Educational Toy Company Click-A-Brick Applauds Toy Like Me Movement

Co-Founders of educational toy company Click-A-Brick Jason Smith and Georg de Gorostiza applaud the efforts of small toy companies to be more inclusive of children with disabilities as part of the Toy Like Me movement, which was started by mothers seeking more representation of disabilities.

Las Vegas, United States – June 17, 2015 /PressCable/ —

The team at Click-A-Brick say they are pleased to see efforts by some toy companies to be more inclusive of children with disabilities by making more toys that represent them.

The campaign to get more toy companies to create toys that represent children with disabilities — dubbed Toy Like Me — was started by journalist Rebecca Atkinson, herself deaf, and former play consultant for Ragdoll Productions Karen Newell, who has a son with visual impairment, and the deaf writer Melissa Mostyn, who has a daughter with cerebral palsy.

Together, the three women started a Facebook page and Twitter account and started using the hashtag #toylikeme in an effort to raise awareness of the toy industry’s lack of representation of children with disabilities. Aside from American Girl dolls available with hearing aids and no hair or Moxie’s dolls available with no hair, there was basically no other representation of disabilities or dealing with a major illness like cancer in the toy world when the trio started the campaign.

Once the trio started outfitting their own children’s toys with items that represented some form of disability — like their Disney Tinker Bell doll with a custom made cochlear implant — the Toy Like Me campaign took off and has been growing steadily.

Two small toy companies in the United Kingdom that produce dolls, Lottie and Makies, have already agreed to start making more toys that are representative of children with disabilities. However, as Atkinson recently wrote in The Guardian newspaper, no major players in the toy industry have stepped up yet to support the campaign.

Click-A-Brick Co-Founders Jason Smith and Georg de Gorostiza say they are pleased to see smaller companies stepping up to support the Toy Like Me movement.

“We are all for inclusiveness in any aspect of life, and that includes toys,” Smith said. “Every child should have the opportunity to see a toy that they can connect with on a really personal level and every parent wants that for their child. Hopefully, the big toy makers get on board. To be fair, Mattel does produce a hairless Barbie, but they haven’t made it available for consumers to purchase. It’s given out specially to select children’s hospitals. That’s a step in the right direction, but we’d like to see more. No surprise that the small companies are leading the way again.”

Click-A-Brick’s own line of toys does not include representations of humans, Smith says, which makes it difficult to produce toys that would fit into the Toy Like Me movement, but the company fully supports the campaign.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.ClickABrickToys.net

Contact Info:
Name: Rob Swystun
Email: fun@clickabricktoys.net
Organization: Click-A-Brick Toys LLC
Phone: 855-976-3664

Release ID: 84195