Print ad analysis: "Count & Play Market" by Fisher-Price
Avigail Hurvitz-Prinz

This Fisher-Price ad suggests that their toy experts will provide everything for children, create a structured space perfectly designed for play. Creativity and personal expression occur within this frame. Toys must be manufactured, purchased, assembled. The "realistic market" comes with "50 pretend pieces" which "provide lots of food for preschool thought!" and attempts to blur the line between reality and play. Thus, the gendered nature of the play represented within the ad will take the form of reality by children and parents, who see no other model.

The Fisher-Price ad targets parents, through medium of the SkyMall catalog. According to the Sky Mall website, "SkyMall is the largest in-flight catalog company in the United States...SkyMall is seen by over 1.6 million passengers each day, capturing over 93% of the domestic airline market." Indeed, their viewers are captured. While trapped in the air, boredom while traveling encourages travelers to study the SkyMall. SkyMall mimics the atmosphere of a landed mall. It is set up so consumers can "browse from 'store to store' creating a convenient, upscale shopping mall experience" even from the air. SkyMall provides "fine products from America's best" catalogs?for "an upscale shopping experience." The apparent quality of the SkyMall catalog creates a niche for consumers who think of themselves as deserving of quality goods, even in the gauche setting of an airplane.

Fisher-Price, one of the "stores" featured in SkyMall has an enormous market. Their current, primary advertising mantra is "play. laugh. grow." and they, along with their parent company Mattel, are the experts in teaching both parents and children appropriate ways to laugh, play and grow. Inevitably, this socialization also takes place in a gendered context. The Fisher-Price website not only offers categorized toy suggestions depending on age and developmental level, they also provide general parenting advice from "experts". This particular ad, the "Count & Play Market" fits into a larger theme of "Kitchen Sets & Food Play", like the "Fun Foldin' Kitchen", the "Smart Shopper Fun to Learn System Marketplace" and the "Sweet Magic Kitchen". Their catalog in SkyMall however, is limited to a two-page spread featuring their specially engineered toys for the buying.

People targeted by the particular page featuring Fisher-Price products are likely parents of small children, or children themselves who are traveling with parents and can identify a product meant for them, though they do not have capital. These parents are mobile, who fly on airplanes after September 11th. Parents, who see the image from a slightly downward, adult perspective are the buyers on behalf of their children, who might also identify with the image. These parents can afford complex toys with assembly required and a $60 charge, plus shipping.

The text of the ad is aimed at parents who care about making every moment of their child's early life a learning moment, a "typically" middle class ideal. Math skills will improve, Fisher-Price reports, because the toy has not only a functional cash register, but also a balancing scale, weights and pretend money. "Two-sided play," they say, "will keep buyers and sellers twice as busy". The phrasing in the text seems egalitarian and equitable. It is the opportunity to "Stock the shelves, fill the bins and write?on the chalkboard" that offers a creative learning experience for children, within the imaginative frame provided by Fisher-Price. Again, the text and phrasing seems gender neutral. In the ad, however, the implication is that the boy is the one learning those market skills of operating the register, handling money and greeting the customers.

Work, in this capitalist context, is the realm of white boys who will become men. Grocers provide food for consumers. Their work is important, and associated with special symbols?aprons, cash registers, chalkboards. The apron in particular is an interesting symbol. In this context, on a male child, it is associated with work and with a uniform, it implies his ownership of this mini-business, and his authority. Yet, there is a possibility of seeing this young male in the role of minimum wage clerk, which would be potentially subversive to the middle-class identification of the rest of the ad. On the young female child, the apron would be a clear sign of domesticity and the kitchen, and the traditional associations with home and unimportant work. While he is socialized to be a doer, a businessman and an active worker; the female has a similarly stereotyped role. The young white girl, with her matching shoes and floral shirt, has already become a model bourgeois female. Her trivialized duty of buying groceries for her home, a proper capitalist consumer, is nowhere near the importance of the young boy learning to run a grocery store. Her prop is the mesh grocery bag, which she uses to carry the symbols of her consumption. With her face turned downward, away from the camera and from the young grocer she seems to defer importance and to show her own submissiveness. The play of children is early socialization for properly gendered adult behavior, as gendered consumers, to come.

Printed in Sky Mall for Southwest Airlines, Summer 2003.


 


COUNT AND PLAY MARKET -- FISHER PRICE TOYS -- F2-P75104 -- $60.

Two-sided play keeps buyers and sellers twice as busy at this realistic market! Stock the shelves, fill the bins, write daily specials on the chalkboards and hang the open-for-business sign - all before greeting the first customer of the day! Balancing scale, colorful weights and pretend money strengthen number, color and counting skills. Cash register has a working drawer and bell and even gives receipts! Store all accessories in the base. Approx. 30"L x 15 1/2"W x 38"H. Assembly required. Ages 2 years and up.

?    50 pretend pieces provide lots of food for preschool thought!

SkyMall and Fisher-Price webpages-accessed November 2003

SkyMall company information

http://www.skymall.com/webapp/skystore/common/faq/about_skymall.jsp?FILE=airline_partners

http://www.skymall.com/webapp/skystore/common/faq/about_skymall.jsp?FILE=store_partners

Other Fisher-Price Kitchen themed toys

http://www.fisher-price.com/us/products/thumbnail.asp?catid=Kitchen&from=ToysByType&catname=Kitchen+Sets+%26+Food+Play&type=assistant&lMinAge=3.00&lMaxAge=7.00