New Fisher-Price® Little People® Animalville™ sets teach kids about community helpers

June 23, 12:26 PMChicago Children's Toys ExaminerRenée Carver

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Fisher-Price® is preparing to sell a new line of Little People® toys exclusively through Target – Animalville™ figures and sets that will teach children about community helpers and their jobs.

Backstory of the Animalville Animals

According to the Fisher-Price Animalville Web site, the citizens of Animalville are the inventions of the imaginations of the Little People® friends. When Eddie, Sonya Lee, and the rest of the Little People characters get together, apparently they make up stories about anthropomorphic animals that hold important community jobs.

By playing with toys from the Animalville line, then, children get practice with imaginative play while also learning about and role-playing the occupations different people (or animals) take to keep a community running.

Meet the Animalville Animals

Visitors to the Animalville Web site can view a video that introduces some of the Animalville community helpers and read profiles that describe the name, job, and characteristics of each of the 15 new animal figures.

The Animalville products range from the $30 Little People® Animalville Town Center (a playset that combines several community businesses) to $20 school and airport playsets to $10 figure and vehicle sets to $6 figure and accessory sets.

Animalville products – first impressions

So far, the Fisher-Price Animalville citizens call to mind the late 1970s to mid-1980s LEGO® Fabuland line of sets that combined to build a cute LEGO® city populated by animals who held jobs like mayor, gas station attendant, and teacher. They also share some DNA with Richard Scarry's Busytown characters and the Sweet Pickles books.

The animal characters have clever punny names that will amuse adults even if children do not understand them at first (or ever), such as Chef Penny Pasta™ (a multi-tasking octopus chef) and Eileen Down™ (a giraffe crossing guard). The line covers a wide range of community occupations – from fire fighter and police officer to image consultant and ice cream server – and children of all races will be able to relate to the animals.

Gender stereotyping in Animalville

One drawback to the Animalville line is that for the most part, the female characters are pigeon-holed in stereotypically female jobs and/or presented as assistants to male figures who hold the alpha jobs. Rita Letta™ the mail carrier and (arguably) Eileen Down the crossing guard hold jobs that could just as easily be thought of as male positions. Beyond them, however, the line offers up only such cliché female jobs as cook (a fancy "chef" at least), teacher ("Miss" not "Ms"), ice cream server (more food prep), and nurse and image consultant who each act as assistants to boss male characters – a doctor and a hair dresser. 

The male characters, on the other hand, get to play active roles like mayor, pilot, race car driver, police officer, and fire fighter. Even the child imaginative stand-in character – the "student" – is a boy.

As cute and appealing as this line looks, the gender stereotyping is disappointing and a bit surprising in this day and age.

Purchasing Animalville products

At this point, Fisher-Price intends to offer the Animalville toys exclusively through Target stores. As a way to teach children about the interaction of people in a community and the possible jobs different adults might hold, this line of toys would be a nice addition to any playroom. Perhaps playing with them can inspire kids to assign additional jobs to other playroom figures and explore other employment options for both men and women.