In my ideal parenting world my three children (two boys and a girl) would be colour-blind when it comes to the toys they play with. Any toy, regardless of the colour of the box it comes in, and regardless of the child it is marketed to, would be welcomed as a toy to be played with.
While my husband and I usually agree on how we parent our children, we don't agree on this issue. My husband, while liberal on everything else, is extremely old school when it comes to the toys that boys and girls should play with.
If it comes in a pink box and wears a dress or silver tiara then it is quite obviously a girl's toy. If it comes in a khaki-coloured box, and is essentially a piece of plastic shaped into the form of a weapon of some kind, then it is for boys only.
But this is when his thinking gets a bit clouded - because the boys' toys are fine for girls to play with, but the girls toys are not for boys to play with. So our children can share the Star Wars figures and the Star Wars Lego, but not the dolls, baby bottles and Princess Barbies.
I know, it makes no sense to me either. I grew up with two younger brothers, and our house was always filled with any number of pink and blue coloured toys. The three of us shared them pretty much equally. The dolls were mostly my domain but we still shared the He-Men, ThunderCats and other toys, without regard to who they were initially designed for or the packaging they came in.
This is now being replayed in our household with our young children. When our daughter has friends round to play, they gravitate towards the playhouses, the ponies, and the dolls. But when my daughter is let loose with her brothers, it is the pirates, and the swords and the Jedi that come out.
Our youngest is almost two years old and will sometimes commandeer one of his sister's doll's strollers, pile it high with soft toys and proceed to ram pieces of furniture with it.