A "concerned sister" gets press petitioning Hasbro to put boys in commercials for Easy-Bake ovens.

"The toy has long been marketed to girls and made in gender specific colors like pink and purple. The calls for Easy-Bake to take on a more gender-neutral stance has been made numerous times in the past."

Funny that it's still okay to call some colors "gender specific." But progress comes incrementally. The day will come when we get our viral video pleading for the end of stereotyping pink and purple as girl colors.

Meanwhile, in Sweden:

Sweden's top advertising watchdog—known as Reklamombudsmannen, or RO—has taken [Toys "R" Us] to task in recent years for catalogs and ads that showcase girls playing with dolls, scrapbooks, and kitchen and beauty toys and boys with guns, cars, trains and tech gadgets....

The Swedish government has been on the front line of efforts to engineer equality between men and women....

"I think it's amazing that they've actually listened to the consumers," [said a female shopper]. "I didn't used to shop here as much before they changed, because I didn't like the way they separated between girls and boys, pink and blue."

Here's what you get with government pressure (and maybe with You-Tube and Change.org):



Somehow, I don't see that photo bringing in any boys that wouldn't have felt drawn to the activity anyway, but perhaps it's intended to make parents feel and act better when their son tells them that's what he wants.

As for the 13-year-old girl's video:



Was that little boy scripted? Leave him alone, and don't put him on YouTube. It seems to me he's already saying he likes to cook and wants a toy oven and the lack of boys in the ads wasn't perceived as a problem. Hold off on the indoctrination and let him discover his own happiness.