Horvath first sketched the cute, simple monsters as a way of signing letters to his girlfriend, Sun-Min Kim. Kim and Horvath met twelve years ago, while they were both students at Parsons School of Design. After graduation, Kim moved back to South Korea, and Horvath returned to LA. He ended each letter to Kim with a little monster named Wage, which was his way of telling her he would continue to work hard to bring her back to the US.

The monster first made it into doll-form when Kim sent Horvath a handmade toy, stitched to resemble his doodle. Horvath was so excited - this is the only weird part - that "he carried the doll around with him to show his friends." Eric Nakamura, who had just opened a store specializing in Asian pop culture items, saw the doll, and instead of assuming his friend was off his rocker, he asked Horvath for an order of the Uglydolls.

From there, the weird critters blew up, making their way from small, independent toy-stores into the hands of celebrities. Horvath says that although he could probably sell the Uglydolls at a huge store like Walmart, he would rather see his creation grace the shelves of smaller retailers. But, he adds, "I have nothing against big companies. I just like to shop in mom-and-pop stores. I remember when I was 8 years old, I went to Forbidden Planet, an independent comic book store in New York. I stared into that store window as a boy, amazed by everything in there. For me, it was a huge thrill to be able to see my dolls, years later, sitting in that same window." Kim and Horvath are now married, and live in Manhattan Beach with their two-year-old daughter.

Ugly Dolls Are A Labor Of Love [LA Times]

Thirty six-month-old children were shown a pink doll and a blue truck. With new eye tracking technology, scientists found that while boys and girls both looked at the doll more than at the truck, girls looked at the doll more than boys did, whereas boys looked at the truck more than girls. According to Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily,

The researchers say babies this young don't have the motor skills to actually play with these toys, so the result must be due to different visual preferences in boys and girls. Arguably, babies at this age don't have any opinion about gender roles and don't even particularly distinguish between genders, so social influences must not be responsible for this difference.

Munger, however, is skeptical. He writes,

Personally, I'm not so sure I'm convinced by the researchers' logic. Little girls are dressed in pink and boys are dressed in blue from a very young age. Girls are given dolls and boys are given trucks, so whether the babies are conscious of gender roles or are able to physically interact with these toys, they have been exposed to them more or less based on their gender.

Eric Berger of SciGuy adds, "I think the study might have been more persuasive if the dolls and trucks would have been the same color." Since plenty of people still think it's important to paint a baby girl's room pink and a boy's room blue, I agree that color differences may have biased the results. I also agree with Munger that "it's intriguing to learn that at an average age of 6 months, girls already appear to be more interested in dolls and less interested in trucks than boys are" — although given that both genders looked at the doll more, the difference seems pretty small.

However, I'd also like to point out that the doll/truck dichotomy is sort of an artificial one. Kids are surprisingly flexible, and while it's true that some only like tutus and tiaras and others are single-minded MicroMachine addicts, most kids (and most toys) fall somewhere in between. My brother and I jointly played with the following: Legos, face paint, a Playmobil castle complete with an iron maiden, a set of cardboard bricks we used for our version of "The Cask of Amontillado," Batman and dinosaur action figures (who costarred in our short film, Mr. Freeze and the Velociraptor Rumble in Van Nuys), various wigs, and a stuffed flamingo named Rasputin. As interesting as it is to study gender differences in the way kids play, and to find the source of these differences, we should remember that lots of play — like lots of human behavior in general — is ungendered, and that boys and girls have a lot more in common than an essentialist interpretation of the doll vs. truck study might suggest.

Babies As Young As Six Months Prefer Different Toys Based On Sex [ScienceBlogs]
Even At Six Months Girls Want Dolls, Not Trucks [SciGuy]

See, the next Pixar project — after TS3 and Newt — is The Bear And The Bow — the company's first flick about a girl. Guess what? She's a princess. (While The Cowgirl character in Toy Story was a hit, she's definitely not the "star" of the franchise.)

Holmes continues:

I have nothing against princesses. I have nothing against movies with princesses. But don't the Disney princesses pretty much have us covered? If we had to wait for your thirteenth movie for you to make one with a girl at the center, couldn't you have chosen something — something — for her to be that could compete with plucky robots and adventurous space toys?

Agreed. As a child I loved fairy tales, but also loved stories about girls who went somewhere: Dorothy to Oz; Alice to Wonderland; Eloise to Paris and Moscow. I wanted to be lots of things — photographer; archaeologist, filmmaker; gymnast; microbiologist — never princess. Isn't it funny how Coraline could do well at the box office without a castle, pink gown or tiara? (And now Coraline: The Musical is being staged.)

We already know that Disney is pretty committed to the Princess franchise. A blogger at Packaging Girlhood writes of The Princess And The Frog:

Another Disney princess movie. Yawn. Hard to get too excited because we know when it comes to gender, Disney has the imagination of a toadstool… We already know Disney is hopeless, but maybe Pixar can give us what we want. While we wait - and it could be a very, very long wait — we'll take a reader's advice on the NPR site and go back to the best in good old 2-D animation: Studio Ghibli's haunting, imaginative, original films like Howl's Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro, and Spirited Away. All female driven with nary a princess in sight."

Dreamworks, the studio known for making jabs at Disney in flicks like Shrek, usually relies on male leads (Bee Movie, Kung Fu Panda) but throws female characters into the mix in ensemble casts (Madagascar, Monsters Vs. Aliens.)

Why is it that most animated films fail to present strong female characters? In December, the BBC presented a list of "subversive animated female heroines" which included Betty Boop (?!). Wonder Woman has been done, and she can't be expected to carry female-driven animated flicks all by herself.

Maybe the animators looking for good stories should turn to sci-fi? This list of heroines from science fiction includes great characters like Ripley from Alien; Buffy from Buffy The Vampire Slayer (is that sci-fi?); Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica; Dana Scully from The X-Files; Sarah Connor from Terminator and, okay, one princess — Leia, from Star Wars. All make decent Halloween costumes, and none of them are waiting for their prince to come.

Dear Pixar, From All The Girls With Band-Aids On Their Knees [NPR]
Rate-a-Trailer: Toy Story 3 Enters Rebuilding Phase [E!]
Disney's First Black Princess [Packing Girlhood]
'Sexy' Sigourney Weaver Is First Lady Of Sci-Fi [Independent]
Better the Mother You Know Than the Other One [NY Times]
Musical "Coraline" Even Stranger Than The Book [Hollywood Reporter]
Earlier: Women And Cartoons: Beyond Breast Size

The Swedish org "Trade Ethical Council against Sexism in Advertising" (ERK) (because the actual Swedish words are presumably different), decries the Lego photo spreads thusly:

As the post recounts, the Danish company started out in the 70s as deliberately gender-neutral and high-mindedly concerned with cognitive development. When the stridently gender-specific toy market of the 80s came around, Lego started a girly pastel line called "Paradisa." In this regard, Feministe's Holly points out, they were right on trend with ideas about gender differences and similarities, which waxed and waned throughout the 80s and 90s.

One interesting thing I noticed during my tenure in the land of plastic bricks — when someone’s watching them, peers or adults, kids are much more likely to adhere to stereotypical divisions of play, and gravitate away from what’s clearly labeled as “for the other gender.” When we looked at statistics from the Lego website, however, where kids of a certain age range were often playing by themselves in front of a computer, we often found that the gender division of who was playing little online web games was much more gender-neutral. In other words, girls on the Lego website were playing the sports and (Lego-sanctioned, relatively non-violent) combat oriented games. This wasn’t a huge surprise, since the conventional wisdom was that of course there were some girls who liked “boy stuff,” and nobody bothered to market to them separately. More surprisingly, there were plenty of boys who also played the princess dress-up games. I always though that spoke volumes about the role of social observation in many kids’ adherence to gender rules.

What's funny about the whole controversy is that, were there ever a toy that seemed like it didn't require the bells and whistles of boy/girl marketing, it would be Lego. At the end of the day, after all, it's always blocks. Its limitless creative potential and essential plainness is probably what devotees love and what I, as a child, found unspeakably dull. The case raises several questions, none of them new: is this sort of "gendering" inherently offensive; is it based on anything but societal construct (as Holly seems to suggest; having been a wholly stereotypical small child myself, I will self-recuse); are the kids who find Lego intriguing already a subset; and, is this kind of marketing even effective? Lego's an interesting test case because the toy is itself so very neutral, in its appeal and presentation, that the sex-specific trappings are wholly superficial and, as such, make for an interesting control of sorts. (It's also why, ironically, it can be such a good medium for weirdness.) That "cognitive development" has become less a touchstone for marketers than its more commercial corollaries is probably a comment in itself — although more on the buying public than a company that, at the end of the day, has always just wanted to shill plastic blocks.

Gasp! Kids’ Toys Are… Gendered? [Feministe]
JC de Castelbajac's Lego Fashion Show [Shopping Blog]
Cultural Issues On Color & Sex [Colour Lovers]

[Image via JeongMee Yoon's Pink & Blue Project]

Stats: The Cone is a British sex toy that, as its website puts it, is made of "soft, squidgy plastic." (Squidgy is such a fake British word.) There is a 3000 RPM motor within, and there are 16 different built-in programs of vibration. The two controls on the device help you manage the speed, intensity and pulsing of those programs. It requires 3 C batteries. The price, as I stated above, is $130.

Pros: You're supposed to sit on this thing, inserting the tip either into your vagina or your butt hole. I don't do the butt thing when I'm just playing around alone, so I sat on it with my vadge. That lasted for maybe a minute. I was too scared to release all my weight onto that thing, because it gets rather wide at the end (7" at the base), so I was sort of holding myself up with my thighs. I don't really work out or anything, so after holding that yoga-esque pose for 60 seconds my legs turned into jelly. So instead, I sat down, placed the cone on my bed, and wedged it between my legs, and pressed it up against my crotch, Western saddle-style. I have to say that the motor was totally on par with the kind of strength I need to be worked properly. And the pulsing was really awesome. I really was partial to program 14, that had heavy, altered pulsing, with some steady vibe thrown in every few seconds for good measure. Also, it's super-duper quiet.

Cons: One of my friends at our brother site Gizmodo told me that when the editors over there review gadgets, one of the ways they rate it is by trying to use the item without reading directions, because nothing should be that difficult to use that you would need written instructions. I feel like that line of thinking particularly applies to sex toys, because when you're ready to get off, the last thing you want to do is sit down and try to have to use your brain. The Cone fails on this front. I didn't understand how to open it, and even though there are two buttons, I couldn't figure out the off and on situation. Also, I could only come while using this thing if I was sitting upright, and personally, I like to lay down and relax when I'm playing with myself.

Verdict: Great motor, good vibes, bad design. If they could make this thing as a hand-held, or even as something a little more conducive to other positions, it would be much more on point.

Stats: The Mary Mermaid is a dildo in the shape of a mermaid (and also, disturbingly, the virgin Mary), with a fin that curves up for clit stimulation. It's part of manufacturer Fun Factory's "Twist 'n' Shake" line of toys, and has separate controls to adjust vibration of the fin and rotation of the dildo. It's 9.25" in total size, with 4.5" of "insertable" length. It takes 4 AA batteries, and costs $73.95. It's a little bit noisy when you have it going at full blast, but nothing out of the ordinary. Check out the way it moves and sounds here (don't worry, this is just a demonstration and my vagina does not make an appearance):

Pros: This thing looks and moves strangely and its freakishness alone kinda turned me on. Having separate controls for rotation and vibration (each of which can be completely shut off) is a plus. The sound of the mechanism isn't too loud or annoying.

Cons: I warmed up with some fin vibe before plunging the dildo in. I also put on some Xtube porn to help me along. I inserted the top of the dildo in after a few minutes, but it (or my vagina) was being stubborn and wouldn't really go in, even though I was plenty wet. I turned up the rotation to see if it could sort of twist its way in there. I could only get the bulbous head part in though. While the top portion was still inside me, I let go of the Mermaid and looked down to see what was going on. The bottom half was seriously flopping around like a fish out of water. I couldn't help but think of that Faith No More video. I couldn't get off.

Verdict: Meh. It's pretty much just The Rabbit, repackaged as a mythical creature.

Mary Mermaid [VibeReview]

Earlier: The NEA: Is This "Luxury" Vibrator Worth It?

Pros: The NEA is a cool looking little gadget (and I mean little— it's only about 3" in length). It almost looks like a miniature computer mouse, and it has pretty LCD lights on the two buttons that control the speed. (It doesn't require batteries, as it comes with a charger.) The purr on the vibe is super-quiet and could probably be used without roommates being any the wiser.

Cons: I could not get off with this fucking thing. At. All. The vibe is way too weak. Plus, fast and steady vibration with no variation tends to just numb my area instead of arousing it, leading me to just become frustrated.

Verdict: At $89 (almost twice the price of the incomparable Magic Wand), you'd be better off using your hands.

NEA [LELO]

Earlier: 5 Household Items That Will Help You 'Get Off' Easy
Glove Affair: Testing The Fukuoku Five Finger Vibrator
Sexual Chocolate: Testing The Clone-A-Willy Kit

(Click to enlarge)