The Store
The store that I performed my research on was Big Lots. It has a boy and girl’s aisle as well as a baby aisle that has a very small section of semi-neutral toys.

In the girls aisle I found dress-up (Disney princess, monster high and some tutu’s, as well as some generic dress up items), kitchen (pots, pans, aprons and cooking items), baby dolls, and Barbie dolls.

All of the packaging for the girls’ toys had very little red, with some white, and yellow, as well as different shades of blue and green but nothing within the dark scale of these colors. Some had black but very little. The majority of the colors were found to be different shades of purple, and pink. All the colors seemed to be themed towards fun and bright. The girls’ toys could all be categorized as either dress-up, playing kitchen or playing with pretend make-up. There were baby dolls that came with bottles and “fresh” diapers for changing. All the toys seemed to be stereotypical for a girl to learn what to do when she grew-up i.e. cooking, cleaning and taking care of a baby/children.
Upon examining the isle containing “boys’ toys”, I encountered super heroes, building toys, play guns from pistol to long barrel riffles, different kinds of vehicles from sports cars to construction working trucks, as well as transformers and motorcycles.
Career themed toys could also be found ranging from muscle men and law enforcement to firefighters. All of the packaging for the boy’s toys had some white, yellow and orange as well as green and brown but the main colors were red, blue and black. All the colors were dark and really bold. I noted that none of the packaging contained different shade variations but rather solid colors. All the boys’ toys seemed to carry a common theme and could be categorized as being for fighting (for good or for evil), racing, learning how to build things or even