It's not terribly surprising that the toys children play with tell them how to act. During the formative times of childhood, just about everything is an influence. What's more shocking is that children's toys seem to tell adults how to act too. Or maybe not according to some. In this picture it's pretty easy to tell which toys are for boys and which are for girls. Although there's no specific label saying boys or girls above them, the aisles couldn't be more gendered if they tried. But for many people this is still an outrageous breach of morality. How will adults know what to buy if there are no specific labels? They could be color blind so they don't see the pink, and mute so they can't ask the target employees what toy to get, and they could be really drunk so they can't tell the difference between a barbie and a G.I. Joe, and if all of those were true they might get their kids the "wrong" toy. So many things in this picture tell us what we're "supposed" to do, but people are still up in arms because they want to be specifically told. Good news for advertisers though, instead of using subtext, just tell the customer to buy your product and many of them will.
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