Instead all six dolls – available in a variety of different skin tones, it goes without saying – have the straight-up-and-down figures and full faces of my seven-year-old daughter, with a long-haired wig 'cap' that fits easily over the short-haired style the doll comes with.
None of the 12 "wardrobe options" that come with every doll are either pink and sparkly or camouflage-tastic – and are all exactly the kind of styles and patterns my daughter would currently lunge at in H&M Kids.
There is no mention of gender anywhere on the packaging – no mention of accepted pronouns either. And I'm immediately convinced that my daughter, along with every 5-8 year-old child the range is aimed at, would naturally pick one up and play with it.
Taken at face value, without the mental gender clutter we've been forced to accrue over the past few years, I can't imagine any parent would have a problem with Creatable World.
As sexualised as Lego – interestingly now back as one of the most popular toys on the shelves – Creatable World dolls reflect only the pure, uncomplicated and yes, agenda-free, state of childhood itself. And that, for any parent who has fought the pink vs blue toyshop battle for years – trying in vain to steer the girls away from Katie Price-featured Bratz dolls and go-go-dancer dressed LOLs – simply comes as a relief.
The agenda may be invisible to a child's naked eye, but it's there in the online marketing material and the language used by everyone involved in Creatable World's conception.
The number of times the words "inclusive" and "diverse" are mentioned in each and every interview – with the notions of "stereotypes" and "labels" repeatedly and ferociously rejected – reminds one that Mattel still sees a need for Barbie reparations. But Monica Dreger, vice president of global consumer insights at Mattel, insists that what prompted the dolls' creation was actually the company's realisation "that kids are calling the shots now…. They're at the forefront of any social movement happening within the world. And this one has to do with inclusivity."
Over the months of focus group-testing that took Dreger and her team across the US, "from more conservative to more liberal communities and everything in between – where we talked to transgender kids and gender-fluid kids and binary kids, only to discover that they were all kind of saying the same thing: 'we're all in the middle'" – they noticed that the concept inspired far more hesitancy than the doll itself. And much of that, Dreger admits, was to do with gender becoming a trigger word.
"Two or three years ago it wasn't, but now it has political and social connotations and, because of that, a lot of parents felt that they had to take a stand. I think they were picturing the worst possible example." I certainly was. "Only, like you, when they saw the doll, they got that it was actually to do with self-expression – and that's all."
Megan Perryman, who campaigns for Let Toys Be Toys, a voluntary group challenging gender stereotypes for children in the toy world, believes Creatable World is a move in the right direction.
"We're not involved in the broader gender conversation," she points out. "Our aim is to get rid of those labels, and allow children to feel they can play the way they want to. Kids don't like adults being prescriptive – they want to tell their own stories. And we also know for certain that toys stimulate the brain in different ways, so the bigger the range of toys children can play with, the more they will develop in a well-rounded way."
Isn't there a reality check though, I ask Dreger, in terms of natural inclinations?
We could have the nature/nurture debate until the end of time but, as a mother, I know that despite all efforts to keep my daughter away from everything pink and princessy, she was naturally drawn to those things – while my nephew was fascinated by diggers before he could talk.
"Well that was what we saw from our research too," she admits. "And is that because we've trained them to think that way? I don't know."
She's honest about how likely boys who have never expressed an interest in dolls are to pick up a Creatable World doll.
"And I don't think that was the aim of creating the range, but those who couldn't find an offering in toy stores before might well do now," she says.
Perryman echoes that hope – and believes that with both Hasbro and now Mattel no longer explicitly marketing some of their lines to girls or boys, the quiet rise of gender-neutral toys will start to get louder.
In the three years Let Toys Be Toys have been active, they've succeeded in getting most of the big UK toy shops to ditch signs saying "boys' toys" and "girls' toys," and is now working on getting manufacturers to be more careful about the subtle but pernicious messages used in marketing.
"Because it's almost as though girls are being pitted against boys, when even in adulthood what we need to see more of is the breaking down of those barriers; collaboration between the sexes – not seeing each other as the enemy."
Is the general trend against sexist marketing helping? "Definitely," says Perryman. "We've seen a 70 per cent reduction in toys exclusively branded for either girls or boys and a whole host of publishers have stopped labelling books in the same way. I honestly think it's seen as quite old fashioned to do that now. And the bottom line is that the differences between girls and boys are not as huge as people would have us think."
That much I do believe. And although I also believe that gender-neutrality is a 2019 adult construct, the promotion of genderless-play and paring down of sexualised dolls can only be a good thing in a world that will get cluttered, complex and confusing enough, all too quickly.
