Posted on 01/15/2012 2:04:39 PM PST by NYer
Christmas had come and gone, and the toy aisles were emptied of Lego Star Wars sets, and Lego Harry Potter sets, and Lego superhero sets.
This is when Lego decided to roll out its newest line: Lego Friends, aimed squarely at girls.
Lego Friends figures are strikingly different. They dont look anything like the traditional Lego minifigure. Lego Friends have big eyes, button noses and pink lips. They wear skirts. They have names like Mia, Andrea and Olivia.
They come with pink and purple bricks, in sets that can be built into a pet hospital, or a bakery, or a fashion design studio.
They also come with the biggest gender controversy since J. Crew featured a mom painting her little boys toenails pink.
Hey Lego! shouted one commenter on the companys Facebook page. Im a girl and I dont like your new Lego Friends set. I think it promotes ridiculous gender stereotypes that damage little girls everywhere.
We like Star Wars, Harry Potter, space ships and explosions, too, not just salons, cafes and drinks by the pool. Some of us want to grow up to be engineers, not manicurists.
Jennifer Garlen of Huntsville has found herself swept up in the controversy. Garlen is a visiting professor of English at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. One of her areas of expertise is feminist criticism and theory.
Garlen is also an adult fan of Legos or AFOL, as they call themselves. Garlen was in Birmingham this weekend, at BrickFair Alabama, the first-ever Lego fan convention in the South. She gave a seminar on Building Like a Girl: Women, Girls and the Lego Community.
She had no idea the topic would be so controversial.
Lego has been trying to tap into the girl market for more than 20 years, Garlen said. Its tried dollhouses (the Scala sets of the 1970s), jewelry (Clickets sets) and horses and castles (the Belville line).
Lego keeps trying to put out a product that will really hook the girl market, but it hasnt happened yet, Garlen said.
This time, though, Lego invested four years in research. The company followed girls in different countries, talked to families, watched how girls play. Its not like they said, Lets make something pink and throw it at girls, Garlen said. They really worked the science behind this.
How boys saved Lego
Lego has been making plastic interlocking bricks for more than 50 years. The company which is still family-owned never intended them to be boys toys.
Back in the 1970s and 80s, the company ran ads that Lego is for girls and boys, Garlen said. By the 1990s, however, the company had overextended and found itself in financial trouble. It sold off assets, including its theme parks, and focused on the bricks.
The company realized that its main consumers were boys, and that boys were interested in adventure, vehicles and what Garlen called conflict-driven play. So thats what Lego focused on. The company came out with Star Wars sets. Sales took off.
But at the same time, Garlen said, Lego has always made toys that could be considered gender-neutral the City sets, for example, with their city buildings and firetrucks and airplanes.
Lego is also making many more female minifigures than in years past. I think theyve really opened up their product to be more inclusive, Garlen said.
But I dont know if the way the product is perceived by the public has changed along with that.
The blue aisle
Toy stores are part of the problem. Toy stores are so divided. Theres the pink aisle and the blue aisle. Wheres the both aisle? Garlen said.
Legos are deep in the blue aisle, down there with action figures and cars. Girls dont even go down there, Garlen said.
(Sure enough, toy stores are debating where they should put the new Lego Friends line. Does it go in the Lego section? Or does it go next to the Barbies?)
From the kids perspective and the parents perspective, Legos are for boys, Garlen said.
If some people have a problem with Lego Friends, Garlen suggests that look at the gender equation from the other side. I like Star Wars. I like superheroes. I like Harry Potter. And Im a girl, Garlen said. Her 10-year-old daughter likes those things, too. We dont look at those Legos and say those are for the boys. Nobody has stopped parents from buying those Lego sets for their daughters.
Garlens daughter used to wear Star Wars T-shirts to school, and the other kids would tell her that girls werent allowed to like Star Wars.
I think thats at the core of this debate right now, this perception of who gets what, she said. I think Lego might be suffering from that same perception.
After all, nobodys saying that Mattel should make more boy-friendly Barbies.
The girl inventor
And nobodys saying that boys (and grown-ups) cant play with Lego Friends. The best thing about the new sets is that the pieces work with other Legos, which hasnt been the case with Legos other girl-themed toys.
Adult Lego fans are excited to have new colors of bricks to work with. Theyre using the new Lego Friends bricks to build pink and purple starfighters.
Other builders have taken the Emmas Design School set and used the pieces to build Emma a giant plasma cannon (which, when you take the guns off, transforms into a snowmobile).
Garlen and her daughter tried out Olivias Inventor Workshop. My daughter is not particularly girly, and thats the least girly set, Garlen said. Olivia is a girl whos a robot inventor. Its not all puppies and kitties.
So how did Garlens daughter play with her inventor set? The little girl figure died in a robotic accident, Garlen said. She drank something in the lab she shouldnt have.
What boys think
One of the beauties of Lego is, no matter what it says on the box, kids are going to take it apart and turn it into something else. Perhaps that will make Lego Friends successful.
If all the previous lines that Lego has put out for girls have failed to catch fire, history tells us we ought to wait and see what happens, Garlen said.
If Lego Friends takes off, that says something about the accuracy with which Lego has understood the market. Regardless of what mothers think, if girls like it, then Lego has done its job.
We asked a brother and sister from Piedmont to test out the Olivias Treehouse set. Will Burkhalter, 7, refused to play with it. I want the aliens Legos, he said.
His little sister, Nora, 6, declared Lego Friends the funnest Legos. Funner than boys Legos.
I love the toy pets. I like the way I can feed the bird and cat, she said. I thought I saw a bird just like the Legos bird, in real life.
And I see on the box a lot of friends for the Legos girl. Theres one with red hair and black hair and brown hair. I want to buy them.
Ive been dying for one of these.
BrickFair Alabama
When: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. today
Where: Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex
What: Displays of Lego creations made by adult fans and artists. Also lots of Lego things for sale, including custom minifigures, accessories and more. Billed as primarily a look-dont-touch event. Strollers are not permitted.
Admission: $7; free for kids 3 and under.
Info: www.brickfair.com
A brief history of Lego
The Lego company estimates it has produced more than 400 billion Lego bricks about 64 Legos for every person on earth. Heres a look at how it all started, 80 years ago, in a small workshop in Denmark.
1932: A Danish carpenter named Ole Kirk Christiansen switches from crafting furniture to wooden toys. To name his toy company, he coins the word Lego, from the Danish words leg and godt, meaning play well.
1939: A British toymaker named Harry Fisher Page invents plastic blocks that lock together.
1947: Christiansen discovers the plastic blocks, and begins to refine their design.
1958: Lego design evolves to the state we now know it, with the stud and tube coupling system that makes for stable, strong, interlocking bricks. Bricks from this era still work with brand new ones.
1961: The Lego wheel is invented.
1966: The first Lego motorized train debuts.
1966: Norman Mailer builds a utopian City of the Future in his living room using 15,000 Legos. Its featured on the cover of his book Cannibals and Christians.
1967: Supersized Duplos, designed for small hands, are introduced.
1968: Legoland amusement park opens in Billund, Denmark. It includes a model of the Statue of Liberty made from Legos.
1975: The Expert Series is introduced, featuring complex sets for older builders, with working gears and cogs.
1978: The first mini-figure arrives. At last, people to populate Lego houses and cities.
1979: Ole Kirks grandson, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, takes over the company and introduces play themes such as Lego Space.
1980: According to a survey, 70 percent of all Western European families with kids under age 14 have Lego bricks in their homes. Most likely scattered all over the floor.
1989: Seymour Papert of MIT, a longtime proponent of kids using computers to learn, is named Lego Professor of Learning Research. The Lego Mindstorms line of robotic toys is named after his book.
1996: Legoland Windsor amusement park opens in England. It includes a model of St. Pauls Cathedral made from Legos.
1999: The first Star Wars Lego sets are released, ending the era of smelly model glue and changing Lego history.
1999: Legoland California amusement park opens. It includes a model of Mount Rushmore made from Legos.
2001: The Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle becomes a huge bestseller, with more than 1 million sets sold.
2002: Legoland Deutschland amusement park opens in Germany. It includes a model of the Reichstag made from Legos.
2003: Mini-figures change from yellow to realistic skin tones.
2003: Shaquille ONeal, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett and 21 other NBA players become Lego mini-figures.
2004: Photos of two astronaut mini-figures land on Mars aboard the NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity.
2008: Google celebrates Legos 50th anniversary by illustrating its logo in Legos. (Googles founders are huge Lego fans. Googles New York office is filled with Legos as artwork and Legos for play.)
2008: A model of the Taj Mahal, with 5,922 pieces, becomes the biggest Lego set ever sold, surpassing the Star Wars Millennium Falcon, the previous record holder with 5,195 pieces.
2009: The first Lego store in Alabama opens at the Galleria mall in Birmingham.
2011: Legoland Florida theme park opens on the site of the former Cypress Gardens. At 145 acres, its the biggest Legoland in the world.
2012: Lego announces plans to release long-anticipated sets based on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings at the end of the year. A Lego Gollum. Hmmmm.
My son is deep into LEGO Ninjago. It’s kind of scary how well LEGO has understood the minds of young boys. They probably know what they’re doing with these girl toys.
Right. And alternatively, the faggish, metrosexual fathers in the suburbs can buy them for their sons, if they so choose.
Thankfully, the market will decide, not some social engineering hack at a government agency... Although the way things are going it may one day be the case. Long live free market capitalism!
Rocks, twigs, and mud the original lincoln logs... for those of us who couldn’t afford the other... ;)
Man...the PC crowd has sissified everything...I had Cooties when I was a kid, and they looked NOTHING like that...
I’m a fan of Lego — and Lincoln Logs and other classic toys for boys, which I never was.
Toys these days, meh! Saw a trivia game in the store the other day, called, “FACT OR CRAP.” Bills itself as “trivia with attitude.” I call it culture with coarsening. :(
Buy the old stuff online, it’s better, cleaner, and made in the USA. Or go to the flea market.
Play chess, checkers, poker, Scrabble.
Buy the little girl in your life a nice pink air gun! Trains are cool too — build a model railroad, with a few villages here and there.
Pick up an art set and and old Bob Ross video.
If she’s really, really a GIRL...buy her a rock polisher! She can build her own jewelry :)
They were a popular gift-exchange item with Cub Scouts this year. My sons got some. All our small Lego-bits go in the same container, once the boxes are opened, so they turn into all kinds of bizarre things.
I found the baby drowning Star Wars clone troopers in the dog bowl once. "Die, men ... die ..."
Why stop at Star Wars? Lego should do some Red Dwarf, Dr. Who, or even Star Trek Lego sets! I know some chicks that dig Dr. Who and Star Trek!
You know what they say, old Cooties are the best Cooties (which, of course, is quite different from what my Grandmother meant when she used to call Grandpa "an old coot."
Not sure if they're compatible with Lego, but they sure are darn awesome...!
http://www.characterbuilding.eu/dr-who/micro-figures/
Star Trek would be good, but Red Dwarf is too obscure for American audiences and Dr. Who only a bit more well known (although it would probably be a big seller in the UK).
If they don't they are complete and total smegheads!
I see only one problem with the product. It’s that red square with the white letters. Stop marketing the product as LEGO. Girls need their own identity.
Exactly. As long as the butch girls aren't forced to buy the female Legos what difference does it make?
How about Long Shapely Legos?...
nully *ducking* and running for cover...
I’m not sue I see the problem here. If she wants to play with regular Lego models and pieces - DO IT. The new ones are for those who don’t want to play with what’s already out there. Sheesh!
Seems this woman was just sitting in her room looking for something to be offended by so she could wave her arms and throw a tantrum.
I’m not sure I see the problem here. If she wants to play with regular Lego models aend pieces - DO IT. The new ones are for those who don’t want to play with what’s already out there. Sheesh!
Seems this woman was just sitting in her room looking for something to be offended by so she could wave her arms and throw a tantrum.
I’m not sure I see the problem here. If she wants to play with regular Lego models and pieces - DO IT. The new ones are for those who don’t want to play with what’s already out there. Sheesh!
Seems this woman was just sitting in her room looking for something to be offended by so she could wave her arms and throw a tantrum.
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