Crisis Averted: Hasbro is Not, Repeat NOT, Dropping the 'Mr.' from Mr. Potato Head to Make Him Gender Neutral
AP - Mr. Potato Head is no longer a mister.
Hasbro, the company that’s made the potato-shaped plastic toy for nearly 70 years, is giving the spud a gender neutral new name: Potato Head. The change will appear on boxes this year.
Many toymakers have been updating their classic brands in recent years, hoping to relate to today’s kids and reflect more modern families.
“It’s a potato,” said Ali Mierzejewski, editor in chief at toy review site The Toy Insider. “But kids like to see themselves in the toys they are playing with.” …
As part of the rebranding, Hasbro will release a new Potato Head playset this fall that will let kids create their own type of families, including two moms or two dads.
The Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head characters will live on in some form, Hasbro said, but didn’t provide details. …
Dropping the “Mr.” from its name could encourage other companies to stop assigning genders to its toys, a trend that has already been happening, said Mierzejewski. Barbie maker Mattel released a gender-neutral doll line in 2019.
Quote: "Kids like to see themselves in the toys they are playing with.” Fair enough. Granted, Mr. Potato Head is a plastic, anthropomorphic, root of the starchy nightshade planty Solanum tuberosum with holes to fit eyes, hats, ears and ridiculously expressive mouths. But if your kids see themself in that, more power to them.
Personally I think it's a stretch to say kids would rather play with a toy that they thinks reflects who they are. But what do I know? I'm not the EIC of The Toy Insider. I'm just a guy was a kid and raised two of them. I think the last thing I wanted to play with was just an accurate representation of me. And I don't think my kids saw themselves as talking sea sponge fry cook, or a speechless droid or a any of the million Hot Wheels they used to leave for me to step on. Nor do I ever recall feeling that my Mr. Potato was a role model. When I was little, he didn't define me. He was a just a silly brown plastic tuber with a talent for disguises who kept me entertained in the pre-video game era.
But to repeat, what do I know? I'm sure there's been a small but vocal group of families who couldn't look past the cisgender Potato Head and his duplicitous role perpetuating the patriarchy. I'm sure there are kids who were upset by the Potato Heads being assigned gender roles and having pronouns forced upon them. And who turned to their parents and said, "I can't play with these brown orbs without feeling that I'm duplicitous in perpetuating these non-fluid stereotypes. Please give me a less specific toy to play with so as to break the cycle of oppression."
And to those families, I wish you nothing but the very best. Sincerely. The only thing goofier than worrying about whether a plastic potato is going to have an adverse affect on child development because of the honorific in front of his name is worrying about the fact someone worried about it. If you haven't figured out by now that everything is Bizarro World by now, you just haven't been paying attention. Every day there's another development in societal evolution that I would never have been able to explain to my parents, God rest their souls. You can truly believe that something like this is going to make a difference and get us one step closer to turning the world into a utopia, or you can truly believe that this puts us inexorably on the path to hell. Both ideas are equally silly.
Personally, I'm just here to watch the crazy parade roll by. And there's no better place than Twitter to check the "whataboutism" and both sides accusing the other of worrying about this when we should be worrying about [fill in the blank]. But I'm just going to be enjoying the comedy. This truly is part of Life's Rich Pageant.
So thank you, Mr. Potato Head. You saved our lives. We are eternally grateful.
UPDATE: Just as I was about to post this, Hasbro saved the day:
Thank goodness cooler potato heads have prevailed. We could've lived without this scare. And all the puns in the Hasbro Tweet. This was the Culture War equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But like now, like then, disaster was averted. Stand down everyone. We dodged this bullet for now. We can all go home and wait for the next round of cultural politics hysteria.