Commercials and my boy

We've been watching Treehouse almost exclusively since Kiernan was born. We have been spoiled by the lack of commercials.

Suddenly, he wants more. He wants to watch shows he hasn't seen before and we've been letting him watch a lot of the Retro stuff - Inspector Gadget, Smurfs, Loony Toons. He likes it and we're happier with these options than a lot of the other stuff on (ie Sponge Bob).

But now we have commercials. And I am amazed at a couple of things

1) How quickly he went from "I don't like commercials!" to "I want one of those!" "Can I have that thing?"
and
2) How very gender specific his choices are. He ONLY asks for the "boy" toys. I don't think we have a lot of gender specific toys at our house, most of the stuff is pretty neutral, blocks, musical instruments, shape sorters, etc We do have quite a bit of kitchen stuff, and also workshop stuff. I hadn't really noticed until lately how much Kiernan mostly prefers the workshop stuff (but I HAVE noticed how much Juliette ALREADY enjoys the kitchen stuff) but every ad on tv that's about cars and superheroes and I don't even know what else, but obviously for boys gets a "Can I have one of those?" and all of the swimming puppies and barbies get a blank look.

I don't really care either way. He can like what he likes and he can ask for all he wants but he'll get a few choice things for Christmas and his birthday, but it's all struck me as really interesting.

The end ;)