That is not what this article was saying. Looks like they intend to double down on the woke, touchy feely playsets base on the discussion with Feminist “Gender Advocacy” groups, LBGT+ activist VP in their design department and the marketing chief saying they want to be more “inclusive”. Their only idea is to remove the labels of boys and girls from the marketing materials while they push out product that encourages “nurturing.” That won’t fly with boys who don’t care what the marketing materials say, just whether or not the set is cool or uncool.
Apparently the only gendered figure in the one set will be the purple figure with the beehive hairdo, the drag queen. If they go with all little rainbow colored figures in all the sets instead of the ones in various flesh tones, than yeah, you’re right. If otoh they just get rid of gendered stuff, the girlied up pink sets, and the packaging that says for girls or for boys will be what changes. We’ll see what they do, but I’m betting that they are spinning this to sound woke so that they don’t get dragged over the coals for ditching all the Barbie pink products. Which means that the purple one is probably going to meet the same fate as the Barbies.
I mean, the animal rescue one is a natural for kids that want to be veterinarians when they grow up. They shouldn’t be labeled specifically for girls.
Look at where they did a large chunk of the research, former Soviet bloc countries, China, in addition to our own country. I think its spin to some degree for the English speaking market. If you look at the little rainbow colored figures even, 5 look like girls, 6 look like boys. They might claim that the only gendered figure is the purple drag queen, but it just looks like a female with a 1960’s hairdo.