The Lego ‘Friends’ range (left), compared to traditional Lego (right).
So apparently, according to the marketing team at Lego, I should probably spend this afternoon hanging out at the “returns counter” of my local toy store. It seems the Lego hospital I’ve bought my daughter for Christmas isn’t quite pink and sparkly and girl-world enough to hold her attention.
In 2012 the international toy giant is bringing out a range of Lego just for girls. What does that mean exactly? Beauty salons! Cafes! And lots of pink and love hearts!
(Really the most disturbing part of the whole thing, in my opinion, is that the characters look like they’ve wandered out of 1986 … with those big hair bodywaves and ra-ra skirts, I feel like these Lego girls should come with a free Bananarama cassette. Actually I think I saw that little Lego girl on the left on Toddlers and Tiaras last week ….)
Lego has certainly been a total boys-domain in the past. We’re talking NO girl characters in the main sets for kids aged 6 and over. But instead of creating girl-friendly Lego (what does that even mean?), couldn’t Lego just introduce female characters into Lego’s existing sets? Am I missing something?
Anyway here’s what news.com.au has to say:
TOY giant Lego is introducing “girl friendly” female characters that look more like dolls than the tiny yellow construction figures we are used to.
The “Friends” range is aimed at girls aged five and up and features ready-made characters called Stephanie, Emma, Andrea, Olivia and Mia all with different personalities and interests who live in a fictional home town called Heartlake City.
As the mother of a three-year-old girl I just find it exhausting fighting the fight against all the pink, sparkly, love-hearty, princessy stuff that’s marketed at her. And it’s a vicious circle, in my mind. The more our girls think they need their toys to be pink and sparkly (because they’re being taught that’s what girls play with), the more they want it. Maybe I’ll go buy Ava a kite ….
Here are some images of the Lego ‘Friends’ range:
So what do you think? Did you play with Lego growing up? Did you feel excluded? Do girls need their own girl-friendly Lego in order to play with it?
Comments
178 Comments so far
I had a “girls” lego set as a kid… it was called Belville and I had a house with husband, wife, daughters, babies, sons, pets etc. There was also a park, and a stable that came separately. While it was geared at girls, being pink and definitely not like the traditional boxy yellow characters, it still required construction like lego. I had a GREAT time redesigning the house, putting rooms in different places.. I usually ended up pinching some of my brothers lego to assist in this redesign!!
So enamoured was I with it, that I refused to let my mum get rid of it. It is still in a box in our “toy cupboard”.
I’ve just Googled and it looks like Lego turned it into the usual princesses and castles.. shame. But I did find a picture of the house I still have!!
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Sorry, I just have to say it, Harry Potter lego rules! I was so jealous of a friend in year 6 who got the lego Hogwarts for her birthday. I loved lego into my teens and my bro is headed the same way. Lego ends up everywhere at our house, kitchen, bathroom, my laptop bag, you name it. Theres just no need for girly lego.
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How bloody ridiculous. Lego is Lego. Mind you, I’m so old that I remember when Lego was basic stuff and not all Harry Potter and Star Wars and whatever the hell the young people are playing with these days.
You know the one bad thing about Lego? The pain it causes when you accidentally tread on it barefoot. Ouch.
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to put my false teeth in a glass and apply my corn plasters.
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I’m only 20 and I remember a time before movie-and-tv-themed Lego.
The first of that range came out when I was about 8 or so. It started with Bionicle, IIRC.
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it’s news to me that girls don’t play with traditional lego. i’m sure we had lego girl hair… or maybe things have changed since the eighties??
i just used normal lego to design and landscape a lot of houses haha.
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If you’ve never read Antonia Senior’s “The Pernicious Pinkification of Little Girls”, I highly recommend it.
As a side note, there are diamond ring teething rattles for babies now. I know it might seem harmless to some but I’m starting to get pretty tired of being treated like a brainless twit by major marketing companies.
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I don’t have a problem with girls toys or pink. I feel the angst over this stuff is often over done. My problem with this lego is it is simply lame. It is inferior to real lego. Real lego just needed some more female characters that’s it. Some lego sets won’t hugely appeal to most girls, like star wars but things like Lego City are amazing for girls or boys. My little brother and sister have built an entire city on a testle table and it’s fabulous.
Classic lego characters are such a nice shape, why these weird ones? Ok idea, weird design.
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I’d say the marketing team nailed it. Love the range and I think it will appeal to a lot of girls.
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I played with Lego as a kid, and I had female characters, but I Definately saw it as my brothers type of toy, not mine. This set seems to blend a traditional doll set with some DIY skills – I think it’s pretty great!
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Interestingly it doesn’t look like there is much construction involved – all kinda done for you, just move the pretty figures about…
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You’re right, there doen’t seem much to it which is a shame. I think it’s a wasted opportunity by Lego they could have done so much better. My 8yo daughter loves Lego, she has the emergency services set, & the aero plane. I will say its quite expensive. We’ve even been to Lego Land in London, it was excellent!
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That’s what I thought – it doesn’t look like there’s as much building as with regular lego, they look more like sets for dolls to sit in – like just separate bits of a dolls house. Lame.
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Lego have girl characters in existing sets. They have generic “non-boy” sets. They’ve had these since they started, and they’ve never stopped making them.
They’ve had huge success with making more boy-oriented sets, but they’ve had multiple failures in the past when trying to target girls. Admittedly, all of their attempts at “girl” Lego have been pink and horrible, but that’s hardly any worse than the fact that the “boy” Lego is full of guns, swords, and good guys battling bad guys, and no strong female characters.
If you’re upset about this, and you *haven’t* bought Lego for a young girl, perhaps you should ask yourself why not? If you’re upset about this and you *have* bought Lego for a young girl, then you can continue to buy the generic Lego. Problem solved.
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john – you are missing the pester power point – another person wrote about it i cant find it now, she says her daughter was happy with regular lego/duplo but will now want girlie lego. perhaps if nanna is buying a prez she will buy girly lego only.. i see her point.
i like the lego creator sets…they are more traditional lego…my sons want start wars lego …they LOVE teh stuff…
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Well, if she now wants the girlie lego, doesn’t that mean it appeals to her more?
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No, as the article said, “The more our girls think they need their toys to be pink and sparkly (because they’re being taught that’s what girls play with), the more they want it”.
Our friends’ 7 year old is a very girly girl, which our friends encourage, and her little brother is a very boisterous boy, (think of those adverts – for beef I think – where the little girl loves fairies and her brother loved monsters etc, but they both like meat) and I’ve heard her giggle and say our nine-month old daughter is dressed like a boy because she’s wearing something other than pink. When I say she can wear any colour, she giggles and says that’s silly. She’s been conditioned by her parents and now by her schoolfriends to think she MUST like pink in order to fit in. For her 7th birthday recently I asked her mum for ideas what to get her and she suggested lippy, as she’d run out. I didn’t get her lippy!
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I played with Lego as a kid and I would’ve gone nuts over this new range. My frustration though is with the lack of gender neutral role play toys out there. My son is getting a very pretty dollhouse for Christmas because I could not afford over $350 for a gender neutral one. The only non-pink option was a fisher price fire station which is not what he is interested in. Thankfully he likes pink and I have an open minded husband!
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About twenty years ago I bought a Lego house for my daughter in a post-christmas sale for a fraction of the full price. It was gender-neutral and needed to be built block by block on a Lego board and had furniture pieces to add into the scene. My daughter loved it and so did her brothers who came along later. It went to their cousins who also loved it.
This sparkly, pinky stuff just isn’t what Lego is all about. Girls and boys might play differently but they all love just building and creating and old style, gender-neutral Lego is just perfect for that.
I don’t think your little fella will even notice the colour … he will be too busy playing.
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Thanks Susan, I know he’ll love it and that’s what counts! : )
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Just imagine Death Star Canteen done with that Lego. Cool.
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So much win. <3
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I LOVED lego when I was a kid! I had quite a bit of it (in the 80s). It was definitely my toy of choice for a long time, right up until I moved into the
‘lego technic’ where I got to build all sorts of elaborate creations that could move. I can’t remember when I stopped playing with it so much? Maybe around year 3 or 4? I also had plenty of girl figures.
I am happy with some of this, and hate some of this new stuff. I like that they are bringing back something that is more ‘town’ than ‘space’ etc. I have two girls and when I was looking into starting their lego collection I found it really difficult to find the sorts of lego that I had a child (lego houses, shops, train stations, mechanics, etc) – it was all very ‘boy’.
I would have been happy though if they had just brought back more of this ‘town/ city’ lego though. There was no need to create these sparkly girl characters – just bring back the girl lego figurines that always existed! I’m surprised to hear that you can’t get girl figures in the sets nowadays? My girls are playing with their Dad’s old lego (his parents kept a few boxes away) and there are plenty of female figures in them. They look exactly like the male ones, except that they have female hair dos (this is really the only difference). I clearly remember having an ambulance set and the set came with one male and one female character. Most of the house sets had both sexes too.
So yay to bringing back the more generic types of lego, but nay to how they have done it. They didn’t have to ‘pinkify’ it – they just had to be more down the middle of the road. That’s all I wanted! (By the way, I think as a kid I would probably have loved the vet hospital. I can picture my girls salivating over it! The other sets are too ‘girly’ though – for want of a much better way to put it!).
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Check out Lego City, that has houses, shops etc. Very nice
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It’s better than Bratz…..
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Amen to that!
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Pretty well anything’s better than Bratz.
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I love the new range… it looks like fun! I loved Lego when I was little – I had everything! Started off with Duplo and slowly graduated to playing with my brother’s Lego – airports, trains, trucks, I didn’t discriminate. I also had the Belville hospital and playground, which I loved but found really limiting because it was so much bigger than the rest of the Lego. I think that’s the main difference between Belville and Friends – at least with the new stuff you can mix it in with your existing blocks.
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Now I know what to get you for Christmas! Solved!
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I’m known to still play with Lego occasionally and will adit that I’m thoroughly disappointed when a child I’m entertaining doesn’t want to play, because it means I can’t without looking strange.
I played with it growing up, loved it. There were still female characters. I never felt excluded, I loved the cars and stuff that you could build. Although most of the time I just built massive towns. I guess that’s why I like The Sims now…
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I hate the gender-toy thing – all pink and blue aisles telling us what to buy. My (almost) 3 year old wants a doll house for Xmas and he is getting one, but hard to not find a pink one. We went with sylvanian families cos he loves animals too but I have been told that there comes a certain age where other kids will say ‘that’s a girls toy’. I feel like it’s ok for girls to play with anything – as it’s cool to be a tomboy – but there is a stigma when a boy loves Barbie, or princess dresses or prams (my son has access to all!) and I think that is unfair. Almost as though it’s drilled into them at a young age what to like.
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It sucks hey? My son (who is 6) asked Santa for, among other things, a pink my little pony. An adult friend of ours has seized on this and constantly makes jokes about how he work in the performing arts.
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I hope you give that friend a good solid talking to!
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My son has a 2 year old pink my little pony happy meal toy. He loves it, combs the mane and takes it everywhere! It’s just a phase and in a few months time there will be something else he loves.
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My husband grew up on the same Welsh valleys area as the designer Julien McDonald (hubby was a year or two younger). Apparently all the kids thought he was weird as he didn’t like rugby. In-laws said the same thing when I met them (wonder where the kids got those ideas from). Not sure if there was any actual bullying or teasing going on but if there was… well who’s laughing now?
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That’s quite true about the girls who play with ‘boy’ toys being OK, but not so much the other way around. It’s pathetic isn’t it?
A lot of the boys at my daughter’s kinder love hanging out in the home corner, playing restaurant and what-not. It’s good that the home corner stuff there is plain wood and not pink plastic. They love playing chef, waiter, diner etc so it such a shame that when you to buy a tea set (for example) at a toy shop, they mostly very ‘girly’.
And what’s with all the domestic appliances being pink and the lawnmowers and golf sets being blue?!
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I have a son who is 9 months old. I am determined to let him play dolls or cars or Lego or kitchen or dress ups…. Whatever he wants to. But you guys are right, it iis SO hard to find anything that’s not blue or pink. I don’t mind buying pink toys for him, but, like the ‘tomboy’ comments above, I don’t want him to get to the age when other kids might say those toys are too girly (being all pink) & have him not want to play house or kitchen etc.
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Oh & Batgirl, I am with MissT, hopefully your friend gets a telling off & leaves your son to enjoy whatever toys he wants!
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I have two girls who have both loved lego over the years. I have one son who has never gotten in to it as much as the girls. It has even been used to make illustrations for school assignments.
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The whole family loves Lego! From 60+ grandpa to 2 year old grand daughter it’s a hit!
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I played with Lego when I was little and never realised it was a boys’ toy. In fact I wasn’t aware it was until I read this.
Jeeze I was slow on this one.
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I never realised when I was a kid too (in the 70′s/80′s) but I think it was definitely more generic back then. I only realised a year ago when I was trying to find some for our kids how very ‘boyish’ it is now. Lots of guns and alien type creatures!
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I actually think this is a good idea, obviously they have done their research and figured out that there is a niche in the market for this kinda thing!
For me, growing up I was always a bit of a tomboy so I think I would’ve preferred the regular Lego. I used to love playing with it just as much as my brother and never wished it to be more ‘girly’. But then I never really did like playing with dolls…..
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Both my daughters enjoy standard issue Lego .. I don’t mind this new stuff but I am disappointed that the figures are not just female versions of the current sqat little Lego men .. Looks like polly pocket, not Lego.
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I gotta say, my girls would love this Lego.
They already have a set in a big pink box which they love playing with. They also love playing with the set at their Nan’s house in a big blue box which has a helicopter in it. I don’t think they have even noticed the difference in the colour of the blocks.
I often try to find more Lego to build on our collection but all I can ever find is Star Wars and other quite ‘mature’ themes. I’m always surprised that there isn’t more generic Lego (let alone ‘girl Lego’). I played with Lego all the time as a kid and loved it. It was fairly generic from memory.
My daughters are quite girly by nature and love all the stuff I dreaded them being into when my first daughter was born. But I’ve made my peace with it. And besides, they are not totally obsessed with ‘girl toys’. We have just come back from visiting friends all day and it is a ‘boy house’ without a doubt. But my girls always have a blast with his toys. Not a bored moment from them. Funnily though, when he comes to our house, he bores very quickly with their toys… it’s interesting.
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Girl minifigs are hard to come by. I’ve pointed this fact out to my husband and son many times. I love Lego, always have. I don’t need it to be pink. I just want a higher representation of girls across all their range.
FYI the Lego Ideas Book is great for inspiration. The contributors are men and women.
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I just showed that to my 4.5 yo and she really wants the dog and fashion design sets. Couldn’t tempt her with the cool inventor set. My girls love their duplo but we haven’t moved onto lego yet. I don’t think they’d really care what colour the blocks were.
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We are just this Christmas moving up from Lego Duplo to the standard Lego, and were pleased to be able to buy the pink Belleville box. Our girls will like it – they would also have liked a bog-standard box, but given the choice we have gone with the set which has some pink in it.
Good on Lego! They are in the business of making money, and they obviously think that the Friends range will attract more girl users. And given the creative and building elements of all Lego, that seems pretty great to me.
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Loved lego growing up, I still have all mine and I’m 42!
My kids all love Lego (I have girls and boys) and couldnt care less if its girlie or not, but the new colours will be nice!
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“Lego has certainly been a total boys-domain in the past. We’re talking NO girl characters in the main sets for kids aged 6 and over. ”
I’m sure I had a couple of construction-figure-type girls in my Lego, but this was back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (a.k.a. 1970s/1980s).
I played with Lego as a kid & LOVED it. Back then in the pre-historic era, it was mostly just the sets of blocks, bases etc – not the single-purpose ‘build your own Hogwarts / Ghost Mountain / airport’ sets. I spent hours & hours building little houses, towns, etc etc.
And if I could find a decent set of blocks now, I’d probably buy it – for myself.
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Yeah, I hate that they now tell you what to make! No fun in that, Lego :/
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I’m glad someone else can verify my Lego memories! There were those little hair pieces that you stuck on the Lego man’s head to make it a girl.
I get the feeling Lego has changed a lot since I last played. I don’t remember any furniture or accessories – just lots and lots of blocks that we built stuff with. I remember my brother and I spending ages constructing what, at the time seemed like, incredibly large structures.
It looks like most of the fun of Lego has gone
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You can still buy a big box of lego bricks… although there’s still gender specific ones. Primary colours, presumably for boys (the one we all know from our childhoods), pinks and mauves for girls and one with bright greens which I think is supposed to be gender neutral. I’m sure I’ve seen them in Kmart or Target.
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As an employee of a big chain department store I did see “girl” lego long before this release.
Lego Belville was for girls. The marketing was a dead giveaway
Slow news day much?
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Yes, my daughter had a Belville set too. Two girl figures and ponies to boot. They did look completely different though.
She also had a lego set called Paradisa which had a couple of girl figures and a couple of boy figures. Not a salon in sight, but a beach house instead.
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I bought my girl some ‘pink box’ lego the other day – she loves the colours and the ideas in the booklet that came with it. Originally I bought her the pink and the blue, but the blue box had ideas like trucks, tractors and mechanics – things my girl is not interested in. However, I hate the new ‘friends’ range. Why can’t they just do (gasp) mixed boxes with ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ figures and ideas? I hate the look of the figures and that they are doing things like using a beauty parlour. I hate that my girl loves pink and princesses because she thinks that they are girly. I struggle with feeling like a bad feminist because I buy her the occasional barbie doll or my little pony that are marketed exclusively to girls. I am blue in the face from telling her that colours and toys are for EVERYONE but it feels like a losing battle. Yes Lego, address the gender imbalance but DON’T do it by restricting even more what girls are ‘allowed’ to play with!
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Does anyone remember ‘Clik-Its’, which came out about 7 years ago? It was made by Lego, and it was like these rubbery bags with holes in them, and it came with little things like hearts and flowers to click into the holes. They called that ‘Lego for girls’ too.
I had a proper Lego kit when I was 4 or 5, but I didn’t play with it often because the only person it came with had yellow skin and was really ugly, and I was far too obsessed with my two dolls, Bonny and Jenny, to play with Lego.
When I was about 7, I got this Lego set called ‘Belville’, which was a series of Lego sets, set in a snowy castle place, with a king, princesses, a prince (known as Draco due to his blond hair), a queen, a witch, and two babies. I loved it. It wasn’t your traditional Lego, which focuses on building stuff, rather it came with instructions on how to set up the castle, then you just played with the characters. When I played with it, the blue princess would always fall off a cliff riding her horse, and her sister, the pink princess, would have to save her (the prince was way too ugly to save her. I put him under the floor of the castle.
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I think it’s brilliant. Lego has been male dominated for far too long – Pirates of the Carribean, Star Wars, Harry Potter etc. I am delighted that my son will now have little girls in his play
Girls do play differently to boys – why shouldn’t Lego accommodate this?
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Lana, do you feel the same about traditionally female oriented toy brands, that they need a masculine element for balance. Are we over thinking this as adults?
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No not at all – I just don’t think Lego have done a bad thing. They are just broadening their market and I applaud it
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I think it si fabulous too. Lego is great for using the imagination, nutting out instructions, especially when it has gone wrong, back tracking what went wrong and fine motor skills in putting it all together and handling the small pieces. It is heavily orientated towards boys with the ‘themes’ they have and is therefore NO cometition to those stupid bratz and polly pocket which provide none of the above benefits lego does. If they can adapt it a bit to prompt interest from young girls, fantastic I say!
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Why do you class Pirates, HP and Star Wars as boys thing? All have strong female characters and I loved all of them when I was a kid.
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I swore there was girl lego? I remember I had ones where you could swap the hair and clothes among them all, and there was a pony tail or two amongst them. I didn’t feel the need for pink sparkly lego, I was as equally into my toy cars as my barbies though so maybe that’s why!
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There is and it’s called “Belville”.
http://belville.lego.com/en-US/default.aspx?domainredir=www.clikits.com
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Nothing stopping girls or their parents buying standard lego, there is no ban for girls. Last time I checked though, girls and boys ARE different and like different things. No different when they grow up. No grand corporate sexist conspiracy, just supply and demand. Viva la difference.
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This is not true. Many a time I have asked in toy shops about whether they stock, e.g. , the city range – trains, planes, etc.. and not very gendered. But Lego dictates what shops can have, and when, and they like to sell their big ticket items (i.e. movie tie-ins) and can sell them most effectively at a big cost to the boys market at which they aim. Thus, they don’t let shops stock the “girls” stuff, even if they ask. Pure ideology, branding, and market politics, NOT supply and demand.
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If they are not supplying what is demanded most, they are a pretty stupid business. Business always supply what they feel will sell best. In my world, that equals supply and demand.
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I could have sworn there was already ‘girl lego’… I remember having a lego ice cream shop set maybe 12ish years ago? It was all pastel colours and had girl lego people..?
My brother (who is 4 years older than me) was massively into lego so I naturally wanted some! But I was never really into building the big complicated sets.
I do remember going to legoland in the UK when I was 8 and loosing my shit!! haha
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me too!!
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I played with Lego, as I had an older brother. While he was busy having the little Lego men shoot each other and building forts & space ships, I was trying to pretty up the rocket with coloured lights, and hunting for the few flowers (remember those little red & yellow ones?) to place around the bland houses he created. Call it gender conditioning, but it’s just what I did. I would have loved a little pink cafe to add to his stale, boring space town!
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i love the classic lego man shape and know that they do already adapt them to girls figurines (ie princess leia to start with) so would have thought they could have kept re-adapting the current shape?? disappointing!
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I had Lego as a kid. Regular boys Lego. My mother never lived by any stereotype for girls and I’m one of six daughters. Very little pink, no pre-teen makeup (umm not much teen makeup either!), no Dolly magazines or similar media promoting a ‘girl’ image. We played outside on bikes, in trees, in dirt, and built Lego buildings with regular Lego and it wasn’t a hair salon or florist or cafe. This looks like making money from people who either don’t have kids and need to buy a ‘girly’ present, or parents who willingly abide by gender stereotypes and believe a girl option in Lego would be better than the normal range.
I have three boys. Thank goodness.
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Wait – are the lego girls TALLER than the lego boys? Why on earth do they have to be a differene height?
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I LOVED Lego as a kid. My brother and I would play for hours, and my mum cursed us every time she stepped on the ‘block that got away’.
Personally, I think it’s a good idea. Surely it’s better educationally that girls get more involved with the tactile problem-solving nature of Lego than learn about high fashion and how to apply makeup at the age of 5 (considering many ‘girl’ toys), even if it does involve making Lego slightly more attractive to girls. But you will also find plenty of girls who either don’t care either way or are staunchly anti-pink.
And for the record, I am very excited that I am going to Legoland in Chicago in a couple of weeks. Also for the record, I’m 29, and won’t be taking children with me.
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When I was 8 we did a big overseas trip and did Legoland (in the UK) and Disneyland… I have perfect memory of Legoland but only vague memories of disneyland (even though we were there for a few days)
You’re going to have an amazing time
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I think this new lego range is great. It gives kids more options for their Lego creations. This only becomes a gender-political-stereotypes issue when we (adults) put our hang-ups on our children. Kids just like stuff. It doesn’t matter if it’s pink, blue or green with purple polka-dots. It also doesn’t matter if it’s a cafe or an intergalactic space station. Kids will like what they want to like.
No matter how many trucks, cars, trains or intergalactic space stations I put in front of my girl (2.5) she will always choose the toys that are pink, glittery and that have tulle.
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For thirty years I have dreamt of being given the platform to boast of this:
I won a shopping centre lego building competition. And I’m a girl.
My prize was a choice between lego jewelry or star wars lego. I chose the star wars to give to my older brother, who didn’t win…..(though secretly wished I had chosen the girly lego for myself).
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Go Ruth!!!
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Thanks Bec, one of my life’s greatest achievements, hehe
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My daughters will go nuts for the animals and the little Wall.E looking robot. I think lego have backed a winner.
That said, they quite like their brothers lego too, when he lets them touch it!
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If you don’t like it – don’t buy it.
Simple and what is practiced in this house. Hence we have no Wiggles, Hi-5, Disney licenced dress ups, Bratz, very few Barbies, and a deficit of pink and sparkly.
Lego is a massive company, there is no way this stuff would be produced if there was no market for it and it wasn’t going to sell.
We won’t be getting any of it. I never liked the Belville range either. We’ll stick with the traditional Lego.
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Just curious, what is wrong with the wiggles?
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I can understand all the other examples, but not the Wiggles. Before I had kids I was a bit anti-wiggles because of all the marketing, but I gave them a try, and they were so wonderful, and it horrifies me to think we nearly missed out on them. They are so good, and have been such an important part of our lives, that I forgive them their marketing and think they deserve every cent they get. Also, other than buying their music and concert tickets, I have never spent a cent on their marketing products. We went to our last Wiggles concert 2 weeks ago, and I will personally miss them so much.
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Mum loved taking my nieces and nephews to see the Wiggles, and is looking forward to taking KDot too. I love them as well!
I happened to go into town a couple of weeks ago when the concerts were on, it was lovely seeing the little Captains, Dorothys, Wags, etc running around excited to be seeing them.
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Urgh. I didn’t realise it looked like that. I thought it was just the regular blocks in pastel-ish colours.
I played with Lego. I don’t remember not wanting to play with it or feeling excluded coz it wasn’t ‘girl friendly’. I was just interested in playing Lego.
No, girls don’t need their own lego. Another ridiculous marketing strategy that helps to enforce segregation between sexes.
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My brother is 4 years older than me and we had lots of lego and duplo (bigger lego bricks) at home growing up. I loved playing with them and didn’t care that there weren’t any pink bricks – that was what my Barbies were for. I still love pink though!
When I was in Berlin in May I saw this in a shopping centre, I thought it was really cool!
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I’m not a parent, so perhaps one of you mums (or dads) could weigh in on this but is Lego not the creative toy it used to be? It seems like a lot of the sets I see have large and unusually shaped pieces that can only be used to make a very specific building or object. Don’t they sell plain blocks any more, so you can make whatever you like?
Because that’s what really struck me when I was looking at these pictures. There doesn’t appear to be much room for creativity at all.
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You can still buy the boxes of plain pieces, and in girl colours too! But they can charge a whole lot more for Star Wars lego!
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You are spot on there! My son has lego but doesn’t play with it much because he can only make certain things with certain bits. Not like the old days at all.
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You can buy basics, but they’re harder to find. Two years ago I bought my kids (1 girl, 1 boy) a 1600 piece box of plain lego, but it was only a special offer in the kmart mid year toy sale. I have seen smaller sets of plain blocks in places like toys r us. I too avoid buying the “kits” as I often find them too limiting as too how creative the kids can be.
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Great! Girls get to play with all the cool stuff…and I’m stuck with Mr Boring and his 1950s hair-cut…
…err, I mean…yuck! I don’t have time for that girls-stuff…I’m too busy building my lego death-star!!
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Don’t Lego already produce a ‘girls range’ called Belville????
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My daughter plays with the regular lego, she couldn’t care less what the colour is. I’m not loving the whole made up face look of the new girly lego, I’ve got to admit.
My other daughter’s favourite colour is red. She doesn’t want pink, yellow, purple or any of the other colours easily found in girls’ stores. She wants RED. And it’s got to be the right red. Fussy little buggar.
So yeah – not a fan of the new sparkly lego.
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