The clothing company Gap has been criticised over a new advertising campaign featuring an image of a boy, labelled “the little scholar”, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with Albert Einstein’s face next to a girl wearing pink who is called “the social butterfly”.

The ad says of the boy “your future starts here”, while the girl’s clothes are “the talk of the playground”. The campaign has provoked outrage, with critics describing it as sexist.

Among the detractors was the Let Toys Be Toys campaign group, which calls on companies to stop limiting children’s interests by promoting some toys and books as only suitable for girls, and others only for boys.

The former children’s laureate Malorie Blackman’s response to the campaign was one of many other negative reactions to it on social media. There was no immediate response from Gap.

There have been very public campaigns to persuade toy and clothing manufacturers to abandon the stereotypes of boys as being active and clever, with girls passive and pretty.

The toy store Hamleys abandoned its pink and blue signs for boys and girls after being accused by one blogger of “gender apartheid”. The Pink Stinks campaign group has also successfully tackled many retailers over casual sexism, including persuading Sainsbury’s to stop labelling doctor costumes as for boys, and nurses and beauticians for girls.

One woman responded to Blackman’s tweet about the Gap campaign by saying: “That actually made me feel ill. Unbelievable.” Another wrote: “Where is this crap coming from? Who is driving it? My kids were born in the 80s and didn’t have this.”

The twin images show the girl in sparkly cat ears and a cream T-shirt with a pink “g” logo, while of the boy it says “shirts + graphic tees = genius ideas”. Ruth Walker-Cotton pounced on a spelling mistake, tweeting: “My daughter & son both love to have genius ideas – please don’t limit them. Ps you spelt Einstein wrong.” The scientist’s name appears on the T-shirt spelled “Einstien”.

Joe Flatman tweeted to alert Gap about an ad from a commercial competitor, showing a girl with a rugby ball. He wrote: “@UKGap take note: your competitor @JoJoMamanBebe gets my custom when they manage mixed-gender messages like this.”