The Ministry of Consumer Affairs pursues a social and institutional commitment for equality. It aims to ensure that commercial communication, in this case to under-aged children, conveys an egalitarian, plural and non-stereotypical image.

To achieve this objective, the Ministry wanted to develop a campaign that would make the entire Spanish population - parents, children and the toy industry - reflect on the discriminatory roles perpetuated by toys, at the time when toys are most talked about and when most toys are sold, at Christmas.

In Spain, children are educated around the values of equality, however, people do not realize that they can perpetuate sexist stereotypes by giving a specific type of toys to their children. Prioritizing a pink world of care and beauty for girls (68.2% of advertisements targeting girls include these stereotypes) and a world of heroes, action and the colour blue for boys (71% of advertisements aimed at boys include these stereotypes).

That’s why the Ministry of Consumer Affairs wanted to develop a campaign to raise awareness about the impact that toys have on children’s development. A project with a great objective: to open a social debate about gender stereotypes on toys and its advertising.

To make families and toymakers think about this problem, on 12th December toys called a #ToyStrike. Children and parents stopped playing for one hour and instead shared on social media a photo of their toys "on strike" using our digital strike kit and the hashtag #TOYSTRIKE.

The campaign managed to attract the attention of the media and raise public awareness by using a resource never before promoted by a public administration in Spain: a strike.

This caught the attention of Spanish media outlets, opening a debate around gender stereotypes perpetuated by toys and raising public awareness of this problem.

Everybody knows the problem wasn’t about giving a doll to a girl or a soccer ball to a boy. The real issue is about continuously giving the same type of toy to the same gender. These stereotypes will influence the future of the children, and because of that, in Spain, 84% of nursing students are women, and 88% of police officers are men.

The objective was clear. We needed to generate a social debate that would have enough resonance to become one of the main topics of conversation at Christmas, the time of year when most toys are sold.

The campaign was launched on December 9th through an official video statement posted on all the Ministry's social networks. Toys claimed their right to play with all children and called for all Spanish children and families to join the movement with their toys through a digital strike on the 12th of the month.

The seed was already planted, we just needed Spaniards to accept the message and join our protest. For those who wanted to participate we created a protest kit with digital banners, GIFs and stickers filled with our slogans so that children could join the protest with their toys from home. Social networks flooded with images of toys on "strike” using our hashtag.

This action was carefully timed by the Ministry to coincide with the highest sales period of toys.

The success of this campaign was not only measured with data, but also with facts.

Since its launch the country's media have celebrated the campaign, occupying 14 hours of debate on TV & radio, generating more than 1,300 TV appearances, 3 billion impressions and a PR value of €56.9M in earned media.

430,000 people joined the digital strike and the campaign hashtag #ToyStrike (#HuelgaDeJuguetes), the debate became so big on social networks that the conversation about sexism in toys became a trending topic for 3 consecutive days in Twitter.

But our greatest pride is that #ToyStrike helped all the agents involved in toy communication to reach an agreement to eradicate sexism from their communications. On 27th April, an agreement was signed between the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, the Spanish Association of Toy Manufacturers (AEFJ) and the Spanish Advertising Regulation Agency (Autocontrol) to co-regulate non-sexist toy advertising campaigns for next Christmas.