Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 ... 626 627 [628] 629 630 ... 852

Author Topic: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread  (Read 869911 times)

Heron TSG

  • Bay Watcher
  • The Seal Goddess
    • View Profile
Re: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread
« Reply #9405 on: January 07, 2012, 10:09:32 pm »

Holy lutefisk, Georgia. I don't even comprehend that.
Logged

Est Sularus Oth Mithas
The Artist Formerly Known as Barbarossa TSG

kaijyuu

  • Bay Watcher
  • Hrm...
    • View Profile
Re: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread
« Reply #9406 on: January 07, 2012, 10:21:20 pm »

Stupid idle question that just occured to me: would it be dignified enough for a 27 year old to buy a lego technic kit for himself?.
Hell even if it wasn't mostly acceptable, why would that matter? The proper reaction to people saying you're "too old" for something is "fuck you."

Or perhaps something with less vitriol but the same message, as the circumstance demands.




I still get the urge to bust out legos once in a while, but my world creation whims are mostly satisfied by game design nowadays. The times I play Dwarf Fortress I'm usually building some sort of super building too, which goes back to exactly what I did with legos. Legos are friggin' awesome toys.



Re: Parents saying what kids "should" and "shouldn't" have.

Oh god I HATE it when parents/grandparents/etc tell their kid they "shouldn't" want something. If Timmy wants a barbie, get him a friggin' barbie.
Logged
Quote from: Chesterton
For, in order that men should resist injustice, something more is necessary than that they should think injustice unpleasant. They must think injustice absurd; above all, they must think it startling. They must retain the violence of a virgin astonishment. When the pessimist looks at any infamy, it is to him, after all, only a repetition of the infamy of existence. But the optimist sees injustice as something discordant and unexpected, and it stings him into action.

Truean

  • Bay Watcher
  • Ok.... [sigh] It froze over....
    • View Profile
Re: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread
« Reply #9407 on: January 07, 2012, 10:35:01 pm »

Yeah, unfortunately being the boy who plays with girl toys is still a great way to get your ass kicked, repeatedly. Yes, I am talking from personal experience here.:( Just join most online game servers for multiplayer. I hear the words, "Gay," fag," and all sorts of other stuff I won't even repeat here used derogatorily. At least in that situation it's not like they can physically hurt you....

Dolls and "Action Figures" are the same damn thing.... G.I. Joe is incredibly careful to do whatever it can to make it so this is not said.
« Last Edit: January 07, 2012, 10:39:52 pm by Truean »
Logged
The kinda human wreckage that you love

Current Spare Time Fiction Project: (C) 2010 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=63660.0
Disclaimer: I never take cases online for ethical reasons. If you require an attorney; you need to find one licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. Never take anything online as legal advice, because each case is different and one size does not fit all. Wants nothing at all to do with law.

Please don't quote me.

kaijyuu

  • Bay Watcher
  • Hrm...
    • View Profile
Re: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread
« Reply #9408 on: January 07, 2012, 10:43:11 pm »

Haha, I remember vehemently making that distinction about my ninja turtles "action figures" back as a kid.

Of course they're still dolls. Dolls that punched and beat up other dolls, but yeah.
Logged
Quote from: Chesterton
For, in order that men should resist injustice, something more is necessary than that they should think injustice unpleasant. They must think injustice absurd; above all, they must think it startling. They must retain the violence of a virgin astonishment. When the pessimist looks at any infamy, it is to him, after all, only a repetition of the infamy of existence. But the optimist sees injustice as something discordant and unexpected, and it stings him into action.

Vector

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread
« Reply #9409 on: January 07, 2012, 10:52:06 pm »

You start off by isolating them into "dollhouses" and "action-adventure" things, marketing them to boys and girls separately on television (boys during Saturday morning cartoons, girls during whenever bored moms are supposed to be watching TV).  Pick fairly gender-neutral colors, so that the girl ones aren't all completely pink.  Part of the draw is that it's supposed to be, well, kinda realistic, so sell something that looks like a normal house on the street and something that looks more Victorian or whatever.  A couple different things you're advertising with a burger joint, something like that, a social venue that a boy would also see as integral to a town.  The key is creating environments that girls and boys would both recognize as important to their fantasies, but both would use differently with stereotypical play.

I see an ad that starts with an adorable little girl in pink overalls with flowers, white shirt, and a slightly lighter yellow construction helmet than the usual "boy" model.  She has lots of fun building and customizing.  Then the next shot has hair barrettes instead of the construction helmet and she's doing stereotypical dollhouse things.  But nowhere does it say "for girls"--it just says "Lego."  Cute, bouncy music, girls push their houses together and suddenly they have a town and they get to have their friends visiting.  Marketed as social.  Traditional.  Family values.

(I don't know why I start thinking in Rorschach's voice when I'm trying to think up marketing for little girl toys, but whatever works)

In the stores, we're going to have those sets just below the adult eye level one, or above, so they're easy to find, but not too easy.  The adult eye level will have slightly more upscale sets, stuff that blends male and female things.  A castle is like a super-dollhouse.  Princesses need castles.  Every girl is a princess.  Every boy is a knight.  It's perfect (an ad with girls and boys, the girl maybe in a princess-ish dress, the boy clothed in a way oh so slightly reminiscent of the military; the princess and her handmaiden is enjoying the wood, the knights are sparring, and then a little red-headed girl, slightly more attractive than the others, bursts in with a dragon, general calamity, unification against this front, dragon with forest sold separately, another set with horses, saddles, and a unicorn to kill or tame; it's a toy that children can play with together, and more significantly, it's "fun for the whole family," all of your children, more important than ever in this economy).  You know what kind of scandals you could have going on with the queen and the knights?  An Arthurian one, that's what.  Toys with just girls aren't nearly as much fun as toys that also have boys to fall in love with you.

And on the bottom shelf, in the kids' eye view, we're going to have the stuff that you don't need cognition to appreciate or think about.  Pirates (with a pirate queen, that's classic, it's royal), brightly colored stuff, whatever, and just below or above that, a bit more or less attractive, companion sets to the mainstays, things you reach for because oh mom it will go SO WELL with my castle, like more knights and ladies, or a set with a rugged hunter, another way to get that much-desired unicorn and some more pretty plants.

And all this you put out under the name of Classic Fun.  Classic girls, classic boys, classic ideas, but the point is that we don't have two points but a spectrum which somehow fits together perfectly, dovetailing (the adventures of Milly Sue in space sold with a girl fighter pilot), once the little girl figures out that she can pop some heads and get some dashing female knights), and the kids who want to play differently will be able to do so easily--and as Lego is sold as a Smart Yuppie Kid Toy soon enough it will be girls as well making palatial structures, and fathers proudly saying My Little Engineer.

And from there, Tonka and other similar companies start taking the angle because hell, it's a good business idea, and suddenly we are no longer the only girl construction toy AND WE WILL FIGHT TO THE DEATH FOR OUR MARKET, THAT WAS OUR IDEA, YOU BASTARDS.

Some of this may seem a little bit odd or rushed, as I was interrupted in the middle, but I think it'd be easy.  And more than that, I think it'd work.
Logged
"The question of the usefulness of poetry arises only in periods of its decline, while in periods of its flowering, no one doubts its total uselessness." - Boris Pasternak

nonbinary/genderfluid/genderqueer renegade mathematician and mafia subforum limpet. please avoid quoting me.

pronouns: prefer neutral ones, others are fine. height: 5'3".

ChairmanPoo

  • Bay Watcher
  • Send in the clowns
    • View Profile
Re: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread
« Reply #9410 on: January 07, 2012, 11:02:00 pm »

Quote
.  Part of the draw is that it's supposed to be, well, kinda realistic, so sell something that looks like a normal house on the street and something that looks more Victorian or whatever.  A couple different things you're advertising with a burger joint, something like that, a social venue that a boy would also see as integral to a town.

I had my own Lego death squad back then.

I had TWO, actually. A medieval one and a sci-fi one. Plus two submarines of this sort (a large one and a small one). The wolf-castle hooded guys were insurgents to oppress.


What I mean to say by this is that whereas many lego lines are fairly gender neutral, and can appeal to both sides, they won't necessarily be appealing in the same ways. I wouldn't have found the burger interesting except as a setting for a lego pastiche of Jack Bauer's adventures.

 And, well, there's also the not-so-gender neutral ones (I mean this in a "normally", way, mind you. I don't inherently have a problem with girls playing with toy soldiers. It's just that it isn't that frequent) definitedly have a wide audience. (I don't intend to buy them, because it would transgress my internal laesa maiestas guidelines, but I'd have loved to have as a kid some of the kits that have popped up as of late).

Logged
Everyone sucks at everything. Until they don't. Not sucking is a product of time invested.

Vector

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread
« Reply #9411 on: January 07, 2012, 11:06:17 pm »

Ah, sorry.  That's a specific reference to something that I had when I was younger, which was a marketed-to-boys build-your-own-city thing.  With houses and gardens and stuff.

Usually, there's things like gas stations and food involved, and a lot of those things could be suggested as playable-withable in a more stereotypically feminine way.
Logged
"The question of the usefulness of poetry arises only in periods of its decline, while in periods of its flowering, no one doubts its total uselessness." - Boris Pasternak

nonbinary/genderfluid/genderqueer renegade mathematician and mafia subforum limpet. please avoid quoting me.

pronouns: prefer neutral ones, others are fine. height: 5'3".

fqllve

  • Bay Watcher
  • (grammar) anarcho-communist
    • View Profile
    • ufowitch
Re: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread
« Reply #9412 on: January 08, 2012, 01:13:15 am »

Some of this may seem a little bit odd or rushed, as I was interrupted in the middle, but I think it'd be easy.  And more than that, I think it'd work.
It would work. Legos are of the pure imaginative class of toy that appeals to everyone. There really isn't any reason for there to be gender segregation in the market, and if little girls are missing out on Legos because of it then they are missing out on a profoundly enjoyable creative experience and thats a damn shame. And I think this is an excellent pitch, but ah, the problem is introducing the idea to the right people.

Hah, I wonder if you made your own pilot ad and posted it on Youtube that would get their attention.
Logged
You don't use freedom Penguin. First you demand it, then you have it.
No using. That's not what freedom is for.

Bauglir

  • Bay Watcher
  • Let us make Good
    • View Profile
Re: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread
« Reply #9413 on: January 08, 2012, 01:33:36 am »

One major error, at least, is putting them in a separate aisle. If you're trying to hook them, you want the existing products to exist near the hooks so that they'll be likelier to expand on a whim. I refer to errors with the actual product, I mean, if I understood the link correctly.
Logged
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied. “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

MonkeyHead

  • Bay Watcher
  • Yma o hyd...
    • View Profile
Re: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread
« Reply #9414 on: January 08, 2012, 05:04:08 am »

My youngest daughters favourite toy post-chirstmas is a toolkit. She is using it to perform rudimentary surgury to my left knee as I type. The fact that there is also a 4 ft square dolls house on the table is also kind of cool. Parents should get the toys kids enjoy playng with, regardless of gender "allignment". Trouble is I ont think most people would want to (as mentioned by many). Too many people want the pink fluffy girly girl and the muddy boy dont they? Tis a shame.

As for Lego... I spent most of my childhood making space craft, space stations and so on. In my early teens my broter and I progreessed onto using Lego and rudiemntary pneumatics and motors to make robots designed to beat the crap out of each other, inspired by RObot Wars (which I then later competed in a number of times) The guidelines were irrelevant and restricitive. My eldest daugther makes submarines out of hers.

Now, transformers was THE toy of my childhood. They were planes and cars and tanks and stuff, and ALSO robots. Woo! Oh, and a cartoon, that was basically one long advert. Whats that? A new character? Gotta buy them all! Pokemon wasnt the first franchise to have that idea at all. There was even a female robot, that turned into a sedan car of some type, but lo and behold, it was pink, and it didnt sell, so was dropped quietly. Most girls werent aware of its existance as it was buried within this typical boy cartoon. Or He-Man (like the name couldnt be any more descriptive huh?). Magic guy who has manlyness (sp?) of the scale, a magic sword and rides a tiger into battle in some medieval technoworld with lasers. Of course he had an action figure range. Looking to double thier profits the makers created a female character in the same setting - She-Ra. Her adventures were mainly about caring, sharing and helping each other out, and less about throwing baddies around with liberal mild violence. Not sure what point I am getting at here, but the attitude that each gender needs to be focussed on in a different way seems to come from a desire to make as much money as possible, instead of giving a crap about a socially responsible attitude to gender stereotyping.

scriver

  • Bay Watcher
  • City streets ain't got much pity
    • View Profile
Re: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread
« Reply #9415 on: January 08, 2012, 05:12:18 am »

She-Ra totally got the better theme song though. She-Ra! She-Ra! Badabadabam badabambambam ba bada badamdam dam
Logged
Love, scriver~

Luke_Prowler

  • Bay Watcher
  • Wait, how did I get back here?
    • View Profile
Re: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread
« Reply #9416 on: January 08, 2012, 05:49:04 am »

She-Ra totally got the better theme song though. She-Ra! She-Ra! Badabadabam badabambambam ba bada badamdam dam
And animation that didn't look like crap.
Logged

Quote from: ProtonJon
And that's why Communism doesn't work. There's always Chance Time

DJ

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread
« Reply #9417 on: January 08, 2012, 06:35:59 am »

Board games are gender neutral for the most part. They're also virtually the only toys my parents bought for us kids. If we wanted something else, we had to make it out of blocks of wood, copper wire and elastic bands.
Logged
Urist, President has immigrated to your fortress!
Urist, President mandates the Dwarven Bill of Rights.

Cue magma.
Ah, the Magma Carta...

Il Palazzo

  • Bay Watcher
  • And lo, the Dude did abide. And it was good.
    • View Profile
Re: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread
« Reply #9418 on: January 08, 2012, 07:24:50 am »

Have you seen this? Kinda related.
Riley on marketing
Logged

Truean

  • Bay Watcher
  • Ok.... [sigh] It froze over....
    • View Profile
Re: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread
« Reply #9419 on: January 08, 2012, 11:59:34 am »

Rick Perry would send ground troops back into Iraq, today if he could....

He has got to be one of the craziest assholes, I have ever seen. He's G.W. Bush on crack.... We don't own that country and we'd been there going on a decade.... We haven't really gotten anything out of it and shouldn't have been there to begin with.

It seems lots of people appear willing to spend $Trillions of dollars on an undefinable, and therefor by definition unwinnable, never ending war, but that homeless guy in the street, fuck him. Same thing with health care.

I'm beginning to think that if you're the president and want to declare war (by whatever means) you should have to be a front line combatant with exactly the same standard issue equipment as every private. If its important enough to risk someone else's life, then you can risk yours. This is the exact same political "lead from behind solely to get elected," crap that screwed us in Vietnam.... We are being bled dry and therefore losing this incredibly expensive war.... But hey, let's not tax the rich to pay for it even though they deserve it and lets cut as many social services as possible even thought the people getting them deserve it....

???

We never learn from history though.... Why on earth should we fund our little wars.... Supporting the Troops is not a stupid empty gesture ribbon decal on your stupid car. Taxes support our troops.... Why O why are we out of money.... Because hey, why should you pay taxes when voting in men who declare wars allegedly for freedom....
« Last Edit: January 08, 2012, 12:12:36 pm by Truean »
Logged
The kinda human wreckage that you love

Current Spare Time Fiction Project: (C) 2010 http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=63660.0
Disclaimer: I never take cases online for ethical reasons. If you require an attorney; you need to find one licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. Never take anything online as legal advice, because each case is different and one size does not fit all. Wants nothing at all to do with law.

Please don't quote me.
Pages: 1 ... 626 627 [628] 629 630 ... 852