Seems Mums don't play with Lego...

[EduCated]

...at least not according to one of this week's MN competitions

Let Dad relax and have some fun, quality time with the kids. Grab a box of LEGO and see where their imaginations take them. With the LEGO brick you can build anything your imagination desires, as the latest TV ad from LEGO shows.

LEGO has been covering playroom floors since 1949 and today it is still the number one kids construction toy. So popular is LEGO worldwide, that there are now 80 LEGO bricks to every person in the world! Why not challenge Dads and kids to see what they could build with 80 LEGO Bricks?

To celebrate the joy of LEGO, four Mumsnetters can win a LEGO Build & Play Box. The children are going to love it and Dad's will feel a sense of childhood nostalgia as they get back to playtime basics and build with the kids.

If Dad's are after some building inspiration, check out the latest TV ad from LEGO, tissues at the ready.



I mean, really? Are single mums allowed to enter, or is having a Dad in the house mandatory?

[SteamWisher]

I love Lego. I've been building DS's sets every evening although DH has now taken over.

[NothingMoreScaryThanAHairy]

Bloody hell! that's appalling HTF did that get onto the website!!!!!

For the record dh is shit not very good at lego where as I love it (and ikea which is lego for grown ups!).

Come on MN you can do better than this....

[Procrastinating]

Thanks wonderstuff, I can see the colours are gendered, I just wondered if it goes further than that.

My dd will be doing star wars lego with her mother tomorrow. We are both extremely good at it.

[NothingMoreScaryThanAHairy]

the more I think about this the more I think is it really 2013! Really? because that ad does NOT read like it at all!

[Curbyourlassitude]

I do 90% of the playing in this house whether it's lego, playmobil, dolls or role play.

I also get annoyed at the assumption that it's men who do all the swinging around/wrestling/rough and tumble stuff.

I've always done most of that too!

[DrinkFeckArseGirls]

I think they should fire whoever wrote it and who proofread it.

[bsc]

wonderstuff Duplo is no longer gender-neutral! They have a disney princess box now plus some pink castle thing

Little children are only aware of 'girls' things and 'boys' things if people in their lives make them aware! We have never had 'girls' things and 'boys' things, and my children play with all types of toys, and like all colours.

[Wonderstuff]

How old are your kids? Because I was adamant that I was going to be gender neutral with toys, but bloody advertising is EVERYWHERE now, at 6 my daughter only wants 'girls' things and has convinced her 3 year old brother his favourite colour is blue. He does enjoy dressing up in her princess dress up though.

[Curbyourlassitude]

My house is pretty gender neutral (have 2 DD).

We have dolls and dressing up clothes but we also have trains and cars. Our lego/duplo is non pink. Playmobil is a really good gender neutral toy.

I also don't have any barbie pink duvet covers/clothes/furnishings so house doesn't look particularly "girly".

[bsc]

They are 8 and 5. When my DD started school (nursery class) she came home and said "Mummy, all the girls say their favourite colour is pink but I don't, because I like yellow best."

[samandi]

The phrase I hate most is, "Dad will feel a sense of childhood nostalgia..."

Even if you are trying to genderise Lego today so that you can sell Lego Friends, don't fucking retcon the "Lego is a toy for kids" out of history. 30 years ago, today's mums and dads were equally targeted as Lego users.

TheDoctrineofWho - Apparently not only are women not allowed to enjoy relaxing and playing with Lego with their kids today, but they didn't do it as kids themselves either!

Hmm, funny that, because I have some very vivid memories of playing with bright blue, red and yellow Lego blocks. Building houses and cars no less.

[heartichoke]

I think I might just write to Lego about this...

[tethersend]

I'm great at Lego, as long as I'm building shoes. And cocks.

[EduCated]

Aren't Lego cocks a bit cornery?

[Wonderstuff]

[NoComet]

Ouch, I don't want to think about Lego cocks

[ErrolTheDragon]

Of course I played with Lego with DD, though TBH we preferred K'nex because you can build real machines with gear wheels and motors, and really awesome bridges etc.

Just tried a couple of image searches Knex for girls and Lego for girls

[KaseyM]

WHat kind of wankers wouldn't buy lego for girls before Friends was introduced?

This! I know a dad who was genuinely happy when Nerf Rebelle was launched so that he could buy one for his DD! He's not a wanker though, just someone who has brought the hype.

Problem is though, acc Lego research it's also girls asking for pink Lego and beauty salons, which just arms Lego with a good defence against criticism. They fail to see though that this is down to the problem they themselves have created: girls have actually read the cues from all the crappy toy advertising and gotten the message that unless something is pink and beauty-related it's not meant for them.

Makes me want to weep!

As for even Duplo being gender neutral, not really. DS and I did a project the other day and I had to put many of the male mini-figs through painful gender-reassignment surgery because there were only 2 female mini-figs!

[TheDoctrineOfWho]

I'm sure that more Lego is being bought for girls now by friends for birthday parties or more distant relatives like aunties - it's been sanctioned as ok for girls! Don't dorget as well that befor Lego friends, Lego was getting into lots of
Different lines like space, pirates etc which in other toys were already identified as "boy subjects". It wasn't just bricks. So yes, I believe that more is bought for girls now.

[Pachacuti]

The figures will be distorted, though, because there are so many factors at play. In the 70s Lego was marketed in a pretty gender-neutral way (although I'm pretty sure more was actually bought for boys than for girls) and also the emphasis was on interchangeability. Then Lego started moving more towards very specific sets for building very specific things and also started skewing their marketing very very heavily towards boys. So yes, after a couple of decades of that their sales to girls will be fairly low and when they introduce a new range that they market at girls sales go up. It's not a huge surprise that if you switch from "marketing at 50% of the population" to "marketing at 100% of the population" your sales will increase.

The interesting (but impossible to do) comparison would be with sales figures if they'd continued marketing at boys and girls equally over the last thirty years. Although even then, a fair chunk of the commercial motivation for pinkification is that it pushes families with children of different genders into buying multiple products rather than sharing/handing down as they would otherwise have done, so Lego Friends might still be a shrewd commercial move. Sigh.

[Onoshobishobi]

It's sexist insofar as it assumes mums don't play with Lego. What I haven't seen anyone mention though is that it's also sexist because it assumes only mums will be entering the competition (a bit of an oddity as it's sort of aimed at mums for dads and manages to be offensive to both). Maybe they've made the mistake of thinking that Mumsnet is only for mums, but you can see why they might think that.

[flatmum]

in my house I am the Lego queen - I have built, re-built, organised, tidied, found, ordered, bought, paid for, suggested, displayed, praised, fixed and consoled when broke every bit of Lego that has entered this house for 3 dc. I don't think their father, DP has so much as looked at a piece. How bizarre.

[wonkylegs]

Lazy advertising copy - poorly thought through without even considering that it would royally piss off it's main audience.
Lego - I would vet your PR department as foot in mouth episodes before your main selling season are just stupid.

We are an all encompassing Lego household - last Christmas we all got Lego gifts. DS got the fire station, DH got star wars and I got Lego Architecture - Falling water (because I'm an architect)

We all love Lego although I wish my DS wasn't such a slave to the instructions. He accepts when I make him a castle/spaceship/police station/house/bridge out of random blocks but won't do it himself.

[Pachacuti]

Oh, I just look at the Lego Architecture sets online and sort of stroke the screen covetously...

[tribpot]

I love Lego Architecture. (I'm a technical architect which I know is not the same as a proper architect!) My ds also refuses to free style Lego and will only follow the instructions, which means I end up buying new set after new set.