There have been some terrific posts lately on multicultural toys, and I wanted to draw your attention to a few of them.
Dawn Friedman of the Anti-Racist Parent explains why having a multicultural doll ghetto is not enough.
Over at BlogHer, Super Jive asked, Modern Dolls: Slut-Trainers or Empowerment Tools? Is There a Middle Ground?
Also at BlogHer, [...]

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My husband is a comic book collector and increasingly our home is being taken over by action figures. But like most comic book characters, these action figures are white, white, and, um, white. I’d like my son to recognize diversity in superheroes, so I went looking for some African American and Black superheroes. [...]

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I’m white. My nearly two-year-old son is white. My husband is white. So is just about everyone in my extended family. Why should I care about multicultural toys?
Because I’ve always been uncomfortable with homogeneity, and I want my son to feel the same way. Even as young children, [...]

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Via Strollerderby: Check out these fabulous handmade ethnic dolls from Warm Biscuit:

Links: doll above, doll below. Each costs $65.

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This post, and yesterday’s on dolls with disabilities, were inspired by Merlene Davis’s column There’s more to diversity than color, in which she notes
But what about children with Down syndrome? What about children who can’t walk or are blind?
Why can’t they have dolls that reflect their image?
Well, truth be known, they can.
With just a few [...]

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Check out these accessories for dolls with disabilities. I especially like the tiny hearing aids and the guide dog. They’re available from Lakeshore Learning:

Lakeshore also offers this set of six differently abled figures, each about 5.5 inches tall, for $19.95:

Also from Lakeshore: Multicultural dolls dressed for school.

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There’s been a lot of hubbub in the news lately–thanks to the movie based on the Bratz dolls–about the differences between Barbie and Bratz, and how the Bratz dolls are finally unsettling Barbie from her lofty perch in the toy world. (The Mirror reports that Bratz dolls are outselling Barbie 2 to 1.)
As article [...]

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Clem Richardson of the New York Daily News shares the story of a program in Harlem that teaches kids to make their own multicultural dolls. About toymaker Kara Lesondak, Richardson writes,
[S]he taught the mostly African-American and Hispanic students to make and market dolls that looked like them.”Kara created a very unique doll-making program [...]

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Some interesting and relevant links from around the web regarding ethnic dolls, multicultural toys, multicultural superheroes, ethical toys, and more:
From The Toronto Star, The Trouble with Ethical Toys. An excerpt:
assistant professor Gavin Fridell, who specializes in fair-trade issues, doubts fair trade toys will ever have much of a market presence, since ensuring that all [...]

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Found on Etsy.com
These two adorable ethnic dolls are available in germandolls’ Etsy shop:

If you purchase these ethnic dolls, please let the artist know you saw them on MulticulturalToyBox.com! Thanks!

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