Its still amazing how much we sort boys and girls based on gender and not interests.
With that said, you can see why retailers would be slow to drop gender categorization. For people who aren't particularly progressive on this issue, Amazon just made shopping harder. For the average adult shopping for kids' toys, I bet the single most valuable bit of information to predicting their purchase is the gender of the recipient.
If you are shopping for someone else's kids, how hard is it to talk (/text/email/etc.) to the parents about the kids interests?
> If you are shopping for someone else's kids, how hard is it to talk
> (/text/email/etc.) to the parents about the kids interests?
Then what? Arrange to meet them at their home to talk to their child for 30s about what they want for their birthday (that's in my price range) - the whole process is costing more than the present at this point.
Am I right in thinking you're not a parent?
Asking a parent you know for ideas for a party present for a kid is quite reasonable, asking the child won't help unless it's a child you're close to and you're spending a considerable sum and I'd warrant know the child's personality pretty well.
But, given that kids that don't conform to gender stereotypes of interests exist, probably infinitely more useful.
Heck, even for kids that conform to gender stereotypes to the extent that all of their interests are within the scope expected for their gender, its still vastly more useful to get direct information from them or their parents about their interests, because its very rare that any kid's interests will be cover all of what is within the gender stereotype even if it is contained within the gender stereotype.
You must really be an arse hole to feel the need to belittle people just because they disagree with you.
Ask about their interests, or get something generic enough that it's going to be fun for everybody.
Point being, pretending to be off put by a reasonable and logical thing doesn't make you correct.