Brokenshell44
It's Dora the Explorer, her only personality trait is starring lifelessly into the souls of children and her idea of Adventure is taking a light stroll and occasionally swinging on palette swapped playground equipment.
In other words, not a huge loss.
In the name of the POWER, I will punish you!
Yeah, I'm not too broken up about pre-school show character getting girly toys.
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all" Futurama, Godfellas
Could not care less.
Didn't Lauren Faust make an online criticism that a proposed tween-age version of Dora had her tomboyish elements removed?
edited 10th Nov '12 8:07:51 AM by Sijo
Brokenshell44
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
She was slightly more apathetic. She claimed that the redesign was too dull for Moral Guardians to get worked up over.
edited 10th Nov '12 8:10:43 AM by Brokenshell44
Trained by Flim and Flam
Dora had another personality trait: being too stupid to see the obvious without outside help.
My neice finds the show an insult to her intelligence.
She's seven.
BUY A CAR FROM ME!
The earlier gender is enforced, the more effective. Frankly, I'm more irritated that girliness is shoved into the character because the character is aimed at such a young demographic.
She's seven.
Well yes, pre-school shows are slowed down and simple. Blues Clues showed that making things excessively easy to understand actually helps kids 3-6 learn better. So I don't think it's really fair to judge the show that way.
Let's Hop to It!
As someone who used to dislike Dora, but later came around on it, I do take the concern of the original poster seriously. To try to answer - I think part of the reason is that they try to do the toys based on what's happening in the TV series. And that recently aired an installment called "Dora's Gymnastics Adventure," so it's not surprising that they would want to capitalize on that by having gymnastics themed merchandise. There's a lot of different Dora merchandise out there covering various themes and I'm sure you can still find merch that's more aimed towards the sort that you like also.
What troubles me is when Viacom used Dora's image and voice in an ad against a cable or satellite provider (I think maybe Dish Network) when they weren't carrying Nick Jr for a while due to a fee dispute. That wasn't cool.
P.S.: A recent installment actually featured Dora in a riff of Don Quixote and promoted a "Reading Is Cool" Aesop, which I thought was quite nice.
edited 10th Nov '12 12:56:30 PM by JMQwilleran
From what I have seen of the merchandise, it seem that Dora the Explora has gotten... girler.
Nowadays, she just doing gymnastics, ballets, and playing house with... other humans?
I know this has happen to many action females, but Dora has mostly kept her strong, adventure-seeking gimmick this far. But now... so much for a young role-model.
Eh, I'm just curious.
Yep, I'm still here.