GoldieBlox, The Toy That Aims To Get Girls Hooked On Engineering, Is Coming To A Toys ‘R’ Us Near You

Move over, Barbie — there’s a new toy in town now.

GoldieBlox, the San Francisco Bay Area startup that has created an engineering-focused toy aimed specifically at little girls, has inked its first nationwide distribution deal with retailing giant Toys ‘R’ Us. The company’s flagship toy, the story-oriented construction set called “GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine,” is now available at every Toys ‘R’ Us store in the United States for $29.99.

If you have a minute, you should definitely watch the cute video GoldieBlox made to celebrate the Toys ‘R’ Us deal. The feature image above is a screenshot from the video, in which a bunch of rad little girls storm the aisle of the toy store that’s dominated by the pink-colored toys that are typically marketed to them.

Founder and CEO Debra Sterling, the Stanford engineering grad who has said she developed GoldieBlox to give girls today the kind of toy that she wishes she had when she was growing up, tells me that the distribution deal is a huge coup for her company — but there is still a long way to go. “We are now just one tiny box in a sea of pink plastic princesses… we have our work cut out for us,” she said.

The idea behind GoldieBlox is simple: Engineering is clearly a prime field for the jobs of the future, but today some 90 percent of engineering jobs are held by men. Meanwhile, toys like LEGOS have inspired many young people to think like engineers, but those products are typically marketed towards boys. GoldieBlox aims to create toys that appeal to girls and also ignite their interest in building things.

I sat down with Sterling and had some hands-on time with the Spinning Machine toy this past fall, while GoldieBlox was raising funds through its Kickstarter campaign (ultimately, the campaign blew past its own expectations, raising a total of more than $285,000.) Check that out in the video below: