For over 50 years, Barbie has been the hottest doll on the market, but like all superstar divas in the limelight, she has attracted her share of controversy. Whether the issue is her unrealistic physical proportions, or most recently, the fact that she relies on help from her boyfriends in the book “I Can Be a Computer Engineer,” Barbie has consistently been seen to possess the beauty but not necessarily the brains.
The alternative to girls’ toys found in the "pink aisle" is Goldie, with her frizzy hair, tool belt and Chuck Taylor shoes. She is curious and smart, and together with her friends and animals, she sets out to construct machines and solve problems. The six books and construction-set combinations, called GoldieBlox,are found on over 1,000 toy-store shelves and they're meant not only to be entertaining, but ultimately to inspire girls to become engineers.
GoldieBlox creates the kinds of toys, that its founder and CEO Debbie Sterling, longed for as a kid, and upon graduating from Stanford in 2005 with an engineering degree, she set out to create it. The fact that only 14% of working engineers in the field are women further inspired Sterling in her quest to use GoldieBlox to help close the gender gap for young people.
In the fall of 2012, Sterling launched a Kickstarter campaign with the intention of raising $150,000 to get the project started, in just four days, $285,000 had come in. With her inaugural toy, the Princess Machine, which sold out on its first holiday season on the market, Sterling ran into her first business stumble. The viral commercial for the Princess Machine became embroiled in lawsuits over its parody of the Beastie Boys’ song "Girls." The company faced copyright infringement and withdrew the video. But soon enough, GoldieBlox was back at work, and in 2014, the toy company won a small-business Big Game competition and a 30-second Super Bowl commercial worth $4 million. As Sterling told Yahoo News and Finance Anchor Bianna Golodryga, "The Super Bowl is infamous for [its] sexist adds and beer commercials, and here was this fist-pumping girl power moment in the most unexpected of places!"
This week will mark a new endeavor for Sterling. GoldieBlox will join the 88th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with its own float, putting engineering principles on display for the world to see.
"I had a gut instinct that the modern parent wants more for her daughter and is frustrated by the lack of options," says Sterling. "GoldieBlox has become more than a toy; it is a social mission." VIDEO
Posts
