In fairness to Hasbro, it's a potato.

In a desperate bid to stay one step ahead of cancel culture, Hasbro, maker of the iconic "Mr. Potato Head," has thrown up its hands and decided Mr. Potato Head could be any gender he, or she, or xi, so desired.

It's not clear if trans-Potato Head will be allowed to compete in the Tuber Olympics as a Mrs., though.

This strikes me as a solution looking for a problem. As Kimberly Boyd, an SVP and GM at Hasbro who works on the Potato Head brand noted,

"The sweet spot for the toy is two to three years old."

Keep that in mind as she explains the thinking.

Kids like dressing up the toy, then playing out scenarios from their life. This often takes the form of creating little potato families, because they're learning what it means to be in a family.

Kids want to be able to represent their own experiences. The way the brand currently exists—with the "Mr." and "Mrs."—is limiting when it comes to both gender identity and family structure.

This is what happens when adults stop thinking about the children and start thinking about themselves.

Have you ever seen a toddler play with Mr. Potato Head parts? You'd be lucky if they had their sensory organs represented, never mind their "gender identity."

It gets better when FastCompany writer Elizabeth Segran weighs in.

This means the toys don't impose a fixed notion of gender identity or expression, freeing kids to do whatever feels most natural to them: A girl potato might want to wear pants and a boy potato might wear earrings.

And a girl potato might have one ear on top of her head and three noses.

Not sure what gender identity that is. Maybe hearing-curious?

Hasbro will also sell boxed sets that don't present a normative family structure. This approach is clever because it allows kids to project their own ideas about gender, sexuality, and family onto the toy,...

It "allows kids to project their own ideas about gender, sexuality, and family onto the toy."

The toy always allowed that, assuming a three-year-old even knew what sexuality is. It's more likely she'll project her own ideas about how many arms a potato should have.

She finishes that sentence with:

...without necessarily offending parents that have more conservative notions about family.

The old end run around the stupid parents.

Parents. What do they know about children!

Particularly their own.

By the way, want to know what Elizabeth Segran's Ph.D is in? Of course you do.

She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in the field of South and Southeast Asian Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality.

She goes on.

At my daughter's school, for instance, kids appear to be constantly trying to make sense of how the heteronormative narratives around them square with their everyday reality, where some families have two moms or two dads, and others have a single parent.

No, they aren't. They're constantly trying to make sense of how buttons work and whether or not boogers are a food group.

When my daughter plays dress-up in class, she sometimes marries a boy and sometimes marries a girl; it feels strange that not all toys give her this freedom.

But soon, she'll be able to plan the Potato Head wedding of her dreams. And she'll get to decide exactly what that couple looks like.

Again, a solution in search of a problem. This was always true. It's a potato with parts, once you get a couple kits, the parts end up all jumbled together and the kids make fantastical creatures out of them without needing to consider what an adult with a designated emphasis in gender and sexuality thinks of heteronormative narratives.

Personally, Mr. Potato Head was ruined for me a long time ago.

Safety Issues

Mr. Potato Head's small pieces of plastic with sharp pins on them were considered unsafe for small children. At the same time, parents complained that they kept finding moldy potatoes under their kids' beds. In 1964, Hasbro began making hard plastic bodies, and eventually larger body and part sizes for its plastic potato.

First, the earlier you learn that impaling yourself with sharp pins is a bad idea, the better.

Second, finding moldy potatoes under your bed was a rite of passage.

Besides, once you eliminate the real potato, you're limited to the pre-drilled heteronormative holes they provide with the plastic version thus stifling your imagination and making it all the more difficult to properly represent a Mx. Agender Variant.

Bring back the potato, I say and worry less about titles and genders and other things young children don't care about. Heck, I'm an adult, and I barely care about it.

Update: "What we clearly said earlier is not what we said. You must have misheard."