Lego’s ‘pink ghetto’ draws fire over gender-specific marketing
The Lego backlash was perhaps inevitable. When the maker of countless little coloured bricks sold all over the world decided to create a line of products designed specifically with girls in mind, it was broaching a delicate subject.
Sure enough, as Lego Friends was being rolled out this month, sets in which the girls of Heartlake City can do things like visit the vet and hang out at an ice cream café, criticism descended upon the Danish toy giant.
“Lego’s pink ghetto,” read one headline. An advocacy group compiled 50,000 signatures on a petition that decried Lego for implying that “girls are not interested in their products unless they’re pink, cute, or romantic.” Among the thousands of critical messages on social media rallying around the “LiberateLego” hashtag was a typical post: “There’s already a type of Lego for girls. It’s called LEGO!!!”
Mess with the gender-neutral bull, you get the horns.KEN BENJES, lego fanboy, weigh in!
The Lego Group’s past offerings of ‘girl toys’ were really shitty. These ones are pretty rad via
- The new ‘doll figures’ are the same height as the standard minifigs and the hair is interchangeable. Past ‘girl’ product lines featured barbie-esque figures.
- The sets feature actual building, whereas past ‘girl’ sets often had very little building at all. The sets themselves are on par with other sets. Past ‘girl’ lines were really shitty.
- These are really cool sets.
The way they are packaged there is nothing that says FOR GIRLS. IDK, I feel like it’s just another theme that kids who aren’t into battles or conflicts (which are 80% of Lego themes) can enjoy. It expands on the City theme, which is great, especially since Lego themes in general lack women minifigures. And one of the sets has a scientist girl, which is cool or something.
Lego created pretty sexist patriarchy promoting sets in the 90s when female figures only appeared as pirate wenches, princesses, and barmaids.
I just wish they had used standard figures instead of these new ones.
Or go back to the golden age of Lego (75-88ish) when every figure was androgynous/gender-neutral (words that I probably didn’t use correctly).
So those are some of my thoughts. Also I am geeking out over all then new colors that are available.
