Inclusive advertising Lego

[littlebillie]

Just spotted this on Twitter from 1981. Inclusive and refreshing advertising - respect to Lego for this

My daughter loves her Lego Friends sets (the hotdog stand is our fav) and builds them into all kinds of stuff, especially after watching Ellie V on YouTube. The level of detail is great. She wants to be an architect when she grows up (I keep trying to encourage engineering, there's probably more jobs in it...)

Unlike every other feminist, I was slightly bored by the plain 80s bricks, as I wasn't very imaginative about what to build with them. I would have loved to have had something more detailed.

I think many people on this thread would like the Ethics in Bricks account - they are on Twitter and Insta.

Now Bricklinking the Green Grocer. My bank manager would like a word!

You'll be having nightmares of sand green grooved 2x1 bricks and pound signs on fire DdraigGoch.

(After writing that went to look at the prices on bricklink. Eek!)

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.

I agree with this. My SIL, despite being very non conforming herself, has gone all in for gendering her children (even before they were born she said she hoped she only had boys as she didn't know how to raise a girl). Her son gets everything STEM related, her daughter is drowning in pink and dolls. Not surprisingly her dd has grown up now with a preference for those things. My dp works in STEM and was really keen to try to encourage his niece to try out more STEM related toys so he started buying her things like construction toys covered in pink and flowers and she loved them. I don't think she'd have played with them if they weren't overtly feminine. It's a shame that some girls don't feel they can be interested in a variety of toys unless they're overtly coded as feminine, but that's the reality of the world as it is at the moment. The alternative would have been buying her neutral or masculine coded toys and her simply not playing with them, which surely would have been worse. I think lots of people agree that the cycle needs disrupting but the hard part is knowing at which point to do so.

twitter.com/TheBabylonBee/status/1395525998112755713

Genderless bricks

"Lego Unveils New Genderless Bricks With No Male/Female Connectors"

Hahaha!

They had to bring in the genderless brick because too much of this was going on at headquarters....

@Melroses

twitter.com/TheBabylonBee/status/1395525998112755713

Genderless bricks

"Lego Unveils New Genderless Bricks With No Male/Female Connectors"

How does it connect?? A Lego brick that can't be connected to other Lego bricks in the name of inclusiveness. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤣🤣

@thelegohooverer

It’s not just how they market Lego friends to girls that’s the problem, but also how they market violence, aggression and construction specifically to boys.

They have veered so far from their original ethos and brand name but it makes them lots and lots of money.

Are they marketing it that way? I doubt it.

There have actually been two sets withdrawn from sale recently because it was decided it went against their ethics. One was a Technic helicopter based on a real helicopter that is used by some countries as a military vehicle. Lego does not make sets based on anything 'real' to do with modern war.
The other set was a criminal hideout set. They decided against releasing it.

The other set was a criminal hideout set. They decided against releasing it.
I'm surprised that one got off the drawing board in the first place, tbh. Very odd idea.

Cops and robbers is an old and recurring theme in LEGO:

brickset.com/sets/60068-1/Crooks-Hideout

but it seems that in the past year LEGO are now steering away from this.

LEGO also currently (make an effort to) avoid issuing any sets having a religious aspect:

godbricks.blogspot.com/2009/05/official-lego-sets-with-religious.html

@nauticant

Now Bricklinking the Green Grocer. My bank manager would like a word!

You'll be having nightmares of sand green grooved 2x1 bricks and pound signs on fire DdraigGoch.

(After writing that went to look at the prices on bricklink. Eek!)

I've cheated and substituted plain 1x2s and 1x4s. I've had everything in stock since the winter but have temporarily lost a room during renovations so can't do any building. On the plus side, the useless cupboard under the stairs has now been ripped out and turned in to somewhere to display my fairground.

@Ilovemaisie

There have actually been two sets withdrawn from sale recently because it was decided it went against their ethics. One was a Technic helicopter based on a real helicopter that is used by some countries as a military vehicle. Lego does not make sets based on anything 'real' to do with modern war. The other set was a criminal hideout set. They decided against releasing it.

Yet with licenced themes anything goes!

Ddraig yes indeed !! Although I suppose the argument is all their licenced themes are fantasy (Star Wars, DC Superheroes etc) so it isn't 'real' violence

There was a bit of a huff from some fans too regarding the release of the police station modular after BLM.