Viral Goldieblox Toys Video Flips Little-Girl Princess Fantasy on Its Head

With toys for future inventors, Goldieblox empowers girls to be “more than just a princess”

Only 11% of engineers worldwide are female.

In the United States, women earned just 18% of undergraduate degrees awarded in engineering, while in the workplace women are represented even less: only 13% of working engineers are women. That’s just over 1 in 8.

Goldieblox is a new toy company that’s hoping to change that. Founded by a female Stanford-educated engineer, Goldieblox makes toys to “disrupt the pink aisle” and hopefully, inspire future female engineers.

The toys kids play with are integral in sparking interests that can last a lifetime. Among male college students studying STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) 61% said games or toys had originally sparked their interest in STEM fields, the single biggest factor cited.

Unfortunately, the kinds of creative building and construction toys that can foster these interests are widely considered “boys’ toys”, while girls get dolls and princesses. Without opportunities to build, play, and think like engineers, little girls often lose interest in science, technology, math, and engineering at a young age – as early as age 8.

With their new line of toys, Goldieblox is changing that. The toys are designed to “build spatial skills, engineering principles, and confidence in problem-solving.” Each set includes a storybook girls can read and relate to, as well as a construction set with design ideas. Working along with the story, girls build simple machines and learn engineering concepts like how to build a wheel and axle, and how a belt drive works. Each set includes unlimited possibilities for future building too.

Check out their viral “Princess Machine” commercial below which combines an impressive Rube Goldberg contraption, the Beastie Boys, and a clear message: girls deserve choices beyond “pink and pretty” princesses.

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If you’d like to learn more about Goldieblox, and the work they’re doing to inspire girls, visit their website and Facebook page. And if you’d like to see their “Princess Machine” commercial air during the Super Bowl, you can vote for it here.

Photo by ricarose / CC BY 2.0