How many forums have you been on that had a “million post thread”? I’ve seen quite a few. Inevitably, none of these threads live up to their titles. But what if they did? I’ve just launched www.themillionpostforum.com which has the objective of having a thread which really does get a million posts?

One Forum - One Thread - A Million Posts

Am I crazy? Probably.

The way I look at it. If you had a community of just 2740 people and they each posted once per day - that would be a million posts in under a year.

Why not drop by and post and be a part of history. Or not. But post anyway - who knows?

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Jody Personal Ramblings, Uncategorized discussion, Forum, million, million post thread, million posts

The Easter Bunny, That Well Known Christian Symbol... eh...

The Easter Bunny was certainly a big feature of Easter when I was growing up - but where is the connection with the traditional Christian Easter story? At least with Santa Claus there’s a tenuous connection with Christmas in the form of the legend of St. Nicolas. But the Easter Bunny - what on earth has he to do with Easter?

We run SoftandCuddly.ie and for the past couple of weeks, our cuddly bunnies have been literally hopping out the door and this is what got us thinking about the origins of this great Easter symbol.

So we did a little internet research and our bouncy friend seems to have his origins in Germany and first made an appearance in the 17th century. The first record of edible forms of the character appear in the early 1800s. As to the connection with Easter and Christianity, this is a little less certain and most links are sketchy at best.

The best that can be done is to link the Easter bunny with springtime. Like many traditional Christian holidays, the timing of the Easter celebration may have its origins as a pagan spring celebration. Given that the timing is tied in with the lunar calendar this makes sense. Eggs, rabbits and hares have long been prominent symbols of fertility in many cultures which can explain an association between spring time and rabbits. Further more, the mating antics of hares and rabbits around Easter time make these normally placid creatures a lot more conspicuous in the human eye.

During the spring mating season, many male hare approaches to females are rebuffed, pretty similar to the human experience! However, persistence gives way and the female finally succumbs. To the observer, this whole process can appear as a frantic dance as the male chases the female looking for some action! This is where the phrase “as mad as a March hare” comes from.

So it appears that the best we can do is to attribute the rabbit’s association with Easter down to his status as a fertility symbol and their crazy antics during spring time. Somewhere along the line, some Germans incorporated this into the Easter tradition and some entrepreneurial confectioner made edible ones.

So there you have it. Funny though that he hasn’t been commercialised to the same degree as Santa.

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Jody Did You Know? easter, easter bunny, rabbits, soft toys

Darth Vader's Tie-Fighter

You thought he was dead didn’t you? When you saw Darth Vader’s Tie-Fighter spinning out of control  at the end of Star Wars Episode IV (the first Star Wars movie to be released in 1977) you thought he was a goner right? Well I did anyway!

For me, this has to be one of the iconic moments of movie history. I can close my eyes and see the scene perfectly.  I’ve been reliving the legendary trench run scene this morning on the very brilliant Star Wars Wiki.

The Rebel objective is to fire a proton torpedo through a thermal exhaust port on the northern hemisphere of the Death Star. Gold Squadron Y-Wings and a Squadron of X-Wings have failed, having been picked off by Darth Vader in his unique variant of the Tie-Fighter (TIE Advanced X1). Luke (call sign: Red 5) is leading the third and last trench run along with Red 2 and Red 3 at a distance to his rear - the Rebel’s last chance of destroying the Death Star. Approaching his objective, Darth Vader and two Tie-Fighter wing men pursue the attackers. Red 2 and Red 3 are taken out by Vader.

Luke's torpedoes find the mark

Luke is alone now with Vader in pursuit as he nears his firing position. Vader can’t get in a shot. “The Force is strong with this one” you’ll remember him say. Luke brushes aside his targeting computer causing great concern to the nerve wrecked Rebel command observing from their command vessel.  Vader gets a lock and fires, scoring a direct hit on R2-D2 and knocking him out of action. Luke is getting closer and the Death Star starts firing up its “superlaser”.  Vader gets a lock and starts firing. Just as he does, a volley of fire from above knocks out one of Vader’s wing men. It’s Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon! The second Tie wing man is caught by surprise and is knocked off course, clipping Vader’s wing who then glances off the side of the trench and is sent spinnig out of control into space. Using the force, Luke fires and finds the mark with his proton torpedoes.

A movie moment that will never be surpassed!

The Lego Version of Darth Vader's Tie-Fighter

Being a child of the eighties there are two things that featured above anything else. Star Wars and Lego. I grew up in a pile of Lego bricks was happy to spend the day building, breaking and rebuilding. What I’ll never understand is how Lego didn’t pursue licensing opportunities back then and produce Star Wars toys. Surely they would have made a killing! But the good news is that Lego did eventually see the opportunity second time around and as a grown up child, I now have the opportunity to have my very own Lego version of Darth Vader’s Tie-Fighter.

As a boy, I was also a big fan of Airfix and Revell plastic model kits. I remember spending a lot of time trying to get the glue off my hands! Anyway, it’s also taken Revell 30 years to see the licensing opportunities and you can now, also get Darth Vader’s Tie-Fighter as a plastic model kit. No painting and gluing with this range though, the kits come nicely pre-painted and the pieces snap together.

Man, to be 7 again, when your worst problem was finding that red 1×1 Lego piece at the bottom of the bucket.

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Jody Nostalgia, Retro Toys Darth Vader, Lego, Revell, Star Wars, Tie-Fighter, Trench Run, Vader

A Girl's Toy?

I’ve been doing some internet research on the topic of “Gender Stereotyping” and the role our toy buying choices can play in this. I have an interest in this both as a parent and as the owner of an internet toy shop. How “guilty” am I, or rather, what impact have the toys I have provided my children had in shaping their identity as girls?

Our first daughter is a girly girl and there are no two ways about it. Her closet is at least 60% pink and it’s a rare day you see her in trousers and not a dress or skirt. And this is certainly genetic because my better half rarely wears dresses, skirts or pink for that matter and I certainly don’t! 

As parents, we have always thought of ourselves as open minded and would never refuse a request for any toy, weather or not it is traditionally perceived as being male or female oriented. In fact, our experience with our “all things pink and beautiful” girl has been the opposite. I grew up in a pile of Lego bricks and think it is one of the best toys ever. Our DD just never showed any interest in it no matter how much we bought. In fact, this Christmas she said: “ah dad, you’ll have to stop buying me Lego”!  So, with her, it’s all doll houses, kitchen play things, ponies and dolls. So from our point of view, the only time gender stereo typing has come into our toy buying purchases has been to counter balance our daughter’s tendency to only want stereotypically girly things.

An extreme example of this is when we bought her a Leapfrog Leapster - We’re a bilingual family so we bough her the console and a some games in French in an effort to stimulate her French language development. We bought the console with 2 games. One featured Disney’s Ariel (the little mermaid) and the other featured a little boy character (can’t remember the name). She flatly refused to play the game with the little boy because it was a “boy’s game”. The game still remains un-played to this day.

So we’re perfect, right? Well, apparently not. Here’s something that really caught my eye:

One of the most salient areas in which the effects of gender labeling is evident in children is the prevalence of gender-appropriate toys for children (Basow, 1992). Parental toy choices and child-parent interactions with toys send a clear message to children regarding gender-typed behaviors (Caldera, Huston, O’Brien, 1989). Langolis and Downs (1980) have shown that parents play with their child’s gender-same toys longer, react more positively to gender-same toys, and are more critical of cross-sexed toys. These researchers have also shown that fathers use toys, perhaps unintentionally, to socialize their children differently based on sex and there is evidence that this gender-based socialization process begins as early as the first year of the child’s life (Snow, Jacklin, & Maccobby, 1983). Interestingly, it appears that there may be more stereotyping regarding toys offered to boys. Parents tended to choose masculine and neutral toys more often than feminine toys for their sons but chose neutral toys more than feminine or masculine toys for their daughters (Eisenberg, Wolchik, Hernandez, & Pasternack, 1985).

So while I don’t intentionally try to gender stereotype my children by buying only girl oriented toys, I may, nonetheless, be unintentionally doing the same thing by how I play and interact with them. This is something I never considered and while I don’t see it in myself, I know that if I had boys, I would definitely spend more time playing with them with typically boyish toys - after all, that’s what I know best!

The article also says this:

Miller (1987) has noted that toys viewed as more appropriate for girls were also rated as attractive, creative, nurturing, and manipulable while masculine toys were identified as more competitive, aggressive, constructive, conducive to handling, encouraging sociability, and reality based.

Interestingly, these differences in functionality of gender stereotyped toys correspond to differences noted in the stereotyped feminine and masculine behavioral and personality patterns with stereotypical feminine characteristics described as emotional, gentle, understanding, and creative while masculine traits include aggressive, active, dominant, and competitive (Spence & Helmreich, 1978).

This seems to be suggesting that the toys we typically choose for boys and girls are somehow related to the personality traits which we most often associate with males and females. However, I see it the other way around. We generally choose certain toys for girls and others for boys because they’re different, they play differently and they want different things! We can over-complicate an issue which is really very simple, in my opinion.

For me, observing my daughter and my nephew playing with a wooden toy train set illustrates the difference between boys and girls perfectly. Observing my nephew playing with his wooden train set, he makes the train go around the circuit, puts things in the carriages and generally makes the train do train-like things. However, when my daughter plays with her train set, the locomotive is the school teacher and the carriages are the children. For me, this illustrates a fundamental difference in how both children perceive and interact with the world.

In the end, I believe boys will be boys and girls will be girls!

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Jody Toys and Parenting

New Personalised Name Plaques

We’ve been busy adding new products to our website. We are delighted to announce the latest additions - a superb range of personalised name plaques that will add that personal touch to your baby’s or child’s room. There are a range of styles and sizes suitable for boys and girls. There are also a selection of different sizes to allow for longer names - the Long Red Train (for boys) and  the Pink and White Castle (for girls) both allow for 9 letters. The average child’s name has 5 letters and the small pink crown and small red train both cater for 5 letters. In the middle, the Silver Rocket, Large Crown and Grey Castle, all cater for between 6 and 7 letters.

Fair Trade Policy

These personalised wooden name plaques are made by Lanka Kade who fully subscribe to the fair trade concept. Here is an excerpt from their website:

All our products are handmade by seven family based enterprises with whom Lanka Kade has long term working commitments. New products are designed in the UK for each supplier to utilise their individual knowledge and skills. Our aim is to provide continual employment throughout the year for each supplier, their families and their employees. A representative is employed full time in Sri Lanka to coordinate shipments, liase with the UK on behalf of our suppliers and to arrange prompt payment for all goods supplied to Lanka Kade.

Each business is independent and supplies direct to Lanka Kade. Lanka Kade does not use middlemen, nor does it pay commissions thus enabling the suppliers to receive a fair and full price for their products. Regular contact is maintained with all our suppliers by phone, fax, email and onsite visits throughout the year both direct from UK and weekly by our Sri Lankan co-ordinator. We work closely together to maintain, improve, and update each supplier’s working practice and understanding of fair trade. Lanka Kade is currently assisting three of our suppliers with long term interest free loans used for the development of their business’.

In return, our suppliers are expected to maintain a safe and pleasant working environment, equal opportunities, good rates of pay, prompt payment for both employees and in country suppliers, and a quality product at a fair price.

Children are not involved at any stage of the production of items for Lanka Kade. Lanka Kade (UK) Ltd have been approved by BAFTS (British Association of Fair Trade Shops) since 2001 as a fair trade supplier.

See our full range of personalise wooden name plaques and other personalised gifts here.

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Jody Product Announcements