Do girls need "special" Legos?

[Momvic5]

No, they don't, but they can enjoy them too. I have two sons and one daughter. We have a billion Legos in this house. I often joke that we could have a very happy retirement if we sold all of our Lego. Anyways...My oldest will be sixteen soon so we have been collecting Legos for years. When he was about five or six years old, McDonalds gave Lego sets in their Happy Meals. I remember being so excited about them - some of the bricks were pink! Then a few years later, we found a house and stable set that included pink and purple bricks. Out of the billion pieces that we have accumulated over the years, we have less than 200 pieces in pink and purple. My daughter has enjoyed all of the Legos and their colors, but those pink and purple pieces have always been her favorite. Give the children choices and let them decide what they like.

 

[Momvic5]

What I don't like about Legos now is that they are sold almost entirely in kits with directions. When I was a kid in the 70's and 80's, the sets may have had a few ideas for buildings and such, but they weren't so specific as they are now. Now you can buy a Staw Wars kit, follow the directions, and voila, you have a SW figure. Where is the imagination in that???

.

My kids only build the actual kit one time, and then it is destroyed and becomes individual pieces for imaginative play.

 

[iheartdisney]

So what do we do with the girls who ARE interested in bakeries and pet grooming and like the color pink? They can't play with Legos?

I see there is a double-standard here.

Double standard? nope, just the same old standard. Keep on teaching our girls they need not worry their pretty little heads about anything but shopping and getting their nails done.
And don't forget that to emphasize the importance of their breasts!! You aren't a girl if you don't have breasts!

 

[goofy!]

Just got an email about a new product line Lego is introducing for the "other 50% of the population." The sets are a cafe, a pool to lounge by, a club to sing in and of course...shopping.

Somehow this just feels wrong to me. I remember having Legos as a kid and they were just Legos. There was no gender specific direction. By the time my niece came along, there were much better sets, but still gender less. She built castles and houses and a lot of Harry Potter sets. Sure, some of her play may have been different from the boys, but she didn't need "special" sets to do it.

I would rather see Lego stay gender neutral and let kids use their imaginations the way they want to and not see girls and boys guided into sets that are "right" for them.

No.

I was very happy using the blocks to design whatever I wanted.

However, I abhor all the 'themes" and instructions to build something.

I much prefer a bucket of all different bricks to allow the child to use their imagination to build, boy or girl.

Of course, that expensive star wars ship does end up as a pile of bricks after a month or two

 

[robinb]

Double standard? nope, just the same old standard. Keep on teaching our girls they need not worry their pretty little heads about anything but shopping and get heir nails done.
And don't forget that to emphasize the importance of their breasts!! You aren't a girl if you don't have breasts!

I felt the same way as you did ... until I had a girl. As much as I tried to steer her to the more "boyish" toys, she was bound and determined to like "girly" toys. She has a mind of her own and it's her own individuality I celebrate. I'm as OK with her being girly as much as I was not girly.

 

[MrsJackSparrow4Life]

No they don't "need" them...but then again no child "needs" Legos in the first place.

Unless they are totally replacing all the old Legos with these new girly versions I don't see how selling them is a bad thing. Some girls (and some boys for that matter) want pink and purple Legos and this gives them the option. Options are a good thing IMO.

 

[funnygarcia]

LEGO put a bunch of money into re-designing a line aimed at girls, interesting read in a recent Bloomberg Business Week magazine.


http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/lego-is-for-girls-12142011.html?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5

"The company’s confidence is evident in the launch—a full line of 23 different products backed by a $40 million global marketing push.

To develop Lego Friends... It recruited top product designers and sales strategists from within the company, had them join forces with outside consultants, and dispatched them in small teams to shadow girls and interview their families over a period of months in Germany, Korea, the U.K., and the U.S.

The research techniques and findings have been controversial at Lego from the moment it became clear that if the company were serious about appealing to girls, it would have to do something about its boxy minifigure, its 4-centimeter plastic man with swiveling legs, a yellow jug-head, and a painted-on face. “Let’s be honest: Girls hate him"............


Encouraged by what it had learned about boys, Lego sent its team back out to scrutinize girls, starting in 2007. The company was surprised to learn that in their eyes, Lego suffered from an aesthetic deficit. “The greatest concern for girls really was beauty,” says Hanne Groth, Lego’s market research manager. Beauty, on the face of it, is an unsurprising virtue for a girl-friendly toy, but based on the ways girls played, Groth says, it came, as “mastery” had for boys, to stand for fairly specific needs: harmony (a pleasing, everything-in-its-right-place sense of order); friendlier colors; and a high level of detail.

Twenty-nine mini-doll figures will be introduced in 2012, all 5 millimeters taller and curvier than the standard dwarf minifig. There are five main characters. Like American Girl Dolls, which are sold with their own book-length biographies, these five come with names and backstories."


-----------------------------------------
Interesting stuff... hope it works for them as I know the other girl LEGO items were big flops.

 

[HelenePA]

Double standard? nope, just the same old standard. Keep on teaching our girls they need not worry their pretty little heads about anything but shopping and getting their nails done.
And don't forget that to emphasize the importance of their breasts!! You aren't a girl if you don't have breasts!

so its okay if my girls wanna play with blue legos just not pink or purple ones?

 

[brookmey]

DD loves Legos and plays with her brother's Lego City sets, but she did not want any sets for Christmas because "they're all for boys." Instead she wanted a bucket of them. What did she put in the bucket? Flower pieces, picket fences, and all the pink, white and purple Legos she could find. She had her pick of hundreds of pieces, of all colors, but yet she picked the "girly" ones. When she saw the Friends line, she was thrilled.

She bought the vet set, the invention set and the cafe with her Christmas money. Her reasons? She likes animals and taking care of them, she wants to be a scientist when she grows up so the invention set caught her eye, and she also wants to open a restaurant or bakery when she grows up, like the cafe. She does not want to be a policeman, firefighter, superhero, or pirate.

Legos is just trying to appeal to a wider demographic. Some girls like the sets people consider to be masculine, but others like the more feminine ones, too.

I may be rambling because it's late, but last year during the end of the year party for DD's 1st grade class, the students stood in front of the parents and individually talked about what they wanted to be when they grew up. All of the girls, except 1, wanted to be either a fashion designer, model, singer, makeup artist, vet, teacher and actress. DD was the only girl who said she wanted to be a bug scientist, adventure girl or a baker. But yet she still loves the new Legos.

Just because Lego came out with a new line of sets like Friends, it does not mean they think less of girls. They're just realizing they can reach a broader audience by creating sets that girls will be interested in, like all the girls in DD's 1st grade class.

I am rambling, I should never reply to something after midnight. This probably won't make any sense in the morning!

 

[Jey12]

I kind of view all toys as gender neutral. If you're looking for a lego set it's the "boys" section of toys you go to. DD loves Star Wars, and she loves the playskool preschool star wars sets they have. We find those between transformers and batman stuff. Next we'll go to the next aisle and look at littlest pet shop items along with the princess stuff. I view it all as non gender specific. If I had a DS and he wanted to play with littlest pet shop we'd be over in that aisle looking and I wouldn't give it a second thought.

My question is why is it ok for a kid (boys and girls) to pretend to be a ninja or fighting the evil empire, but pretending to be a pet groomer or go shopping isn't ok? I just don't see how a set of legos that has pink blocks is going to automatically make a little girl grow up to be something awful. Sometimes I think people just think too much and need to let kids play.

I like the new lego friends set, except for the characters, I too think they should have stayed with the classic lego character. At the same time I can see where the new figures would appeal to different kids. As for the breasts, I'm not sure why or when we all became scared of them, but girls do or more than likely will have breasts. I'm going to imagine when DD turns 6 in a few days she is going to get a few of these new lego sets, along with star wars and littlest pet shop. Later at home I fully expect to find her having Yoda and Luke Skywalker taking their dogs to the lego cafe for a snack.

 

[funnygarcia]

LEGO could have spent less on research.
They would just need to read posts on the DIS.

 

[Kat77]

I think the new sets are awesome! I only wish they used classic minifigs.

 

[Planogirl]

I always wonder why so much of what is designed for girls has to come in pink? I always say that it looks like a giant Pepto Bismol bottle was spilled when we walk by the Barbie toys. I disliked pink from the time I was small and just don't see why so much has to be pink.

Also, I don't see why Star Wars is meant for boys. There is Princess Leia and Amidala and plenty of female Jedis. I like to believe that space can be for everyone - that is as long as no one ever comes out with a pink Millenium Falcon.

 

[cornflake]

I may be rambling because it's late, but last year during the end of the year party for DD's 1st grade class, the students stood in front of the parents and individually talked about what they wanted to be when they grew up. All of the girls, except 1, wanted to be either a fashion designer, model, singer, makeup artist, vet, teacher and actress. DD was the only girl who said she wanted to be a bug scientist, adventure girl or a baker. But yet she still loves the new Legos.

That is kind of desperately depressing.

 

[Planogirl]

That is kind of desperately depressing.

ITA. I think that all of those are fine occupations but where are the engineers and the IT people and pilots and so on? Are young girls still so traditional in their thinking?

 

[Magic Mom]

Obviously they are simply trying to widen their appeal. Some girls are NOT into Star Wars and Pirates of the Carribbean etc. so should they just write them off? Of course not.....they are doing what any smart company does. It's not as if they are abandoning the other sets. Girls who like to play with police cars and ninjas will continue to do so and those who don't? Well now they will have an alternative.

Let's face it, girls do tend to be wired differently. There's nothing wrong with embracing it

This.

Nobody "needs" Legos at all, but kids love them. So if there is a market for princess legos, why wouldn't they make them? Plus nobody says they are only for girls.

 

[ilovemk76]

Just got an email about a new product line Lego is introducing for the "other 50% of the population." The sets are a cafe, a pool to lounge by, a club to sing in and of course...shopping.

Somehow this just feels wrong to me. I remember having Legos as a kid and they were just Legos. There was no gender specific direction. By the time my niece came along, there were much better sets, but still gender less. She built castles and houses and a lot of Harry Potter sets. Sure, some of her play may have been different from the boys, but she didn't need "special" sets to do it.

I would rather see Lego stay gender neutral and let kids use their imaginations the way they want to and not see girls and boys guided into sets that are "right" for them.

Standard blocks might be gender neutral but Star Wars, motor cycles and the like are definitely not gender neutral sets.

Lego knows what they are doing. They found out that only 7% of girls play with Legos. They are marketing to the girls who do not want Star Wars. If the this encourages the girls to want to build other stuff with the preferred color Legos and kitbash those sets into a castle that is a good thing.

 

[ilovemk76]

What I don't like about Legos now is that they are sold almost entirely in kits with directions. When I was a kid in the 70's and 80's, the sets may have had a few ideas for buildings and such, but they weren't so specific as they are now. Now you can buy a Staw Wars kit, follow the directions, and voila, you have a SW figure. Where is the imagination in that???

I think the basic sets from the past were much more gender-neutral because they really didn't push you to make any one specific thing. Boy or girl, you came up with an idea and you built it. Now, the kits take imagination out of the equation and, yes, they do tend to be more boy oriented.

What I honestly wish they would do is drop the kits entirely and start selling basic blocks in a wider variety of colors (including pink and purple). Of course, they won't because the kits are popular even though they suck so much creativity out of playtime.

There would not be a Lego company today is if was not for those kits. Once you have 10,000 Lego block why do you need another 1,000? The kits made that demand.

You can build the kit, save the directions and then later tear it down to build something else in your imagination. In the future you can then rebuild, after a long Lego hunt, the original again.

 

[jrmasm]

That is kind of desperately depressing.

Not really. They're not 6 years old for forever. For many of those girls, their goals will change dramatically as they age.

 

[TinkerBelled]

The problem for me is not the 'girly' lego design (though I was always very happy to play with the old legos). It's the very, very limited range of things that these girly legos are set up to do.

If they had come out with 'girly' doctor legos, scientist legos, teacher legos, chef legos, vet legos, race car driver legos, (as well as the friend legos) I wouldn't have a problem. It's not that the feminine legos exist--it's that the kits they come with and the activities they suggest are so limiting. As if the things girls should concentrate on (the only things) are beauty, shopping, and socializing.