After graduating, Sterling started researching everything from childhood development to gender roles. She discovered that in order to gain interest in and pursue a given field, a person must be exposed to the right inputs at an early age. This fact became particularly bothersome as Sterling became more and more familiar with the contents of the average toy aisle in stores. Toys for girls were in the pink aisle, dominated by dolls, stuffed animals, and princesses, whereas toys for boys were found in the blue aisle, filled with macho action figures, various toy weapons, and a huge variety of building block sets. Most experts agree that the toys served up to young girls do little to encourage an interest in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math). This knowledge led Sterling to develop a plan to create a different kind of toy for girls.

As she began developing ideas for toys, another research finding struck her—girls possess stellar verbal skills and tend to learn better by interacting with stories. That insight was instrumental in the creation of the GoldieBlox line of construction sets. Part erector set and part storybook, the combination was designed to engage girls through their verbal skills and encourage them to build through narratives that feature the adventures of Goldie, a freckled-faced blonde girl donning overalls and a tool belt. Although Goldie comes off as a bit of a tomboy, she’s still girlish. Skinny, blonde, and cute, she favors pinks and purples. The toys and stories feature animals and ribbons, and characters are more likely to help others than to succeed on their own.

After her innovative toy sets received little interest at the American International Toy Fair in New York City, Sterling started her own company. That decision sparked more interest than she could have ever imagined. To raise the $150,000 needed for the first round of production, Sterling launched a Kickstarter crowd-sourced funding campaign. Her funding goal was reached in just four days, and the funding topped out at $285,000.

With little to spend on traditional advertising, Sterling first promoted her inventive toys with some YouTube ads, including “Princess Machine,” featuring young girls who take their stereotypically girly toys and create a sophisticated Rube Goldberg device. That video went viral to the tune of 8 million views in little more than a week. Shortly thereafter, GoldieBlox’s first two products became Amazon’s top two selling toys during the industry’s busiest month of December. And if all that wasn’t enough, GoldieBlox beat out 15,000 contenders in Intuit’s “Small Business Big Game” Super Bowl ad contest, winning a $4 million spot during the big game.

Today, only a few years after the launch of its first product, GoldieBlox’s toys are sold at Target, Toys”R”Us, Amazon, and 6,000 other retailers worldwide. The brand features dozens of play sets designed for girls ages 3 through 11, the Bloxtown interactive website and app, a collection of original music videos, a Goldie action figure, and a “More Than Just a Princess” line of T-shirts and hoodies. GoldieBlox has won numerous industry awards, and its toys have succeeded in raising awareness about the lack of women in technical and scientific fields as well as the issues associated with the traditional pink aisle.

With all this success, you would think that GoldieBlox would be heralded by anyone and everyone wanting to change gender-based stereotypes in toys. But GoldieBlox has sparked substantial debate over whether it is really helping the cause it claims to be serving. The opposition, led by many feminist voices, claims that GoldieBox’s approach is little more than window dressing. The debate got really ugly after the launch of GoldieBlox and the Parade Float, a construction set based on a new challenge faced by Goldie and her friends—to create a float to transport the winner of a beauty pageant. “You cannot create a toy meant to break down stereotypes when you start off with the ideal that ‘we know all girls love princesses,’” argues author Melissa Atkins Wardy. Those in the opposition camp call for toys that are gender-neutral. “When we use princess culture, pinkification, and beauty norms to sell STEM toys to girls and fool ourselves that we are amazing and progressive and raising an incredible generation of female engineers, we continue to sell our girls short,” says Wardy. Additionally, although the toys are designed to stir interest in girls by having them build and create, critics have raised concerns that GoldieBlox toys are too simplistic.

But Sterling is quick to respond to all such arguments and show that GoldieBlox isn’t just trying to hook parents with a gimmick that doesn’t deliver. “There’s nothing wrong with being a princess,” says the 32-year-old entrepreneur. “We just think girls can build their own castles too.” This idea is backed by many advocates who recognize that to disrupt the pink aisle, you can’t start out by trying to obliterate it.

To influence through play the types of hobbies and academic fields that women pursue, a company first must penetrate a very competitive market. Creating toys that are void of things that girls find appealing will only send girls scrambling for the nearest Bratz or Disney princess doll. GoldieBlox toys may incorporate traditional gender stereotypes, but they tweak and reframe them. GoldieBlox spent years researching gender differences, seeking significant input from Harvard neuroscientists, and observing children’s play patterns. “Our stories leverage girls’ advanced verbal skills to help develop and build self-confidence in their spatial skills,” Sterling asserts.

Besides, Sterling was just getting started. Today, the GoldieBlox portfolio is not only growing in number of play sets, it’s becoming more diverse with three new characters who have joined Goldie to create a team to which just about any girl can relate. There’s Ruby Rails, a popular African American girl who is a whiz at coding; Valentina Voltz, a Hispanic engineer; and Li Gravity, Goldie’s long-time neighbor and best friend who is an expert at physics who knows how to apply the laws of his favorite science, performing stunts with superhero-like precision. Together, these characters take girls on a variety of adventures that go way beyond princess escapades—such as skydiving, ziplining, and auto racing. Then there’s the “Invention Mansion,” the play set Sterling refers to as the “anti-dollhouse”—a 300-piece play set featuring a “Hacker Hideway” that can be figured and reconfigured into hundreds of different formats.

Whether or not the two sides to the debate will resolve their differences in trying to achieve the same goal, there is no question that GoldieBlox has taken the toy industry by storm. If the most recent annual North American International Toy Fair is any indication, a little GoldieBlox seems to have rubbed off on just about every other toy company. The first year that GoldieBlox set up its booth at the trade show, the tech toy section was a wasteland. Today, nearly every booth features STEM toys, robots, and a lot of not-so-pink products targeted at girls.

Although clearly motivated to put an end to the stereotypes that have long been generated by the toy and entertainment industries, Sterling makes it clear that the goal is to become a multiplatform character brand à la Disney. “We want to be the brand that kids are whining for.” If the next few years are anything like GoldieBlox’s first few, it’s easy to envision a new kind of toy aisle at the local supercenter—one that heavily features GoldieBlox’s multiplatform brand.