"Fight Me Jimmy!"

The Raggirls (well, the older two), have discovered Webkinz. I had heard they were evil, and held off as long as I could, but moms I respect started saying it was OK, so we eventually caved in.

Medium Raggirl has a kangaroo that she named "Jimmy." The main effect of this has been my repeatedly picking up the kangaroo and yelling "Fight Me Jimmy!" in my worst fake-Irish accent every chance I get. The Raggirls think I'm weird, anyway, so I don't even ask me to explain the Star Trek reference.

Until last week, MR was exploring the "clubhouses" area of Webkinz World, and saw that two of the options were "Boys Only" and "Girls Only" clubhouses. She asked me which one was appropriate for her, since MR's a girl, but Jimmy is a boy. After looking at it for a while, it appears that it never occurred to the Webkinz World people that a child would have an other-gender Webkinz. The assumption was that everyone would be like Eldest Raggirl (a very "girly" girl with a overly feminine Webkinz pony named "Mascara"), or, I guess, boys with boy Dragons named "Butch.")

I'm not saying that a kid's site needs a room for transgendered Webkinz or anything, but it seems odd to assume that no one would ever decide to assign their toy the other gender.