Continue Reading Below Advertisement

In the 1980s, Nielsen ratings (the system that ad agencies use to learn how many TVs are watching a given show) introduced a system allowing Nielsen Families to say which people in the house were watching TV -- meaning that, for the first time, ad companies knew what kids were watching on TV and when. Around that same time, the FCC also abolished rules saying that TV stations had to have a minimum amount of educational programming, meaning that TV stations could create as much entertainment content as they wanted (though the Children's Television Act of 1990 created some new requirements in that area). By the end of the decade, Disney revolutionized the game by segmenting their demos into boys and girls with the creation of their Disney Princess license after the release of The Little Mermaid. Since then, the Disney Princess brand has become the No. 2 licensed property in the U.S. and Canada.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

I've talked before about how most gender stereotypes are recent inventions, specifically the pink-blue dichotomy (in fact, pink used to be considered a manly color). But it's even weirder than that, because for a while we were dividing toys based on eye-color: One scientist wrote, "Through the 1920s and '30s ... the pattern was blue for blue-eyed children and pink for brown-eyed children. There were lots and lots of little brown-eyed boys who got pink presents for their birthday." Companies love making up rules about how different we all are, because that is a great trick for getting us to part with our money.

Digital Vision./Digital Vision/Getty Images

"Can you guys stop integrating so well? It's making it really hard for us to sell you shit."

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

My point here is that the people defending the boy-girl toy division are suckers. They've been played by a massive, multi-billion-dollar marketing campaign explicitly and overtly designed to brainwash you into becoming the type of person who buys more of that company's shit. Your choices, your beliefs, and every facet of your identity down to the supposedly immutable aspects of your gender are just cogs in a massive machine that was built to suck as much life out of you as possible while still keeping you more or less alive, if not totally conscious.

Until you get too old to buy toys; then you're allowed to die however you want. So at least there's that to look forward to.

JF Sargent is an editor and columnist for Cracked who can be reached on Twitter and Facebook.

For more from Sarge, check out 5 Ways To Relax That Secretly Just Stress You Out and 5 Insane Lies You Probably Believe About American Families.

Are you on reddit? Check it: We are too! Click on over to our best of Cracked subreddit.