My nieces got a Geotrax train system for Christmas.
(And they love it to bits, by the way. Precious few people have told them this sort of thing is a "boy" toy yet, and I think I'll have to hurt anybody who tries it in the future. But that's another rant for another day.)

Now, you know how it goes, there's a little pamphlet inside the box telling you all the other stuff you can buy to go with your new toy. Apparently, there are lots of "teams". There's the "Oldest team" and the "Biggest Bullies" and the "Most Trusted Team" and a whole storyline...

And there's predictably only one team with any female human or train on it. And you know what they get fobbed off with? They're the Nicest team. Nicest. Not that nice isn't a perfectly good thing to be, but it's so boring. Like that's the best thing you can say about them. In a world of adjectives like "Most Rugged" and "Most Generous", they get the world's most boring adjective ever. Nice.

And so stereotypical. Nice, nice, nice. I mean, seriously. If you're only going to have the one token female in the entire playset, can't you come up with a better adjective? ANY other adjective? All the other teams get great things, like "Most Adventurous" and "Toughest" and even "Crankiest" or "Stinkiest" (which is interesting, if nothing else), and the girls get nice. The character, I'm reading, doesn't even work on the train. She's a passenger. So I've got my nieces playing with these toys all day, and the underlying message is that they shouldn't be, that working on or with trains is for guys. (Again.)

I'm so irritated. And then I'm upset that I'm upset - like a toy is that important? - and upset that I'm upset that I'm upset. So it's not "that important". Shouldn't I still care that it's full of stereotypicity?

Ugh.

At least neither niece can read yet. They don't know any of this. That's something, anyway.