Not to mention the "genderizing" for boys...the message being that the world is war/battle-centric with most Lego sets having this as a theme...or even the Lego City sets that feature bulldozers and other such machines that (in my way of thinking) are intended more for destruction rather than construction...or cops and rescue themes/figures that imply that the world is in constant crisis, which it is in many ways, I just don't want my little ones growing up with that mindset.  I was pleased to see this year that Lego reissued the classic set of multicolored bricks that have no theme, the one's I grew up with that allowed me to use my imagination and create the world I wished to see.

This is spot-on. I remember the 70s and getting Legos - they just seemed like a gender-neutral toy.

This is like making Jenga pink and sparkly. Stupid.

This is so strange to me.  I recall certain lego collections being aimed at boys, but just legos in general were pretty gender neutral to me as little as ten years ago; there were girls on the large box sets and no one considered it a boy toy (and I still don't know that it's restricted to the "boy aisle."  I think it's simply the "lego aisle" or "block aisle" though I haven't been to a toy store aside from Target since I was about 8).  It's not even really the existence of these sets (I'd have liked one when I was younger) so much as the fact that this has to be some separate "girl version" of a presumed "boy toy."

I wouldn't say that it was compeltely genderless, judging by the colors. On the other hand, missing a few light pinks and purples is more forgivable than this

So we just gloss over "Olivia’s Inventor’s Workshop?" I think the idea of a female inventor with a lab and robot is a pretty frickin HUGE leap for girls, considering the recent talk about so few women in STEM.I mean, I get that there's still a long way to go, but it's not fair to exclude things for sake of a personal narrative.

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The lego set my sister had in the early 60s was a box of bricks and windows doors etc. My son's set in the late 70s had wheels and there were a bit more "themed" to make specific items. My husband complained the other day that now lego was just a kit to make one specific thing

In fact, girls don’t feel like the toy is for them because Lego has done everything in its power to ensure that they will not.

Sometimes blatantly so: http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/newsfeatures/article/1097351--lego-under-fire-for-custom-toy-that-can-t-have-girls-names

The product is now up at lego.com -- the opening screen shows five animated "mini-doll" figures in a parklike setting, exchanging casual pats and what look like gossippy whispers.  The opening screen at friends.lego.com shows the same five figures, but now with names -- and their names are *the only links on the page*, as if the new line is going to be primarily character-centered rather than building-centered.  (At that it's an improvement over the "Belville" line, which involved almost no building at all.)

I feel old school since I do not qualify anything but the '81 picture as Lego. If it can only be conceivably turned into what the construction manual tells me, then it is not Lego. My Lego definitely was 'male', but since I lost most of the manuals, I didn't even know what the stuff was originally! Some of the ones I did have were not 'male', though, like a Pizza place.

Is this new? Coincidentally, I was talking to a friend about how I used to love Legos. They were either gender neutral or I was able to find hotels, horse farms, and other things that interested me...then all of a sudden it was Star Wards or other things that didn't interest me. It was ALL directed at boys. So it's swung back, maybe a little too far (the dolls seem disturbing) but its nice to have things that aren't directed at boys.

I had a kid in my shop yesterday (4-6 year old girl)  who was obviously feeling totally distressed, dissed and disoriented because there was no wall-o-pink.  She was actually wailing "There's no girl toys!   Where are the girl toys?  Why aren't there any girl toys?!!   until an adult who seemed to be her father finally said, conversationally,  "There aren't boy toys and girl toys, there are just TOYS!"   She subsided,  but clearly  knew different.   At the time I just said "Thanks for saying that"  but I also got down to kid level when they left and tried to see what she had been seeing - and it was clear that she wasn't seeing Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Wonder Woman,  Bessie Smith, Beverly Crusher, Althea Gibson,  Susan B. Anthony, Ivie Anderson, Marge and Lisa Simpson, Bella Abzug, Rosie the Riveter,   or Ruby Bridges.   (My shop is heavy on pop culture/nostalgia/music/memorabilia/history stuff- from-the-last-century, mostly up to about the late seventies,early eighties).  

Which is about the time every damn thing for girls became pink.

I'm curious how these will go over with my 9yo daughter. She absolutely HAD to have the Space Shuttle Lego set, and got and promptly put together the "City" garbage truck she got as a present. She also wanted to put together my son's police helicopter after he was done with it.

We'd have gotten her more sets of her own if she hadn't also asked for a bunch of American Girl stuff...

I loved Barbies as a kid. But I also loved Legos for the exact opposite reason. My favorite things to build were cars, pirate ships, and Star Wars vessels like the Millennium Falcon. Girls especially do not need Legos to replicate the Barbie experience (or substitute for Susie Homemaker). I was secretly proud that I was good at Legos, which even as a child I knew was considered a toy for boys (though my own brother rarely ever went near them). 

I love that old ad from the 80s. It captures exactly how Legos made me feel--empowered.

I just sent the following letter to Lego: 

I was a lego girl since I was 2 back in the late seventies.  They were my favorite toys from
toddlerdom on through preteen years.  I dropped them during your lack-of-bricks/prefab phase, and happily started collecting them again when you returned to bricks, but I will never buy
the "Friends" line for my daughter, and it actually makes me not want to take her to a lego store.

I'm sending you a link to a
very well written sociological article about the company's marketing
towards girls over the years.  Please send it to someone who can make a difference by
seeing it.  It is quickly circulating all over the world on parent
lists and Facebook.

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/01/01/beauty-and-the-new-lego-line-for-girls/

You
may be aware of a growing backlash against the stereotyped over-the top
stereotypical feminine things (the pink aisle in the toy store, the
princess industry, the prostitute-looking clothes marketed to toddler
girls, etc.).   The Friends line at least nods to possible
intelligence and stereotype-breaking by including an inventor's lab, but
what made lego a great toy for all kids was that it was not
genderized.  Girls like castles.  They like town stuff, they like
trains, they like pirates.  We're very glad to
see more girl minifigs than they had when we were kids, but this
pinky-stereotype girls line is going the wrong direction.

A while back the company gradually made the mistake of making the
toys less bricks and more huge pieces to assemble.  They lost their
fan-base for a while, sales dropped.  They lost what made lego wonderful
and made it more like everything else.  It took a while, but the
company finally clued in and went back to bricks, and made it easier to
use bricks with great online programs to let the customer do the
designing.

Thank you for that, but you're doing it again- stepping back from
what makes Lego great and unique.  The company is jumping on the
horrible pink bandwagon that people are finally starting to realize is
wrong and are beginning to jump off of.

Please reconsider your strategy.  You don't want to lose your dedicated fans again.

This isn't actually new. Belleville and I think Scala, which wasn't available here (Australia), were both aimed at girls. I used to rather like Belleville, though they were larger, jointed figures. But again, they had a similar theme, all pastels and princesses, though there was a hospital and male figures too. There's nothing inherently wrong with having such things, but I do find the "shapely" tiny figures a bit unneccessary.

I guess they are "pretty" to fit the theme though. Are they as customisable as the original type of figure though?

Toys and such have gotten far more gendered since we were kids.  Little girls are sold this super feminzed pink and purple bs and told what they are supposed to be so hard these days.  It's so weird considering where we were not so long ago.  I can't get my head around it. 

I had a great time playing with Legos as a little girl in the late 70's at the age of 6.  Now that I am a mom I thought it would be a great idea to take my girls to the Lego store to get them some sets but was disappointed at the lack of girl products they had.  It is sad to see that they are missing the boat and not developing more girl or even more gender neutral builder sets.  I mean, I can only buy so many House Sets and I've already scooped up the 3 sets that have 'girl color' bricks in them. 

My friend Jacob D. posted this comment (in quotes below) when I shared the link to this article, and it was just too good not to pass upstream. Interesting that the story Lego is telling about itself is one of a massive makeover (so to speak) of what had become a boy-centric company. While it does seem to be advertising this new line fairly heavily, this makes the story sound more like marketing than anything more substantial.

"Not the first time that Lego has gone girly though:

Paradisa - minifig-based: http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Paradisa
Belville - larger, more realistically-shaped figs: http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Belville
Scala - Barbie-size figs: http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Scala
Clikits - mostly jewelry/accessory stuff: http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Clikits"

NPR recently features this issue, and gave some interesting background on the gender implications as well:
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/15/143724644/ith-new-toys-lego-hopes-to-build-girls-market

Are you joking? I'm so saddened by this! I loved LEGOs as a child and recently was talking to a couple of people and they thought that girls didn't play with LEGOs. I played with Barbies and Tonka trucks, thanks you very much.

I think your take on the alleged research behind the new lego toy line is a bit weird and your critique seems forced. Doing anthropological research is NOT about 'wow, these people are so weird'. It's a way of systematizing observations of interactions between people so as to lift it outside of the purely anecdotal sphere, and to provide explanations of our social worlds. As a sociologist, you should know that. I, for one, think that a study about how girls interact with toys at home seems perfectly legit, and it's crude to just dismiss it out of hand (seriously, what's with the square quotes on science?).

Yeah sure, even if the researchers through a totally sound study found that girls like toys typically marketed to be for girls (I wouldn't be surprised), we can still object to the lego company's decision to go with it. But the way you put up your critisism really bugs me.

Nooooo! I grew up with Lego and was looking forward to passing on my love of Lego (which I'm sure helped inspire my career path in technology), to my kids of whatever gender. I was the little girl in the 1981 poster. The best lego were the simple blocks that you could turn into anything - I particularly liked to build robots with digestive systems. The next best was Space Lego.

Legos were one of my favorite toys when I was a kid in the 80s.  I'd use them to design restaurants and stores and things just like what these sets are meant to build -- but these would have bored me!  The fun of Legos is creating something new, not assembling a pre-made design.  (I never understood the kits "for boys" that told you what to build!)  These toys may as well not be made of Legos at all.  They don't seem to have enough pieces for there to be a lot of variations on the design.

This post makes me uncomfortable and disappointed in Sociological Images, along with everyone else who has heard about "girl LEGO" and immediately assumed no previous attempts at girl LEGO have happened, and that these sets are awful and bad for girls.  There are people - my mother among them - who take "feminism" to mean "girly things are gross and stupid because they're associated with woman, who are inferior" and truncate it to "girly things are gross and stupid."  They then police and shame the gender expression of other people (especially their kids). 

I really, really respect My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic for not tumbling down the hole of "feminine people, especially girls, are frivolous stupid teeny-bopper princess airhead whores and valuable people, especially female ones, are manly and tough."  Yes, the girls do more nurturing and more cooperating than happens in some stories.  Yes, these girls are not tremendously masculine - even Rainbow Dash isn't all that butch.  Maybe, having been friends with competitive and consistently aggressive people, masculinely combative behavior isn't all it's cracked up to be. 

The actual Belville sets my little sisters begged for were really crappy, imo, and not great at storytelling.  I am one of the 90's girls who played with a lot of the "big kits that build one specific thing" and loved them.  But the Belville houses were poorly designed and nothing of interest occurred in Belville.  Nurturing play isn't intrinsically a bad thing, and LEGO's move towards character-driven play has always made sense to me.  Have any of you read a book lately?  Seen a fandom?  Most people are most drawn to people, to stories that are fundamentally about people. 

There's something messy and sort of desirable in the more explicitly racialized and gendered "ladyfigs" - because minifigs were never terribly feminine, because we spend so much time convincing little girls that the square, yellow unmarked case is white and male that it rarely occurs to them that such an entity includes them, too, without markers like long hair and eyelashes and lipstick.  (I also stole LEGO Hermione and reassembled figures to have many more androgynous girls in my play.)

So here's to more LEGO animals, to a car that explicitly belongs to a girl, to music, to baking, to invention, to darker-skinned and curly-haired LEGO girls (yes yes yes), to medical care, to fashion, to more animal figures (/everyone/ loves LEGO animals, or did once, or never had them), to chalkboards, to form and function both given value (purple. screwdrivers. tools that aren't that ugly gray.  inner twelve-year-old is squeeing, brb.), to permission to be femme and to inclusion of lots of girls. 

Here's to Emma and Rarity and my loved ones with those traits being as worthwhile, as competent, and as thoughtful as any female person whose interests don't include color theory and clothing.  I just want LEGO Friends to include and be open to more feminine boys as well.

Personally, I think the fact that the 1981 ad features a girl and the word "beautiful" so prominently is in itself highly gendered. A word like "amazing" or "wonderful" or "original" would have worked just as well for describing the project (and the child). Before we can call an ad "gender neutral" we must be able to put a child of any sex in it and have it mean the same thing. While I, along with many other moms, would easily say, "that's beautiful" to a little boy holding their creation, I seriously doubt that Lego--or any other toy--marketers would have put that particular word in print if a little boy had been featured. Consistently linking "beauty" to "femaleness" is one of patriarchy's most effective tactics.

Normally this kind of thing irritates me, but somehow, I'm not too bothered by this.  I played with legos AND dolls when I was a kid, and I loved both.  I see nothing wrong with these "doll Legos", although I agree that there are significant problems with gendering toys like this.  I have to admit, though, that I would have absolutely loved to own some of these sets when I was a child.  I would have been ALL over Olivia's inventor's workshop and her tree house complete with telescope.  There was (and still is) a severe lack of science-oriented play figures aimed at girls.  I'm glad Lego is rectifying this at least a little bit even if it's an imperfect effort.  I wandered over to the Lego friends website, and the "About Me" section on Olivia's page makes her seem like a pretty positive role model, too: she loves "friends, science, school, drawing, inventing things, nature, hiking, photography, history" and she's "also good at reading maps, navigation by the stars, building things, [and] computers."  Granted, she's just one of the five characters, and most of the rest seem pretty stereotypical and "safe" in terms of girls' toys, but I don't think they're terrible.

I had a few Belville dolls/mini-figs when I was a little girl, and I didn't like them for the same reason I wouldn't like these new girl mini-dolls - you can't make them sit.

In both of these toy-lines the designers were so worried about the toys outer appearance, they didn't include the holes in their backsides. This means if you put the doll in a lego car/on a horse when you start to move them around the doll will simply slide off.

Personally I kinda like that they're changing the style of the lego people. I always thought they were really chunky and ugly when I was growing up 20-odd years ago. I didn't have barbies and I was playing with my slightly older brother and, well, yeah - we both thought they were a pretty pathetic representation of a person. Also the female lego people always had skirts, so their legs couldn't be individually manipulated, which pretty much just led me to hating them even more :P

We ended up just playing with the lego blocks and matchbox cars instead.

Seriously this is yet another article written in earnest but with glaring mistakes and a very backwards attitude.

Lego has had feminine products for over 40 years.

http://www.brickset.com/browse/themes/?theme=Homemaker
http://www.brickset.com/browse/themes/?theme=Scala
http://www.brickset.com/browse/themes/?theme=Clikits
http://www.brickset.com/browse/themes/?theme=Belville

This is not a new phenomenon, following any sort of "trend."

The circles you run in would shame me for wanting to be domestic (enjoying time in my home), vain (caring at all about my appearance), materialistic (caring about owning nice things), or even enjoying pastel color schemes. This article has told me in very clear terms that it's not okay for me to be any of those things. Way to promote a caring society with misunderstood half-truths about a product you haven't understood for 30 years and a clear effort at shaming me for enjoying the things this company makes and shaming the company for making the things I would enjoy. 

Though it wouldn't surprise me to learn that there's a lady veterinarian.

The job of a business is to generate a profit for shareholders. Their products are designed to "send messages", they're designed to generate a return on investment. Marketers take the world as a given & then tailor their products and advertising to that world. Lego realized that the world has has become increasingly genderized (eg, to my constant frustration Target now has separate aisles for "men" soaps & "women" soaps). Lego responded by genderizing their products. This is not Lego's fault, but it is the reality they confront. Their move is beyond defensible, as a business its obligatory.

Great article. I was really peeved over the holiday because I was shopping for my 3 yo who finally "gets" Christmas this year and I kept finding toys that were separated into gender-specific groups -"for boys", "for girls". Why?

She got an advent calendar from her dad. It was the Legos Star Wars one. And she loved it and worked on each one every night with her dad. She's a kid who loves pink, stuffed animals, Star Wars and Legos. Why does she need to be a girl or a boy to appreciate any of them? I hate what marketers are doing to our kids.

The article misses a very important point. The pattent for the design of the Lego blocks has expired. That means that now anybody can build Lego compatible blocks, and therefore, there is no added value in Lego's generic gender-neutral old fashioned products so the customers would buy other cheaper brands before paying extra for Lego. Lego was aware of this and years ago decided to introduce exclusive collections, extensive branding, and the focus on boys mentioned in the article.

The bottom line is: If you want gender-neutral blocks, don't buy Lego. There are other toy makers offering it at a lower cost.
If you are brand sensitive, then pay the extra, with the obvious marketing overload.

Today while shopping for three girls aged 7, 6 and 5, I came across the new "girl Lego" and almost barfed (my own 4-year-old daughter just proudly built the Lego police station she got for Christmas).  Then, after a fruitless 30-minute circumnavigation of the rest of the toy store, I returned and bought 3 of the girl Lego sets - I went with the least offensive 'treehouse' and 'puppy rescue' varieties.  Why?  Because the rest of the "girl" offerings on the shelves threatened to make me lose my lunch even more.

I bypassed the "makeup science" kits, the Project Runway fashion creator line, the bedazzling craft sets, the mini-kitchen implements, the princess dresses and heels, the toy vacuum (!) and the countless other pink products aimed at girls their age.  The remaining Lego kits were almost exclusively Star Wars, Pirates, Ninjago and Cars 2 brands which, sorry, I was pretty confident these particular girls weren't into.  So I rationalized that at least they would be building something. 

I HATE gift shopping for girls in this type of environment - and this was an "educational" toy store to boot!  Any suggestions?!? 

As adults we tend to overthink things in the interest of equality, PC, egalitarianism, etc.

Sometimes we should let things be - I have six children (3 boys and 3 girls) ranging from 5 to 18 yrs. They like kicking a football, playing with Barbies, shooting nerf guns, watching musicals/theatre, watching Ben 10, playing with lego, etc, etc.

All activities have included all children at one stage or another; ie, boys fighting over who gets to play with the Barbie Princess to which girl can kick the football the farthest. In fact it is just whatever takes their fancy, they like to play, interact and be creative - be it pink and pretty or dirty and sweaty.

So if Lego want to 'humanise' their characters by giving them shape and adding a range of pastel colour to an otherwise bland pallet then so be it.

I have always taken Lego to be whatever you make of it. You start with the directions and then create your own designs. So let's start with the shapely female hairdresser in the salon and finish with her swapping with the traffic cop or the construction worker. 

In my opinion anything that gives them a creative alternative to computers and tv is a bonus.

That minifig is not an old style one. It is the Cleopatra from Series 5 (2011) of the collectable minifigs. Notice how they give her a female figure by putting those two little black semi-circles where her waist would be. It creates the illusion of having hips. It's something you won't find in older figures (
http://www.o2sn.dk/jesper/lego/vintage/vintage5.jpg ). Also she has that giant block instead of legs. It's supposed to be a dress. It means she can't do stuff, like sit down, or pose like she's running, or something. 

I'm not a fan of the new Friends figs, as they can't be integrated with any other Lego sets. But I assure you, if you ask any little 5 year old girl what her favourite colour is, she will say pink. So Lego just makes what they think will sell. Although, I kinda of wish they did something more creative with it, the Lego figs should at least get an awesome car or something. 

As for the collectable minifigs series, they always have 16 figures in the series (which has a lot of adult fans by the way), and they've only ever had 2 or 3 women figures in each series, such as "nurse", "lifeguard", "popstar", "tennis player", "hula dancer" etc etc. Series 6 however is having 5 women figures (better, but not good enough in my opinion) which include a flamenco dancer, the Statue of Liberty, a surgeon, a skater chick, and an "intergalactic girl" which would be a cool figure if she wasn't wearing a damned pink space suit.

Check it out here: http://minifigures.lego.com/en-us/Bios/Default.aspx

This is extremely frustrating to me!  I played with lego sets (like the girl in the 1981 ad) during my childhood in the 90's and I loved them!  I hate that the only place now that I can get a bucket of legos (not a set) is at the Mall of America Lego Store.

Also, I recently wrote about this very topic http://rachelahanson.wordpress.com/wp-admin/index.php?page=stats

Let's forget for a second that the new girls' sets are vapid and hyper-feminine. Look how EASY they are to assemble! Can't they at least make a girly car or house or something that is challenging? Why must it offend girls' intellect as well?

Lets face it: a lot of the new "lego sets" out there (for boys OR girls) aren't really lego anymore. They've completely sucked the imagination out of it. They're more like mini-ikea furniture with step by step instructions on how the construction is "supposed" to be put together.

Love the article. My daughter (13) makes and then sells Lego Manchester United football players on eBay.  She sells them to boys. Entrepreneur. 

Reminds me of this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OrMT8Wv9mI

I loved my brother's legos and asked for some of my own so I didn't have to sneak into his room to play with his.  My parents gave me a little box of purple, pink, and white legos.  I was no spoiled brat, but I was so offended I cried later.  I hated pink, didn't want to build pink houses or pink cars.  I just wanted LEGOS.  ...Finally bought them for myself in PRIMARY (not "boy") colors when I was 25.  DREAMS DO COME TRUE!

uffda. 

My daughter liked legos a lot more than my son seems to like them.  Of course, now that they've added boobs, may be in a few years he'll take an interest, depending on what his gender orientation turns out to be.  

Has Sociological Images posted about the representation of women in Legos before?  Why, yes.  Yes it has. 
(That was also an awesome post.)

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/04/03/lego-has-disappointed-me/

my daughter says those girlie legos look stupid!!

My daughter wanted these when we went to a local lego store last week. I was bemused, normally she doesn't approve of the girly stuff. (I'm proud of her, six years old and already defying stereotypes).
When we got home, she commenced to hang the "girly" figures from the ceiling (she said they were 'ugly') as she messily attempted to color the pink ones green. I think she just wanted the set, not the colors or the dolls...That's my girl. Although I did not approve of the mess she made...

I had Legos as a child.  They were just bricks and a flat piece you could stick them to.  I enjoyed using my imagination and creating whatever I wanted.  I grew up to be an architect.  I am female.

Here's my take. As an uncle of 4, I keep a ton of legos at my house for all the kids to play with. Robots and Lord of the Rings, mostly. When the girls come over, they play for 10 seconds and then get bored with the orcs and catapults. They complained, to I bought a bunch of Friends legos. From my perspective, the fact that legos exist that the girls find entertaining is awesome.

I understand the gender targeting argument, but at my house, they aren't in pink boxes, they are just bricks to play with, and the Friends line has the blue and purple, and orange, and yes, pink bricks that the girls like. They also have cute animals!

My major beef with the mini-dolls, is not that they look like skinny perfect girls, it's that they are less functional than a standard lego: The legs/but doesn't attach so they can't attatch to a stud except while standing, and the wrists do not rotate. In my opinion, I think it's ok to have "pretty" legos - my nieces like "pretty" things. But when these things are less functional, that sends a bad message.