When LEGO announced that after four years of marketing research, the best they could come up with was a thinner, pinker version of their product, I admit, I laughed out loud. My first reaction wasn't outrage, but incredulity. A billion dollars of marketing research bought you... LEGO Barbie? After marketers have carpet-bombed a pink, appearance-obsessed consumer version of girl power via every conceivable media outlet for the past decade, did you really expect to hear little girls express a desire for anything else?
Turns out I wasn't the only one with a strong reaction to the new Ladyfig LEGOs. ("Ladyfigs"? Really, ask for your money back.) SPARK (Sexualization Protest: Action Resistance Knowledge) movement girl blogger, Stephanie Cole wrote, "the part of me that still fondly remembers epic LEGO vs. Playmobile battles with my sister and cousin, is pretty royally pissed off." The new Ladyfigs, she notes, "are taller, skinnier and they have boobs. They will be marketed to girls five and up. Why?"
We know why. In truth, LEGO may very well get a larger market share if they have two separate lines of products. "Unisex" and "gender neutral" are blasphemy to a large percentage of parents, who are quick to point out that girls and boys play differently. But as neuroscientist Lise Eliot explains, "boy-girl differences are not as 'hard-wired' as many parents today, imbued with the Mars/Venus philosophy, believe." The human brain is "fantastically plastic" and the best thing we can do for our children is to give them a full range of opportunities and experiences, especially in the early years. We don't know at five how little Tierra's or Tommy's passions and talents will surface, so why pay good money to limit their options to the pink and blue aisles of toy stores?
SPARKTeam blogger, Bailey, promoting Stephanie's post on Twitter, soon began an exchange with LEGO: "They thanked me...and respectfully disagreed, stating that four years of research had told them," in so many words, "that the mini-skirt-wearing, hot-tub-bathing, beauty-shop-running LEGO ladies are what girls want now." As if Bailey didn't know the difference between market research, the goal of which is to figure out the best way to target and sell to children, and unbiased scientific research, the goal of which is to know what's good or bad for developing children. Of course, the unbiased research finds that the path LEGO has chosen, narrowing girls' options to a stereotypical version of femininity, is bad for girls.
LEGO, of course, already has a perfect product for girls. It's called LEGO, and all they need to do is invite girls to play. That's actually pretty easy. Add more female characters to the existing products and include girls in the existing marketing campaigns. The brilliance of LEGO is the opportunity for creative play and all young children will grab that opportunity if it's offered with enthusiasm. The problem, as Stephanie explains, is that marketers and ad execs insist that girls are not interested in their products unless they're pink and cute, even though they've already stacked the deck. "Who populates commercials for LEGOs?" Stephanie asks? "Boys! Where in the toy store can you find them? 'The boy's aisle.' So no wonder girls won't buy your products!"
Once upon a time LEGO also had a wonderful marketing strategy directed at girls. A 1981 LEGO ad featured a little girl proudly showing off her multi-colored LEGO creation, with the caption "What it is is beautiful." When SPARK partner organization, PBG (Powered By Girl), posted on LEGO's Facebook page a challenge to "bring back beautiful," within hours hundreds of posts from parents flooded LEGO's page, the challenge popped up on Twitter as #Liberatelego, and over 1500 signed PBG/SPARK's Change.org petition.
How is it that four years of research and a billion dollars didn't buy LEGO a little reconnaissance into the desires of parents
Oh, and you can have that bit of advice for free.
Also, LEGO Friends is nominated for at least one Toy Award for 2012: http://www.toyfair.de/exhibitors/toyaward/nominierte-2012/?L=1#c48432
"The Lego Friends team is aware of the paradox at the heart of its work: To break down old stereotypes about how girls play, it risks reinforcing others. “If it takes color-coding or ponies and hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains,” says Lise Eliot. A neuroscientist at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in Chicago, Eliot is the author of Pink Brain Blue Brain, a 2009 survey of hundreds of scientific papers on gender differences in children."
I think you are right that Lego is already perfect for girls, (I went to the original Legoland in Billund in the late 70's and all of us kids loved it equally and played with it for years) but it seems that some parents have raised their kids to doubt that so the company is exploiting a marketing opportunity.
Nowhere does LEGO call the new dolls "ladyfigs." Not sure where the author picked that up, but it's inaccurate.
This line - unlike some other themes that LEGO has introduced in the past - is almost entirely "brick built." In other words, it is not made up of large, one-purpose pieces (a pink plastic car is always a pink plastic car) but of the same individual bricks as other LEGO sets. It can (and will) be taken apart and built into anything the child wants. That is the point of the toy, and is a significant difference between this line and, say, Barbie or Bratz.
Parents who are hung up on the color scheme probably ought to examine their own prejudices first, but if they want they can still buy large buckets of non-themed, basic bricks at any store that stocks LEGO sets. It is after all the parents' job to encourage confidence and creativity in their children, not LEGO's.
Of course this is perhaps only perpetuating zombie stereoypes...
I believe that's the issue. LEGO has never denied girls the availability of legos, they've always been right there. But for whatever reason, the parents and little girls have ignored them in favor of "girl" toys. I don't know how the responsibility falls on the toys companies, I don't remember the last time I went to a store and saw signs over the toy aisles labeled, "For Boys" or "For Girls".
And the people asking for gender neutral legos have me baffled. Have you ever played with legos? I spent most of my childhood with them and they're basically every color, and the figures have YELLOW heads and hands without any gender specific features. Granted, Lego has expanded their range of product to include superheros and such, but there is no reason why girls don't want to play with Legos other than Girls don't like Legos.
You can't force a child to like something. If you're a parent of a girl, go ahead and take her to the LEGO section and let her choose what she wants. If she goes running back to the Barbies, then you have your answer. It's not LEGO's job to manipulate her into wanting their product.
I always thought jewel tones would be a nice addition...and my daughter has always favored the "general" legos because they were more copious, and more interesting than the "girlie" sets.