landings and this forum for example, but never had the math and science in ghigh school to be the bridge or flight engineer i wanted to be when i was 8 (i liked being up high apparently). so, i'm not smart in an engineering sense, yet i still turned out gay. heheh.