American Toy Makers Respond to the Call for Positive Ethnic Products : Culture: Where immigrant groups used to be caricatured in toys, now they are celebrated.

Meet Shani and her friends, Asha and Nichelle. With skin tones ranging from light brown to mahogany and fashions that feature warm spice tones and ethnic print fabrics, these dolls were designed by Mattel to “reflect the natural beauty of African-American women.” While blonde, blue-eyed Barbies and Kens may be her to stay, so are Shani, Asha and Nichelle.

Today, more and more manufacturers are answering the call for products that teach children not only about themselves, but about the diverse cultures with which they live.

“The whole issue of ethnic toys has exploded in the last 15 years,” says Fath Ruffins, historian at the Archives Center of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington. “It’s affected children’s literature, television programs and the way advertisers market their products to parents.” Ruffins, who is researching ethnic imagery in the commercial market, plans to use her findings for an exhibition and book project in 1995.

Toys can tell us a great deal about changing cultural attitudes, Ruffins adds. Advertisers in the late 19th Century through the mid-20th Century used images that were already recognizable in society. “Toy makers were often expressing the norms of the times,” she explains.

Before the Civil War, there were few commercial toys. As America industrialized after the war, toys were mass-produced. The boom in the toy industry coincided with a period in American history when there was massive immigration. “This influx of immigrants created racial fears among Anglo-Americans and other American-born people,” says Pamela Nelson, curator at the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies in Philadelphia.

The poor and less-educated became prime targets for racial hatred. African-Americans, Asian-Americans and many immigrant groups new to the United States were grossly caricatured in toys. One example was the “reclining Chinaman,” a mechanical bank produced in 1882 that featured a smiling Chinese man lying against a log and holding playing cards in one hand. At the base of the log was rat, a reference to the notion that rats were rumored to have been eaten by Chinese immigrants. When a lever was pressed, a penny fell from the man’s hip into the bank while his hands moved to reveal that all the cards were aces.

“At the time it was produced, ‘reclining Chinaman’ reinforced the image of the Chinese as crafty tricksters who cheated American working men out of jobs by accepting lower wages and an inferior standard of living,” Nelson writes in “Ethnic Images in Toys and Games,” a catalogue to the traveling exhibition of the same name, which she curated in 1990.

Despite the continuation of negative portrayals, there was a definite shift in how toys depicted ethnicity, beginning in the 1920s. This change in cultural attitudes toward ethnic groups was a combination of many factors, according to Ruffins. Movie-going became a popular form of public entertainment. Advertisers believed that once people saw more realistic images, they would want those images in the products they purchased, including toys, she explains.

Nelson offers another explanation as to why toys and dolls became more realistic: “Cultural attitudes toward ethnic groups apparently softened as World War I and the passage of extremely restrictive laws brought massive immigration to an end by 1924. Rather than attacking and degrading groups, toys encouraged assimilation and supported positive expressions of ethnicity.”

There were, however, some exceptions. In 1924, a major retail chain advertised a wind-up toy called “Chicken Snatcher.” The ad read: “When the strong spring motor is wound up, the scared Negro shuffles along with a chicken dangling in his hand and a dog hanging on the seat of his pants. Very funny action toy which will delight the kiddies.”

From the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, the toy industry underwent another major shift. The trend in toys was white, non-ethnic images. “Americans were into the ‘melting pot’ syndrome,” Nelson says. Dolls, for example, were mostly blonde and blue-eyed. “This era could have been damaging for an ethnic child because, typically, a child’s doll is an extension of herself or himself.

“Children do not have the experience to understand the difference between a realistic image and an unrealistic one,” Nelson adds. “Whatever they see in their toys, they accept as being real. Through the process of play, they act out life as they see it.”

“People don’t understand that toys that have negative images can really be damaging to young people,” says Dr. JoAllyn Archambault, director of the native American Indian program in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. “Children play-act, in part, to learn how to become adults.”

Native Americans are the only racial group that today consistently appears in a negative light in large toy-manufacturing lines, says Archambault, who has been collecting stereotypical toys for 20 years. A lot of American Indian toys still depict semi-naked figures living in tepees, she points out.

“These stereotypes freeze, in the minds of children, images of American Indians as racial groups that still live in a pristine past unaffected and unchanged by the 20th Century,” she says, adding that it’s important for children to understand that American Indians today live in houses, drive cars and shop in department stores.

The civil rights movement of the 1960s created many changes in American society, including changes in the toy industry. Manufacturers realized that African-Americans, other people of color and society in general would no longer tolerate overtly negative images. Out of necessity, manufacturers began increasing their supply of positive ethnic toys.

During the late 1960s, Mattel’s black Barbie dolls began to show up in stores, along with black GI Joes. The Barbie line was expanded to include Asian-American and Latino dolls and GI Joe was given a “rainbow coalition” of fighters.

The ethnic market is extremely lucrative, says Donna Gibbs, director of media relations at Mattel. In 1990, when the company launched an advertising campaign geared specifically at black mothers, it watched sales double. The company introduced Shani, Asha and Nichelle in 1991.

Companies devoted solely to making toys for a particular ethnic group are springing up all over the country. In 1985, Yvonne Rubie, founder of Golden Ribbon Playthings, a black-owned company in Queens, N.Y., popularized “Huggy Bean,” a mass-produced, mass-marketed black doll.

Cynthia’s Toys & Games, owned and operated by Cynthia Whitfield, opened about seven years ago for the sole purpose of providing multicultural toys, none of which promote violence in any way.

According to Whitfield, a professor of child psychology at Merritt College in Oakland, there was a need to fill a gap that left children of color without positive images. “Without positive images,” Whitfield says, “the child has no way of validating his or her existence.” Because children neither understand nor comprehend how they fit into their environment, positive images in toys help them learn, she adds.

Positive imagery was important enough to Mel Whitfield and his wife, Loretta, founders of Washington, D.C.-based Lomel Enterprises, that they spent seven years researching and developing Baby Whitney, a black doll. The Whitfields (who are not related to Cynthia Whitfield) even hired an African art historian to design the doll’s face, which is based on a fertility doll in West Africa. The doll, which sold out in 1991, has taken the commercial market by storm, inspiring T-shirts, note cards and a calendar.

The toy market has come a long way. According to Black Enterprise magazine, the spending power of ethnic groups has reached an all-time high. Consequently, children of all colors are reaping the benefits. Toy companies are being forced to meet the demands of the market. “You need to give children a sense of self,” Cynthia Whitfield says. “Once you love yourself, you open up to many things.”