Can Somebody Please Bring GoldieBlox To Australia?
An American toy company aims to offer girls more choice in the toy aisle and “inspire the next generation of female engineers”. [UPDATED: GoldieBlox is coming to Australia!]
[UPDATE 5pm: GoldieBlox have been in touch, and will soon be available at Kidstuff.com.au — according to Kidstuff, “we are hoping to get them in before Christmas”. Yay!]
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GoldieBlox is a toy company based in America that aims to offer girls more choice in the toy aisle and “inspire the next generation of female engineers”. Their website notes that of all the total engineers around the world, only 11% are women: “Construction toys develop an early interest in these subjects, but for over a hundred years they’ve been considered ‘boys’ toys’. By designing a construction toy from the female perspective, we aim to disrupt the pink aisle and inspire the future generation of female engineers.”
The company was launched on KickStarter a year ago, by Stanford engineer Debbie Sterling; they intended to raise $150,000 in a month but reached that target in only four days, and more than $1 million in pre-orders had come in before the product even hit the shelves. The product is an interactive book series and construction set starring Goldie: a girl who loves to build.
So far they’ve released two interactive books that come with a build-it-yourself set: GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine, and Goldie Blox and the Parade Float. But two days ago, they released something different.
“We might have recruited three young girls and that guy who made OK Go’s famous Rube Goldberg machine to turn an average home into a massive, magical contraption,” begins the post’s description. “And we might have made it entirely out of toys.”
“And we might have rewritten the Beastie Boys’ ‘Girls’ to be about girl power.”
“And we might have recorded an 8-year-old girl rapping it.”
“And by ‘might’, we mean we did.”
The result is a strong, cheeky, and fierce anthem for a new generation of young girls who deserve a few more options.
The machine was built by Brett Doar (the mastermind behind OK Go!’s ‘This Too Shall Pass‘) in a house in Pasadena; you can read about how it all came about here.
If you want to learn more about GoldieBlox, head to their website and Facebook page.