I also only watched a minute and a half before losing interest, like the other poster.

I once went to a birthday party for one of my nieces. I think she was about five? Her mom said she wanted LEGO stuff. So, I went to the store and carefully picked out a LEGO set that I thought she might like. It had a treehouse and a stream. I did notice that they had a whole section of LEGO marketed to girls, with pink and purple pastel colours. I considered these, but they didn’t fit the kid I was buying for, even though she was a girl.

When it came time to open presents… Mine was the only one that didn’t have a pink and purple box. Two people bought her the same set. Three people bought her a different same set. She looked at all of them, seemed to appreciate all of them, and then set them all aside, opened the one I got her, and asked me to help her assemble it. She didn’t want it done for her, she just wanted adult supervision. I’d go to reach for a couple pieces and try to put them together, and she’d remind me of my role. When she got something wrong a couple times in a row, I nudged her in the right direction, and she got it built in about an hour or so. Time well spent.

As for Nerf, I’ve never seen a little girl or teenage girl not pick up a regular Nerf gun and foam darts because it wasn’t pink or purple. Ditto for any other toy weapons, like plastic melee weapons like what used to be popular around Halloween. I have a couple foam cosplay swords (the main guy’s first two swords from Sword Art Online) and kids who want to play with them don’t lean to one gender or the other. Girls want to play with the swords just as much as boys do. In fact, as someone who’s been around dozens of kids at varying ages, girls will actually be a bit quicker to fight a grown man or older boy (just playing) with bare hands. Girls can be fierce and girls can be mean.

I don’t know where these toy companies are getting the idea pink and purple are a factor. I think what is a factor is that boys aren’t supposed to like pink and purple things (I never had a problem with them, or dolls, or anything feminine). So I think they just wanted parents to double dip. That’s the real issue there.