Building Toys For Girls

Little girls with serious engineering dreams + Rube Goldberg + Beastie Boys = Internet gold. GoldieBlox, a construction toy and book series for girls, has a new video gone viral (watch it below ASAP) starring three young ladies who are "more than princess maids."

Not all fairy tales are about princesses, as this new toy for girls — which includes GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine ($30) and the sequel, GoldieBlox and the Parade Float ($20) — is out to prove.

The company is about showing little ladies ages 4 to 9 that engineering and fun aren't mutually exclusive. The story's star is a young inventor named Goldie who fashions a belt drive out of pegs, axles, wheels, and ribbon, right alongside her readers.

The story behind GoldieBlox started when, as an engineering student at Stanford, Debbie Sterling observed a startling deficit of women in her department. Over 89 percent of engineers were male, due in no small part to the construction toys, like Lego and K'Nex, that targeted boys and fostered their early interest in engineering and science.

Trying to make sense of why there are so few females in the field, Debbie discovered that, generally, girls like to read and boys like to build, so she combined the two to create a toy, GoldieBlox, that uses girls' natural verbal skills to teach the important spatial skills that engineers need.

For more details on GoldieBlox from the creator herself, watch what Debbie has to say about her project after the jump.