Inclusive advertising Lego

Swap.... good hair do on minifig lad

I kept on meaning to get around to buying the bank Cwenthryth then one day I checked and it had been retired. I mustn't make the same mistake with Assembly Square.

Its just some random one I cant remember we've had it years I think there was an ice cream kiosk and a hot tub or something. Maybe I'm remembering wrong then. She has mostly the city stuff and Minecraft. U can't move in my house fir hospitals fire stations and ocelots

I love putting minifig hair on the minidolls. I have given them some hilarious hair dos (and the other way around - Andrea's hair looks great on a minifig)

The development of Friends, while the marketing of them is problematic just as the marketing of the City line has been, is a huge improvement in terms of them acknowledging the importance of lots of aspects of play that they had previously avoided because it wasn't "boyish" enough

The city builders had to watch while friends builders got a school, hospital, hotel, a yacht, youth club, gym, decent cafes and a mega fairground whilst they got yet another police station and some more criminals to chase. They started producing far more varied sets for the city line, and more usable buildings in the smaller creator line because of friends.

What ones does your daughter have then Whatwould ? Are you sure she has actual Lego Friends and not another brand.

Those ones are nothing like the ones that dd has. Hers are definitely ganglier although she mainly has the city stuff. The Harry Potter lego has the more conventional style figures.

the body image portrayed in the friends sets is problematic

No child is going to get body issues of a tiny plastic figure. Pushing adult issues onto them might though. They don't have tiny waists. They have been made in proportion to be able to use lego accessories already available, they wear a variety of clothes, including skirts and they have shoes, because people wear shoes. Their hair is compatible with and used for normal minifigs so where is the 'big hair'?
A lot of girls prefer having the dolls with similar skin tone and hair colour/style to them too.

Aroundtheworld fingers crossed I am going to be able to display some of my builds later this year. Still not many shows scheduled to happen but some are planned.

Lego's sexism didn't start with the development of Friends, it started with them deciding boys were their main market and focusing the brand as a whole on playing up to male stereotypes and values and pushing it as a boys toy. That meant, for a long time, putting few female characters in the sets, focusing more on the sorts of subjects adults tended to push on boys (like vehicles and police) and steering away from subjects that boys associated with girls (like pink bricks and domestic builds) and mainly using boys in their focus groups and marketing.

The development of Friends, while the marketing of them is problematic just as the marketing of the City line has been, is a huge improvement in terms of them acknowledging the importance of lots of aspects of play that they had previously avoided because it wasn't "boyish" enough.

Lego have v few women in design / senior roles.

(Who thinks we need an Adult Women Fans of Lego thread to show off our builds?)

I like the Parisian restaurant, but mainly because I have populated my ‘town’ with Marvel, DC and Harry Potter characters so it’s fun to have Batman having dinner with Wolverine, next to Hermione and Spider-Man etc. DP and I swap them around from time to time and wait to see if the other notices. For the actual build I enjoyed the bank the best I think, I like the hidden story inside the build. I haven’t built the diner or the petrol station yet, they’re saved for a rainy weekend or next time I have a mental health dip, I find building Lego very therapeutic. Even breaking the builds down again and sorting and organising the bricks ready for a rebuild is soothing!

Winky yes the TV show is pants. The magazine has also recently stopped being published because it wasn't selling enough copies where the other comics (City, Batman, Ninjago etc) are still going. If we are going to go down the boy/girl stereotypes I have found boys do like easy to read comics - not many words, lots of pictures etc but girls would rather read a decent book and find those type of comics 'babyish'. As much as I agree that there shouldn't be girl toys/boy toys and everyone can just play with whatever they want and be whatever they want I also believe there are differences in the way girls and boys develop which does mean they play in different ways.

Dd2 loves lego. Some girls like.pink and purple. So do some boys. And lego wanting to make money Will obviously try and cater fir all tastes.

I agree the body image portrayed in the friends sets is problematic though and yes there need need he nore male characters in the friends sets. The city sets have female fire fighters drs and police officers.

To he fair to lego staff we have never been stopped at the till for attempting to buy the wrong ones and I'm yet to see staff or parents to be fair guide their children to specific shelves.

There's just alot of sighing gasping and empty wallets....

ordinary horses like they had back in the 90s
What like this set?

Here is one of my Friends builds. I built this from the parts from the Hot Dog Van and Emma's Art Studio.

I feel the need to defend Lego friends. It has huge amounts of fairgrounds rides, safari adventures, robots, garages. Some girls like pink, others green or blue.

It also has characters with big hair and big eyes and tiny waists, short skirts and detailed little shoes. Characters that come apart in your hands when you try to play with them but that's ok, they're for girls so they don't need to DO anything, just sit there looking pretty . Even the bloody Lego Friends horses have big eyes and skinny legs and 'swooshy' manes with bows in them, rather than just being plain ordinary horses like they had back in the 90's. They weren't feminine enough apparently.

I also hate the other extreme they're gone to with the (insert macho American voiceover here) boys lego - all weapons and dark colours and angry faces. What's wrong with the little yellow figures and the open ended building possibilities from back in the day?

Custardy I am baffled by what Friends sets you had that couldn't be rebuilt into something else. They ALL can be rebuilt. I will see if I can find a picture of one of my builds.

This is a shame because the LEGO City range is full of female cops, firefighters, skateboarders and deep-sea divers

Yes but isn't it funny how people cry about 'pink lego' yet don't seem to give a crap that city has always been in blue packaging and targeted at boys. Endless bloody police, fire stations, trains and construction. They might now add a few more female characters than they used to but still mainly aimed at boys.

My DD has never enjoyed the Friends sets as you build them and then they are too static, not designed to be pulled apart and rebuilt in different ways. It’s just glorified model-building

All lego can be pulled apart and rebuilt into something else, it simply requires imagination, and unless you buy creator 3 in 1 sets, which are still just model building from instructions, sets from all themes are single model only. Why single out friends?

But I've had to take out and bin the figures. They look emaciated next to normal lego people

Sorry but throwing them away is actually ridiculous. They just look like little figures. Children just see toys. Some prefer the mini dolls, some don't. What do think would happen to your child if allowed to play with them?

With regards to LEGO Friends, while it is all too pink and 'girly' for my tastes (never mind the minidolls replacing minifigures), I can't really condemn a company for taking the advice of their market researchers.

LEGO noticed that their share of the girls' market was very poor and did research to find why. The net result was a product which was much more 'girly' but which has been a commercial success.

fuelcycle.com/blog/market-research-done-right-how-market-research-gave-lego-a-facelift/

Effectively we have a chicken and egg problem. Girls are socialised to gravitate towards these sort of products. Even when parents do their best to raise their daughters in a more neutral way there are huge influences from friends/classmates and popular culture. If a toy company bathes its products in pink, it perpetuates this but if it instead only produces neutral products then they don't sell as well. How do we break this cycle? Both companies and parents need to be pulling in the same direction to change this strong culture.

This is a shame because the LEGO City range is full of female cops, firefighters, skateboarders and deep-sea divers.

I had pink Lego in the 90s. I loved it as it was all mine and my brother couldn't touch it. Similarly, I couldn't touch his technic. The normal Lego was shared.

He used to borrow my plastic animals (puppy in my pocket) to use on his knex creations as they were perfect sized.
I played subbeuto with him when he needed an opponent.

So we shared and didn't share.
I have an Engineering degree. We were strongly encouraged in Maths and Sciences as children.

I played with Lego all the time as a child in the 80’s. Never once occurred to me it was a boys’ toy. All my friends liked Lego.

My DD has never enjoyed the Friends sets as you build them and then they are too static, not designed to be pulled apart and rebuilt in different ways. It’s just glorified model-building.