High-tech Girl Toys R Us

Melissa Schorr

Thursday, June 3, 1999 | 10:35 a.m.

If only Harriet the Spy had used a Password Journal.

Harriet, the title character of Louise Fitzhugh's beloved children's novel, was ostracized by her classmates after they discovered her private journal, filled with the brutally honest comments she'd written about them.

But a new invention would have spared Harriet -- and countless confession-prone authors-in-training -- this occupational hazard: The Password Journal, a diary inside a plastic case, allows its owner to record a password that can only be opened by re-uttering the same secret phrase.

The Password Journal, created by toy maker Girl Tech, is just one of a series of products intended to foster girls' comfort level with technology, according to Girl Tech founder and girl power guru Dr. Janese Swanson, Ed.D., a former Las Vegas resident who will debut the products at FAO Schwarz in the Forum Shops at Caesars at 3:30 p.m Friday.

"We cannot send a message out to girls that technology belongs only to the boys, like we did with sports and cars," Swanson explains. "Technology is rampant and girls are 52 percent of the population. This is the age of the knowledge worker, and girls' opportunities would be limited. For our future's sake, and technology's sake, we must provide girls the opportunity to contribute."

Swanson founded Girl Tech in 1995 after she completed her doctorate concerning gender differences relating to the use of technology. The firm published the "Tech Girl's Internet Adventures" in 1997 and launched a website (girltech.com) with reams of content aimed at girls 8 to 14, including articles profiling worthy role models, a cheekily named "Chick Chat" discussion board, advice columns and referrals to other recommended "girl-friendly" sites.

"Everything I've done led up to this," Swanson explained on the phone from her office in San Rafael, Calif. She recalled several instances of being dissuaded from "gender-innappropriate" jobs, beginning with being turned down for a job as a as a "newspaper delivery boy" in 1969, when she was in sixth grade, because she "wasn't a boy."

"I remember my mother told me, 'There are some things you'll have to accept, because they're really hard to change,' " she recalls.

Swanson accepted that for the time being, abandoning high school dreams of becoming a doctor after seeing the stats on how few women made it into med school. Instead, she ended up in fields that were "reinforced" as aceptable: She started out as a flight attendant, then became a teacher, earning several degrees in education.

Eventually she ended up at Broderbund Software, where she became a senior product manager for the highly successful "Carmen Sandiego" and the Playroom/ Treehouse lines of software. From there she created the toys Kid One For Fun and the Yak Bak line.

She became inspired to start Girl Tech when her daughter, Jackie, then 8, was watching commericals advertising some of her mother's products.

"The boys were holding the devices and the girls were treated as props and victims and cheerleaders," Swanson recalls. "Jackie said, 'Why did they make that product for boys?' And I didn't want her to feel that way. I said, 'I think it's time to stop all this.'

"I was tired of seeing that 'pink' aisle in the toy store. I was looking at the research that showed that both boys and girls said that boys are more 'highly valued' in our society. I couldn't let that happen to my own daughter. (She) was a driving factor in this."

At first, Swanson said, she was told the same things by toy and software makers: "If you build it for boys, the boys and girls will buy it, but if you build it for girls, the boys won't buy it."

Ignoring them, she designed her products to be made for girls, but to her delight, boys have grudgingly admitted that they like the toys too -- sending the seldom heard message that a "girl's" toy can be cool, too.

Some of Girl Tech's current line of toys include the Friend Frame, a talking picture frame, and the Beam-It Projector, which lets girls write messages and beam them across the room via a flashlight.

Allowing for the reality that not every girl can afford an expensive computer or software program, the product line is reasonably priced between $10 and $20.

Swanson deliberately created the products in bright purples and greens, rather than prissy pink.

"The girls told us themselves they don't like pink," she explains. "Pink was young, it's not their image of themselves. (Girls this age) want adventure."

Many of the ideas have been inspired directly by her daughter. The Door Pass, a device that monitors intruders to a child's room by using voice recognition and motion sensors, was inspired by observing her daughter drawing a skull and cross bones and a 'Do Not Enter' sign on her door.

"Privacy is a huge issue among girls 8 to 12," Swanson says with a laugh.

After struggling with a staff of seven for the past few years, Girl Tech was acquired last May for $6 million by Radica Games, a software company with 4,000 employees that is listed on NASDAQ and that, she says, was founded by men who are "the fathers of daughters" and have vowed not to "interfere."

Recently, Swanson visited Radica's factory in China, and in true Girl Tech style, profiled on its website the Chinese women working there as engineers and doctors.

So far, Radica's distribution and marketing muscles have given Girl Tech its needed boost. In February, the company launched its first product line at the FAO Schwarz in New York City, kicking off the industry's annual Toy Fair.

Since then the company has already seen "hundreds of thousands" of products manufactured and ordered by heavyweights such as K-Mart, Target and Toys R Us.

"People are calling us, saying, 'how can I get it?' " Swanson says with delight. "Moms all say the same thing: 'I wish I had this when I was a girl.' It's fulfilling for me, because I did, too."

In fact, the latest product Swanson will release this summer is based on her childhood days of pretending she was Agent 99 from "Get Smart" or Emma Peel from "The Avengers."

The toy, called Bug 'Em, is a ladybug-shaped eavesdropping device that budding 007 s and Linda Tripps can plant on their parents or other unsuspecting family members.

To play fair, the device emits bug-like chirps to let blabbers know they are being spied on.

"The girl can listen in on the conversation," Swanson gushes. "They can play the spy game."

Something tells us Harriet would approve.