I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

http://sinker.tumblr.com/post/14267087602/im-starting-to-think-lego-is-evil

by Sukotto • 15 years ago

398 279 15 years ago

sinker.tumblr.com

javanix• 15 years ago

Look: I will fully admit that these sets are really, really cool. My son is getting a gigantic Millenium Falcon set from Santa this year (DON’T TELL) and both my wife and I are excited to play with it too.

But it’s a model kit. We will put it together once and we will play with it a lot and that will be that. It won’t get remixed, won’t get hacked. Eventually it’ll come apart and be put away and not rebuilt because 1000 pieces is a pain in the ass.

This doesn't make any sense to me. Why on earth wouldn't you mix those pieces in with the rest of the pieces you already have from sets you've already disassembled? Sure, the marketing is a little much these days but unless I am sadly mistaken all the pieces still fit together like they did 30 years ago.

dgabriel5• 15 years ago

I think what he's saying is that he won't rebuild the Millenium Falcon, that the pieces will get scattered and used for other stuff. That's how it goes in our house. The set gets built very quickly, and just as quickly is dismantled and used for bigger, more creative projects.

Wait -- no I see that he won't hack it. I wonder why not??

sliverstorm3• 15 years ago

As a kid I found with some of the predesigned kits, the result was distinctly cooler and more sophisticated than anything I'd ever be able to come up with. As a result I was always loathe to dismantle them. Darth Vader's Tie fighter, for example.

It was much easier to tear apart my own creations because I could make something better.

amirmc3• 15 years ago

I've noticed that some of new Lego sets have very specific pieces. Not really the kind you can mix and match between sets as in the 'old days'.

CountHackulus• 15 years ago

This kind of thing was popular during the LEGO "dark ages" in the early 2000s but has really died out as of late. The Millenium Falcon that's being referred to has very few, if any, unique parts. LEGO has really gone back to its roots in the past 2 or 3 years, especially with the AWESOME creator series.

brudgers2• 15 years ago

Unique pieces are great for remixing once one stops imposing the idea of sets upon Legos. If they don't all wind up intermingled, an adult is probably in charge.

cschmidt2• 15 years ago

It is hard psychologically to realize you can never built the set as intended again. You end up lots of sets in big ziplocs. We've finally moved most of our son's legos into a single big bin, but he was opposed to it for a long time.

zokier• 15 years ago

One problem (afaik) is that the pieces are more and more specialised. A single regular lego piece can be anything. Look at the old ad; almost all pieces shown are regular rectangular pieces. And it even says Universal Building Set. But now you just get 1000 distinctly "millenium falcon" pieces.

iy56• 15 years ago

Except that's not true at all. http://www.peeron.com/inv/sets/4504-1 is the brick list for the Millienium Falcon set. The minifigures are clearly specific to the Star Wars franchise, but aside from the minifig accessories and maybe half a dozen pieces that have decorative patterns, everything else is quite generic. I remember hearing that there's even an official Lego policy against introducing new pieces unless they have 3 different sets to put them in.

pyre5• 15 years ago

When I was a kid, I would have loved all of the specific sets that they have now. Why? Because it increases the possibilities of what you can build. Those 'specific pieces' are mix-and-match with other Lego blocks.

Poiesis• 15 years ago

Seconded. There's no way in hell my kids would keep the pieces from one model together, anyway. We probably have tons of "unique" pieces, but let me tell you, they all get remixed just the same. Another reason to not keep them as kits: all Legos eventually are considered communal in our house after a certain period. It was just too hard to keep track of whose little orange brick it was that they were fighting over.

This Christmas (don't tell!) they're getting five pounds of bulk bricks. Also, no kidding, this for storage: http://www.harborfreight.com/mobile-double-sided-floor-rack-... . The mess was getting to be a problem.

brudgers2• 15 years ago

It won't get remixed because at $140 from Amazon, the author will impose adult values upon the way in which the child uses it. As he notes, he no longer sees it as a toy but as a model kit...and the use - or rather non-use will reflect his view of it as a collectable rather than a bunch of parts.

In all fairness, I went through some of the same thing before I came to a more sensible position - now everything gets remixed to my child's content. They aren't mine after all.

I played with Legos in the era of the ad, and I was completely blown away the first time I went shopping for Legos with my child. They are just orders of magnitude better due to the massive increases in diversity of pieces and far more thoughtful assembly of sets.

Indeed, I have built far more stuff as an adult than I ever did as a child - and my child has had far more entertainment from Legos than I ever did despite the massive competition from Cable TV and console games as well as far more time spent reading and completing homework.

BTW, the author's complaints about tie ins is a bit ironic given his tradition of buying Advent sets.

cubicle67• 15 years ago

My friend's daughter, 8, has this kit[0] and it's one of the most awesome play kits ever. She's already added a heap of extra modifications to hers, and only yesterday it was transporting a load of camels for Princess Tamina(?) who happens to be from Prince of Persia, I think

[0] I'm assuming it's 7965 http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/7965_Millennium_Falcon

ericabiz4• 15 years ago

As a girl geek who grew up on Legos, this makes me really, really sad.

From the NPR article linked to from the article above: "Lego also consciously aimed for boy customers when it embarked on its stunning turnaround. Boys were easier to sell to than girls."

headsmash

"The new Lego girl minifigures have names like Stephanie, Olivia, and Emma, and the building sets include a veterinary clinic, a hairdressing salon, a horse academy and a clinic."

We need more women scientists, girl geeks, etc. And for every person who loves to say "But boys and girls are just different!", there's a stunning example of sexist stereotypes embedded in the very things we buy our kids because our generation cherished them too...

(By the way, if you ever want a conclusive argument that girls being raised to love pink and hate math is societal, not genetic, read "Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference". It's pretty eye-opening, and has plenty of proof to back up its assertions.)

dmm3• 15 years ago

> We need more women scientists

Are you a scientist?

adriand• 15 years ago

Are you capable of realizing that your comment is unhelpful and does nothing to advance the conversation?

ericabiz4• 15 years ago

Nope, I'm not. I basically really suck at school, and am pretty awesome at computers and making money. That's why I started a startup at age 20 instead of finishing college, then sold it for a nice profit when I was 26. Now I'm on to another startup, and run a popular blog to boot.

bryanlarsen4• 15 years ago

The building sets also include an "inventor's workshop", which looks pretty cool, and seems to be exactly the right thing to encourage women scientists & girl geeks.

DarkShikari2• 15 years ago

(By the way, if you ever want a conclusive argument that girls being raised to love pink and hate math is societal

The most staggering thing about these assumptions is not merely how they contradict current scientific understanding, but they contradict reality. Pink used to be a boys' color: the idea of pink as "girly" didn't exist 100 years ago. Ironically, this commonly-given-example is itself a fantastic example of how wrong such assumptions about gender differences actually are.

It's rather laughable -- and sad -- how almost every single "scientific study" (often evolutionary psychology, a popular pseudoscience) claiming such absurd biological gender differences just happens to support 1950s stereotypical American gender roles, as opposed to gender roles anywhere else in history, anywhere else in the world.

The reality is that the biological differences are negligible in most regards, at least mentally -- claiming "girls naturally prefer pink" is just as absurd as insisting that blacks are genetically predisposed to like playing basketball. It denies the vastly greater importance of societal and cultural effects, dumps blame for problems -- such as gender bias in STEMS -- on biology instead of humans, and is pretty much flat-out sexist.

ericabiz4• 15 years ago

Agreed. Thank you for your post! That's basically exactly what the book I recommended says, except she goes into 200+ pages of detail about it (with much supporting evidence.)

pbhjpbhj2• 15 years ago

>'The reality is that the biological differences are negligible in most regards, at least mentally -- claiming "girls naturally prefer pink" is just as absurd as insisting that blacks are genetically predisposed to like playing basketball. It denies the vastly greater importance of societal and cultural effects, dumps blame for problems -- such as gender bias in STEMS -- on biology instead of humans, and is pretty much flat-out sexist.'

Perhaps instead of picking strawmen then we could address something closer to the real questions being asked: whether girls prefer to mimic nurturing behaviour or act out creativity in their play (and the converse, that boys prefer aggressive or constructive play) and that blacks are genetically predisposed to excel at sports similar to basketball (I'd have probably picked East Africans and long distance running).

Surely biologically speaking females should prefer play that mimics nurturing behaviour? (No, not exclusively, nor indeed every female, but generally as a population compared with young males). If males carried the developing human in utero I'd expect it to be different.

Florin_Andrei• 15 years ago

Just be careful to not fall into some sort of extremism.

Gender differences appear to be a blend of nature and nurture. If one thinks nature doesn't matter, it's pretty easy to obtain direct proof to the contrary - just alter one's hormonal chemistry (especially the estrogen / testosterone balance) and watch what happens to the mind. The experiment is simple enough and there might even be ways to do it without falling into legal hot waters.

Nurture is also important, no doubt.

billpatrianakos4• 15 years ago

Why do we need more girl scientists and geeks? I'll never get that. Will having more women in roles traditionally held by men somehow make the world better? Will the woman scientist have a better chance at curing cancer? Will the woman construction worker lay better brick?

I just don't get it. It seems like there's a subset of women who are into science and are smart and are going after or currently holding roles that are traditionally held by or usually dominated by men who for some reason want every other woman to be into the same things because somehow it's for the betterment of the world. If women and men really are equal (and I can't and won't say women are any less capable) then a woman doing "man work" shouldn't produce any different result.

lemming3• 15 years ago

True, but if they never try to do it because society tells them that they shouldn't (devil's advocate here, not claiming this is what happens) then we're missing out on 50% of the potential cancer-curing talent who, by your argument, are equally capable of doing so but end up shampooing dogs or whatever instead.

parfe• 15 years ago

>Why do we need more girl scientists and geeks?

You are only considering a symptom of the problem. It isn't just a question of more women as geeks or scientists. It's how women are treated in society. Things like getting catcalled while walking to class. Being called a slut for wearing a skirt, a prude for wearing a dress, manly for dressing in slacks, or sexy rather than professional.

No, we don't need more women as scientists, or doing math, or building things, or designing video games, or writing books, or plays or tv scripts. And we don't need women collecting garbage, serving in combat roles in the military or elected to government.

But the sum total of a person's experiences add up.

When someone in a video games says "You got raped, bitch." Or a little girl feels shamed into playing with bratz dolls rather than legos. Or while walking down the street a stranger demands she smile because she's so pretty, ignoring she might have her own feelings. Or she plays a video game where the female characters all have impossibly giant breasts spilling out of impractical armor. Or when watching block buster movies where no two main character women (if there even are) talk to each other about something other than a man. Or every time she steps out side someone helpfully reminds her that she could be raped at any moment; she better accept a man's offer to chaperon her. Oh, and why hasn't she married a nice man yet and had some children? She's not getting any younger you know. It all shapes who a woman is.

So no, we don't need more women working as scientists. But if you work to build and maintain a culture where women are guilted, shamed, and literally forced into stereotypically feminine roles because that's the way it is and you're content with that then you certainly help to guarantee she won't be curing cancer, building a better engine, developing a faster computer, or a creating a realistic lead woman character in the next blockbuster game or movie.

einhverfr17• 15 years ago

I don't think it is a question of needing more girl scientists and geeks. If there is a question, I think it is merely one of removing institutional barriers to those who want to take this path.

chaostheory• 15 years ago

It's really sad, but it wasn't that long ago that Lego was in deep financial trouble with horrible sales. Geeks can say what they want, but it seems to have worked out for Lego pretty well

On the bright side, you can make your own custom Lego set: http://designbyme.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx

There's more time and money involved but if it's really important to people, if there's a will there's a way.

mbesto• 15 years ago

> By the way, if you ever want a conclusive argument

Does it negate any evidence for the fact that for hundreds of years our predecessors were hunter and gatherers, whose roles were distinctly filled by men and women? There is a theory that hunters (men) largely looked for large blue horizons (hence a blue sky) to go hunting for animals and gathers (women) looked for berries (hence red, or a hue of red) and thus why we are drawn to those colors. I'm curious as to how far back in history her books relates back to.

substack• 15 years ago

I could just as easily make up a story about how males are intrinsically attracted to pink and red, the color of animal flesh from a recent hunt and how females are attracted to blue waters since in many pre-agrarian societies women had to carry water back to camp.

Without empirical studies with solid controls these are just stories. Evolutionary psychology theories are especially guilty of these kinds of story-making explanations that aren't held up to evidence.

einhverfr17• 15 years ago

Prior to WWII, though, pink was usually associated with boys' clothes and blue with girls' clothes. So that doesn't fly.

I find it interesting how many people assume the current cultural preferences that are less than a century old have some hundreds-of-thousands of years of biological conditioning behind them...... Why is there a need to ground these things in biology? Why not look at culture as culture, and recognize that large parts of it are entirely biologically arbitrary, but that they fit together in meaningful ways?

recoil2• 15 years ago

For whatever reason, the NPR article (http://www.npr.org/2011/12/15/143724644/ith-new-toys-lego-ho...) doesn't bother to mention the "Inventor's Workshop" set (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?set=3933-1) which, perhaps despite the pink & violet splashes, is at least a little bit encouraging, no?

The line that "Boys are easier to sell to than girls" is a simple statement of fact: namely that the marketers at Lego back in 2005 (many of whom were probably men themselves) had more ideas about how to sell to boys. I don't think that's necessarily sexist, it was just a recognition of their limitations. There are other companies that find it easier to sell products to girls than boys.

Deliberately selling to a smaller market was how they chose to try and build a healthy business at the time, and it certainly seems to have been very lucrative for them. You might read that as narrow-mindedness, but to me it just sounds like they were trying to focus. Anyway, the whole point is that Lego now appears to have outgrown this approach! The people at Lego actually do want girls to buy their products.

The Business Week article (http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/lego-is-for-gir...) mentioned in the NPR piece goes into considerably more depth about why Lego found it more difficult to create products that appealed to girls. It also talks about how Lego have actually recognised that simply splashing pink over something isn't a guaranteed way to sell to girls. They're actually trying to look beyond the superficial stuff like colours, at the psychology of play and how that differs between boys and girls, and they genuinely seem (to me at least) to be trying to be as inoffensive about the way they go about that as they can.

Some of the stuff the Lego researchers found is actually quite interesting too: that girls particularly hated the minifig, for instance (something which would have never occurred to me!), because they found it harder to project their personalities onto something so abstract.

I don't think it's fair at all to say that Lego is in any way to blame for any of this. Their products are (mostly) designed for kids of 4+, by which time it's impossible to say which gender differences have been externally "imposed" by society and which may be gender-innate. As a father of both a girl and a boy I am aware that there are differences of both sorts, but that they're so entangled that objectivity about the subject is nearly impossible for a lay-person. My wife and I both try to discourage the superficial gender stuff as much as we can, but we're not going to stop our 3-year-old daughter from owning a Barbie (I bought her the computer engineer one) or declaring that her favourite colour is pink if that's what she wants (FWIW, she's also very interested in Daddy playing StarCraft II - she likes the Zerg).

Lastly, here's a quote from the BW piece that is sadly absent from the two follow-up articles it spawned, “There is no reason to think Lego is more intrinsically appealing to boys.” I'm really not sure why the news that Lego are trying to market their products to girls is being given such a negative spin here. I look forward to buying Lego for both my kids when they're older.

pkamb• 15 years ago

That cops-and-robbers LEGO advent calendar is pretty weird.

I still have this guy hanging on my tree: http://www.1000steine.com/brickset/images/1627-1.jpg

tlrobinson2• 15 years ago

I remember that guy! But I think he got assimilated into the large box of LEGO in my parents' basement.

joelhooks2• 15 years ago

The BrikCrate has changed how my kids approach Lego. It was completely "build the set, forget about it" prior to installing it. Now they build like crazy in free form. http://www.brikcrate.com/

Our daughter enjoys building too.

dgabriel5• 15 years ago

We just have three enormous rubbermaid bins with lids. Half the fun is searching for the right piece, and possibly finding an old lollypop stuck to it. The sound of kid hands pawing through a vat of legos is awesome.

joelhooks2• 15 years ago

It's true, one person's "half the fun" is another's "most of the suck"

someotheridiot• 15 years ago

I'm waiting for the day I have enough to do a Scrooge McDuck and swim through mine :)

jrockway• 15 years ago

I think the key is to remind you kids that once you've built something according to the instructions and you're bored, it's time to take it apart and build something else. I remember playing with a lot of LEGO kits when I was a kid, and I always did this. It's true that, like coloring books, building from kits discourages creativity. But that's easy to fix with something called parenting. Let the instructions be an inspiration, not a prescription.

(And, it's not a bad skill to be able to follow instructions. I hear people on forums like HN complaining about how difficult it is to build IKEA furniture. If they played with LEGO when they were a kid, they'd probably be able to build their bookshelf too :)

potatolicious• 15 years ago

Take a look at modern Lego kits - this is no longer really possible. Half of the pieces are now completely custom pieces that will only ever fit in one way. Gone are the Lego kits where just about all the pieces will recycle into your future creations.

EdwardMSmith• 15 years ago

Ya know, as a father of a 7yo boy and a 9yo girl who together have put in about 40 hours of lego building in the last week alone, using lego from my childhood as well as a dozen kits purchased in the last 5 years or so, this simply isn't true.

Its not true that the pieces will only ever fit in one way.

The reality, I've come to realize after playing with these things quite a lot recently, is that they're simply 'higher-resolution'.

For instance, I have watched this brick (from a Star Wars ship)

http://cosmicbricks.ecrater.com/p/11804345/lego-dark-bluish-...

become variously, a foot, an ear, a beak, part of a dragon's wing, part of a temple, part of half a dozen spaceships of completely bespoke design, part of some sort of epic death dealing mechanized tank/robot thing, and probably several more models where I didn't even notice it.

Whereas I had to be content with "8-bit" round shapes with my old Lego brick pieces, my children and I are able to produce models with much higher resolution - and that're pretty satisfying.

My kids play with these "model" kits by building them as per the instructions, learning a few new construction techniques in the process, playing with the finished model for a day or two, then tearing them apart and applying any new techniques they discovered into their constantly evolving storyline.

Just like Dad did... does...

dragonsky• 15 years ago

Take ANOTHER look at modern lego kids... I think you will find that they CAN be re-purposed. Yes some of the big moulded pieces are single purpose, but a castle wall can turn into a tower wall can turn into a alien cliff face can ....

You get the picture... You may as well complain that a lego rubber tyre is single purpose... well duh.

ugh3• 15 years ago

That’s complete and utter bullshit.

Stuff like that used to happen (the dark late 90s and early 2000s) but not anymore. And even during that time (which was during my childhood) I always found a cool new way to use the special pieces. I actually always loved having special pieces I could repurpose in some way.

This meme needs to die. It’s not based in fact.

Case in point: http://city.lego.com/de-DE/Products/Default.aspx#4643

That big windshield is awesome. I could make a big fire truck with it or other kinds of vehicles, maybe integrate it into a building.

Oh, and Lego has tons of sets that are just awesome and pretty much only made from normal bricks. Take this awesome house: http://creator.lego.com/de-DE/products/default.aspx#5771

Lego has diversified their product line. That means you can get more, well, normal toys. But they are still selling as much classic Lego stuff as they always have.

shin_lao• 15 years ago

I think he forgot you can now order whatever LEGO piece you are looking for online.

So basically LEGO tries to sell to people who will not hack on the LEGO with very cool models but provides formidable tools if you want to hack your own LEGO.

You can even submit your own models if I'm correct.

tomkinstinch• 15 years ago

Yeah, LEGO's CAD software lets you design models and then order all of the requisite parts[1]. I haven't used it yet, it's a really cool idea.

So there are unfortunate movie-themed prefab kits for the masses, and powerful design software for creative folks. LEGO still sells bulk quantities of classic bricks, you just have to look a bit.

1. http://ldd.lego.com/

ahi• 15 years ago

Got one of the castle themed products for a friend. The LEGO approved story: "The Dragon Knights have captured the fair princess and locked her in their tower. The King’s brave Knight sets forth to rescue her, but the tower is heavily fortified and well defended. Can he break through the iron gate and past the catapult to free her?"

I think my friend decided to retheme as an S&M brothel.

duke_sam• 15 years ago

I just bought a couple of the Builders of Tomorrow Set #6177. All regular pieces, no tie-in or specialist parts. Expand with a couple of specific sets for the minifigs or custom pieces and you are set. If you are lucky enough to live near a Lego store you can also expand the collection using the wall of bricks.

I've never liked the Lego kits (even as a kid) for the reasons already mentioned. You build them once and then the (building) creativity is gone. Give me a pile of 4x2 bricks any day.

firefoxman1• 15 years ago

I don't think they're evil so much as just catering to modern society. Legos are from an era where way more people built, fixed, and tinkered with things. Nowadays what do you do when your computer, phone, dishwashers, tv, etc. breaks? Take it to get repaired or get a new one. No tinkering, no opening it up to see how it works before you throw it away, none of that. So rather than thinking Lego is to blame for this attitude, I think Lego is just following their market. And can you really blame a company for wanting to stay afloat instead of following a shrinking breed of people and a idealistic mindset into the grave?

rokhayakebe• 15 years ago

Does LEGO have some sort of patent on "legos"? In other words are other companies allowed to build similar kits?

mtts• 15 years ago

Not anymore:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/lego-loses-t...

It used to be no one could manufacture bricks that were compatible with real legos, but now, apparently, you can.

So if Lego insists on creating only crap merchandise prefab kits (like they have for at least the last ten years or so), someone else can step up and produce something a little more, well, Lego-y.

rubinelli• 15 years ago

I'm pretty sure they have design patents that prevent other companies from building bricks that are an exact copy. But design patents, as shown from Apple vs. Samsung, are a positively grey area. It's not clear if "compatible" parts would be allowed, for example.

sethg• 15 years ago

Any patent LEGO might have claimed on the basic brick design must have expired long ago.

MegaBlocks makes bricks that are advertised as compatible with LEGO bricks, but in my experience the tolerance is just a little bit off.

BenSS• 15 years ago

Yeah, they sorta work, but even my 4yo can immediately tell a mega block from a real Lego. They've all been banished from the logo bin.

maximusprime12• 15 years ago

Megablocks are awful. They stick together for a second, then pop off. You end up with cracks everywhere and pieces falling apart. Do not buy...

archangel_one• 15 years ago

We have some Mega Blocks here and yes, they do work with Lego but they don't quite have as good a feel. Also there are some significant differences, like the flatter plates look to be half-height instead of 1/3 height which would cause problems if you intermix the two!

bryanlarsen4• 15 years ago

I'm having trouble understanding the backlash against the new Lego for girls initiative. As the father of a couple of pre-school girls, I'm loving the new initiative.

It appears to consist of 3 things:

- realistic looking minifigs. Not square and not oversexed.

- additional brick colors, and not just pink.

- sets not based on movie tie-ins, but in real-world locations like an inventor's workshop, a café, an animal hospital and a beauty salon

These look like the perfect toys for young girls -- they encourage both creativity and role-playing. And as the latest science-based parenting books (Welcome to Your Child's Brain, etc) tell you, role-playing is the best way to develop self-control, which is the most valuable skill that can be imparted into a pre-schooler by a parent.

Sure, they're girly. So what? I want my girls to grow up proud to be girls, and aware that they can be whatever they want to be.

But to my mind, they seem better than most of the "boy" Lego sets out there, which appear to be much less repurposable, and are blatant commercial tie-ins or weapons of war.

dgabriel5• 15 years ago

It's the hard gender division. Why are there "girl legos," and "boy legos"? And it also seems like they're offering the same "girl themed" play sets that all the other toys offer, except you have to put it together first. Who plays with lego that way?

cschmidt2• 15 years ago

I think my 4 year old girl is going to greatly prefer their new legos. Right now, she plays with Duplos, and all is well. However, I can see a day when legos are "too boy". That's just what they reported happening in the Lego studies. Duplo works, and then the girls doen't make the transition to regular lego.

We have an older boy as well, and so our house has every lego you can imagine, plus lots of really cool vehicles, trucks, etc. Our daughter never goes near them. If this can make them more attractive to her, that's fantastic.

damoncali• 15 years ago

Who plays with lego that way?

Little girls do.

pyre5• 15 years ago

  > And it also seems like they're offering the same "girl
  > themed" play sets that all the other toys offer, except
  > you have to put it together first. Who plays with lego
  > that way?

You could easily describe all the boy-targeted movie tie-in Lego sets that same way. Heck you can describe any Lego set that way. I had a Lego train set and a freighter with a dock as a kid (as an example). You could easily claim that these were no different than "an HO train set that you have to put together first" and "a toy boat that you have to put together first."

kaybe• 15 years ago

But why would you want two different products? It sounds like you like the "girl" lego much better than the "boy" version. Why not make it accessible to all kids?

bryanlarsen4• 15 years ago

This new set does seem to be relatively accessible to all kids. Perhaps not on it's own, but certainly as a mix-in with other sets.

For instance, on it's own you'd probably guess that the power drill and robot came from a boy's set rather than a girl's set.

leslyn• 15 years ago

Outside of the box packaging, lego's are gender neutral in terms of red/blue/black/white snap together boxes. My daughters built play houses and towers until they were 12. We (society) have missed the point if all we do is encourage building what the 'set' advertises ... In my generation it was Tinkertoys and I built lots of interesting creations using my imagination instead of using directions.

simcop2387• 15 years ago

This is one of the big reasons I grew to like the lego technic sets (and the train sets before harry potter). The entire point of them was to be resused in new ways, along with letting you build robots.

tomjen3• 15 years ago

Before you complain, you can still get a big bag of Lego:

http://shop.lego.com/en-DK/LEGO-Basic-Bricks-Large-5623

I say still, because it is a family business and it seems those who would have gone on to run it have left the family tradition and are now much more interested in enjoying their wealth (which is considerable, in that they are one of the richest families in Denmark).

They would be the fourth generation, so I guess it was bound to happen. At least my children should be able to cut their teeth on Legos.

samstave• 15 years ago

Whomever decided to kill Space Legos needs to be shot into orbit.

The model kits all suck. I went and bought $15 tubs of the wall of bricks recently and my kids get far more use from those random pieces than they do kits.

joezydeco2• 15 years ago

I hear ya. Space Legos were the first sets I really came to love. Although, I got pissed back then because of those odd specially-formed pieces like the engines. NOW, it seems 80% of a lego kit is special pieces.

MartinCron3• 15 years ago

I've heard this complaint for years and years, but we're living in a golden age for non-specially-formed pieces. You can buy the builder sets, order arbitrary quantities of pieces online, or just buy by the bucket at Lego stores (that's what I do).

mhartl2• 15 years ago

A bit OT, but a fun exercise: every time you see the word "millennium", count how many "n"s there are. The answer is "one" an astonishing amount of the time, even in professionally edited copy. In fact, as of this writing the Google search for "Millennium Falcon" brings up an Amazon ad for—you guessed it—a "Lego Millenium [sic] Falcon". (Full confession: Around 2000, I was mortified to discover that I, a card-carrying spelling Nazi, had been misspelling it for years.)

N.B. You can remember the right spelling by recalling that a millennium is a thousand (mille) years (anni).

tlrobinson2• 15 years ago

I was also dismayed by their focus on movie tie-ins and set-specific pieces, but I really like the LEGO landmark/architecture series:

http://architecture.lego.com/en-us/products/

They're built with pretty much all standard pieces (though not necessarily standard colors).

bryanlarsen4• 15 years ago

Christmas present score! Now I have a Christmas present idea for my wife to compliment the far-too-functional present already got her!

cstross• 15 years ago

s/LEGO/toy manufacturers/

(There, I fixed it for you!)

The trend towards highly gendered media-tie in toys that are designed to generate follow-on sales opportunities for accessories rather than to encourage kids to develop their imagination through semi-structured but open-ended play nauseates me. I am doubtless betraying my personal bias here, but the corporate discovery that the quickest way to a parent's wallet is through their offspring is a bleakly exploitative example of market amorality; it may be legal, but is it decent?

pfarrell2• 15 years ago

Hasn't this always been the case... the marketing influence, I mean? I've gone to the Lego store in my town. You can still assemble a nice set outside of the movie tie-in stuff.

Now, whether you can get you kids to think that's cooler or not? That's the real problem.

IIRC, Lego was on verge of bankruptcy in the early 2000's and had to figure out a way to get kids to keep buying. We're witnessing the same type of turnaround Apple had. We snort at this one, though, because we've constructed memories of childhood that remove the marketing we now see as adults.

sliverstorm3• 15 years ago

we've constructed memories of childhood that remove the marketing we now see as adults

You're telling me this: http://www.innovationinpractice.com/.a/6a00e54ef4f3768834013...

Is a piece of marketing? Because that & similar pieces was 95% of what I used.

maximusprime12• 15 years ago

BS @ trend.

Go back 50 years and it was dolls and toy guns. Nothing has changed, boys still like building and destroying, and girls still like caring about things and craft things.

You can try all you want to make boys play with dolls, and girls play at killing each other, but they won't in general, because it's not in their biological makeup to do so.

amitparikh• 15 years ago

I think the point here is that Lego is fondly remembered as -- and maybe even should be -- a gender-neutral toy. There was never anything inherently male or female about Legos. In fact, I remember playing with my younger sister often -- I'd be building a spaceship on one side, and she'd be putting together a house on the other.

The problem is that Lego has gotten away from being a gender-neutral toy and is now marketed specifically to boys. And the travesty is, they've dug themselves such a deep hole that the only way to get back any female users is to pander to their lowest common denominator.

lubutu2• 15 years ago

"boys still like building"

"girls still ... craft things."

I think this says everything that needs to be said: children like making things!

einhverfr17• 15 years ago

I think one has to see toy manufacturers as a conservative (in a politically neutral sense) cultural force. Let's take this a step further and look at the way heterosexual relationships are sold to kids. We can't see lesbian Barby & Kendra sets because that would be sexual, but Barby and Ken are evidently not.

So here we are selling a specific model of sexuality to young girls as normal. And this is a major aspect of our cultural heteronormality.

kellishaver• 15 years ago

The top items on my daughter's (she's 9) Christmas list this year are the LEGO Space Center and LEGO Space Shuttle, both from the City collection. Other items on the list included some of the Alien Conquest sets.

The kid's got a ton of LEGO. The last thing she needs is more LEGO, but it's hands-down her favorite toy. She builds the sets and will play with/admire them for a while, then eventually all of the pieces get dumped into the Giant Bucket of LEGO, which is a huge 30gal bucket overflowing with bricks from sets we've bought her, and from my childhood and my husband's childhood (though oddly lacking in wheels). That's the beauty of LEGO and that huge mish-mash of a dozen sets works for any gender.

Maybe it's the fact that I already have a geek child who's into geek things (She's also getting a D&D red box this Christmas, per her request), but the marketing doesn't seem to have any effect on her. She just sees sets that she thinks looks cool and wants to buy them. I don't think that list would include veterinary clinics and pet spas from this new pinkification effort, either.... but even if it does, so what? You still end up with a bucket of mixed pieces for hours of endless, free-form creativity and building.

I do think that there are more sets available these days that are targeted toward boys, but I don't know that it's come at the expense of other options. You can still buy basic brick sets. There are still several items in the City series that aren't "cops and robbers" and things like the Mars Mission and Pharaoh's sets, or even the Harry Potter sets are no more boy-centric than the old LEGO space stuff used to be.

code_duck2• 15 years ago

While I vastly prefer the open-ended building blocks to the themed sets, I did like the semi-generic Lego space theme as a child. Also very cool were Tente, a Spanish space themed building kit series... they were very futurist and stylish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tente_(Toys)

The more open ended toys clearly have an advantage in terms of creativity, and most children have creativity to spare.

kghose2• 15 years ago

Ahh Tente! Brings back memories. I thought that Tente had more specialized pieces than Lego.

code_duck2• 15 years ago

Yes, they were more specialized. Still better than a 'kit' though, in terms of creativity.

I think I still have all my Tente, sure would be fun to pull 'em out!

bad_user• 15 years ago

It's simple - universal construction kits don't do well in commercials targeted at children.

The very ad he's mentioning targets parents not children. Marketing for toys used to be targeted at parents.

But not anymore - there are cartoon TV stations airing all day, filled with commercials for shitty toys. Then the child sees these toys in stores and starts crying. Parent gives up and buys them. End of story.

krupan• 15 years ago

Funny thing is, that's not new. When I was a kid, nearly all the cartoons I watched were basically just commercials for toys (G.I. Joe, He-man, Transformers, M-m-m-mask). Same for my little sisters (My Little Ponies, Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, Jem). Legos were the only toys that didn't tie-in to a movie or TV show.

veyron• 15 years ago

I disagree. I think, with many of the new sets, a whole class of new pieces were explored.

As a kid, the only cars I really remember were the ones with the small base (3x4 with an elevated segment for the tiny wheels). When I rediscovered legos, I noticed that many sets have larger base plates (for larger vehicles) -- width 6 stubs.

And the pick-a-brick are surprisingly deep in terms of shapes and sizes (I definitely don't remember the curved translucent pieces designed to emulate glass).

maximusprime12• 15 years ago

This is really really really boring.

Yes LEGO make LEGO "sets" that make a specific model. They also make a ton of generic building sets which teach you a ton of stuff. They even have walls of bricks in the shops where you can pick and choose which individual bricks you need.

If you don't like the specific building sets, don't buy those ones.

Every so often some people start moaning about how Lego is not the same as it was in their day. Stop whining.

(I've been a massive Lego fan for the last 30 years).

Oh and AWESOME NEWS! New DC sets coming in January! Now we can have Batman Lego sets again!!!!!

blhack• 15 years ago

Just stop buying lego and start buying K-nex instead.

They are almost infinitely better. They are incredibly open ended, and can be used to build some very complex stuff.

diamondhead• 15 years ago

definitely agree with that. k'nex is way more creative.

nostromo• 15 years ago

When I see these stories taking companies to task over why they sell what they do, I always wonder why nobody holds consumers to task.

For example: why doesn't Lego sell to girls? Why doesn't Barbie have more realistic features? Why don't car manufacturers offer an electric vehicle? Why doesn't McDonalds sell salads instead of fries? Why do record labels offer such crappy music?

It's easy to blame the companies -- but in reality it's very hard for a single company to change the macro culture that informs their product decisions. If you want to find the root cause, look at the users and ask why they demand the products they do. In this case: "why are so few parents buying Legos for their girls?" or "why do girls feel a stigma about playing with Legos?"

pbreit3• 15 years ago

It's much easier for a single company to make some changes than it is for a single or even very large group of consumers to drive a change.

It stinks, but every complaint about products asks for an Apple comparison. I would say both Apple and Pixar have demonstrated that sticking to the purity of your craft can be both fulfilling and extremely lucrative.

maximusprime12• 15 years ago

You assume people want a change. I do not think they do.

Do people want an end to gender specific toys? Certainly some do. But the vast majority do not.

I firmly believe, through interacting with people in general, and my own children, that female and male brains are completely different. They are hard wired to like different things, and behave differently. I don't see anything wrong with that, and don't see any reason to pretend there aren't those differences.

sunahsuh4• 15 years ago

>"why do girls feel a stigma about playing with Legos?"

What about marketing and the outsize influence it has on culture? Companies don't just passively follow markets, the biggest ones use advertising to actively create them.

Girls feel a stigma about playing with Legos because Lego has clearly signaled it's a "boys' toy" with their marketing.

edit: typos

yummyfajitas• 15 years ago

What possible reason would the Lego corporation have for discouraging 50% of their potential market from buying their products?

sireat• 15 years ago

My daughter feels no stigma about playing with the "boys" LEGOs, in fact she does not particularly like the girl oriented Bellville series.

She likes other girl oriented things, so I wonder where LEGO failed with their girls series.

Also, you can still buy regular general LEGO pieces as in the old days, you do not have to buy the latest Star Wars or Harry Potter set.

Problem, with the general LEGO pieces is that about $100 or so can be plenty enough for a kid, while with themed series you can continue selling.

mvzink2• 15 years ago

I tend to agree, but there's a missing element in this economic model, though one that others have mentioned (cf. sunahsuh's comment): marketing. If you look at Marx, or even Smith, it's clear that the wants and demands of the consumers are not always organic, but are often fabricated by the companies themselves. Smith thought this was cool, Marx thought it was evil; in any case, you are right to some extent, but few people go out of their way to buy something they haven't been told they want.

rglullis• 15 years ago

I'm not so sure Smith thought it was cool:

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary."

JonnieCache2• 15 years ago

The person responsible for this, and much of the modern world, is Edward Bernays, the "father of public relations". He got most of his ideas from his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

polshaw2• 15 years ago

twitter and ipad strongly come to mind here. (whored by the media vastly more than they marketed themselves).

flomo• 15 years ago

> marketing

Exactly. When I was a child, Lego held the patent on the plastic brick and therefore could sell bland collections of 4x2s at enormously inflated prices.

When the patent expired, the market was flooded with clone bricks at greatly reduced prices. Lego floundered a bit before figuring out their value was no longer technology but instead "brand recognition".

Since then Lego has been primarily a marketing-oriented company. In fact, "bricks" aren't even close to their main product anymore and only really exists as a branding element at this point.

It would be great if some Chinese company sold huge tubs of quality bricks for a penny each. But it's not going to be from Lego.

codemac• 15 years ago

I blame companies instead of consumers because they market the shit out this stuff.

No one is born with an innate desire for that specific Barbie or Lego set. The companies market to you, make you feel like you want it. The companies may not be able to change the entire macro environment, but they actively profit and exploit it.

So yea, they are way more to blame than what 11 year old girls think their place in the world is. Who do you think told them?

dman• 15 years ago

What about the role of parenting?

TeMPOraL2• 15 years ago

> No one is born with an innate desire for that specific Barbie or Lego set. The companies market to you, make you feel like you want it.

True, but it's the fault of both companies and consumers at the same time. It's a feedback loop. Marketing strategies are based on what people are willing to buy, which is based on what companies market. The system feeds on itself.

maximusprime12• 15 years ago

Depressing to see people blaming advertising and marketing as if they as parents are powerless to buy their daughter a lego set unless an advert says they can.

If adverts have more of an influence on your kids than you do, then you're a terrible parent.

mattmcknight• 15 years ago

Yeah, but they used to market stuff to girls, and generically, but they started doing analytics and switched to marketing stuff that sells more- branded toys to boys. A minor variation in natural preference is expanded by the feedback loop.

That said- you can still buy all of the plain bricks you want from their website. If you don't want the complicated sets, don't buy them. The blocks on their own are fine.

InclinedPlane• 15 years ago

It goes along with the "soft bigotry of low expectations". We've come to a common mental model of the world that disempowers the individual, especially in the realm of responsibilities. The state and the corporation are the sole seats of responsibility and of blame, and thus the sole seats of power.

It's more than a little disturbing to see people willingly disempower themselves in such a fashion for so little in return.

javajosh• 15 years ago

There is nothing wrong with lamenting a change that takes away an easy, beneficial option. It is tacit acknowledgement that if you make the best choices easy to make, then more people will make them.

Given this basic fact, it is our responsibility to exert pressure on states and corporations to make the better options available to us.

einhverfr17• 15 years ago

All I can say is my son hacks lego sets. He also hacks M4 science kits occasionally too. The fact that it is a model kit doesn't mean that after the model is done, you can't tear it apart and put it in a spare parts box that can be used for freeform building.

hvass• 15 years ago

"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth."

I think Steve has the answer here. But I am just as frustrated as you are.

DanI-S• 15 years ago

What you're shown and what you want is undeniably a continuum.

arctangent• 15 years ago

I've always wondered if Steve was inspired by the movie "Network":

"We'll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds... We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! WE are the illusion! So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off! Turn them off right in the middle of the sentence I'm speaking to you now! TURN THEM OFF..."

I highly recommend it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_(film)

techdmn• 15 years ago

I like to rephrase that: "When you are powerless you think, There's a conspiracy. When you are powerful, you realize that people are getting what they want." With these ideas neither group has to accept any personal responsibility.

narrator• 15 years ago

The Chinese gov is a bit more hands on regulating the morality and frivolity of TV. Even totally apolitical TV shows like match-making shows, which they feel degrade the moral character of the citizenry, are taken off the air by fiat.

For example: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07...

s8qnze982y• 15 years ago

That's too much of a simplicistic view. I'll give an example.

A family brings their children to McDonald's, often. McDonald's blasts large amounts of marketing in the children's head. The children grow up and become adults. The adults frequently go to McDonald's.

Is fast food what they want? Or is it what the past generation's powerful marketing wanted?

It's a grey area, without any obvious answers.

Naturally, kudos to Steve for his pompous rethor... ahem, for his powerful and revealing words.

RyanMcGreal2• 15 years ago

The problem is that the people who watch TV aren't the customers. Advertisers are the customers and viewers are the product being sold. To the extent that TV gives viewers what they want to watch, it's a case of optimization-by-proxy, with all the attendant pitfalls.

TeMPOraL2• 15 years ago

> It's easy to blame the companies -- but in reality it's very hard for a single company to change the macro culture that informs their product decisions. If you want to find the root cause, look at the users and ask why they demand the products they do. In this case: "why are so few parents buying Legos for their girls?" or "why do girls feel a stigma about playing with Legos?"

I don't believe there's a "root cause", or at least it's not on the same conceptual level as "companies" and "consumers". It's a feedback loop. Companies create markets and needs by marketing, but marketing is never done in vacuum, it's correlated with what people already need. There are lots of loops like that (concept of popularity, or TV - as the quote of Steve somewhere in this thread goes), and we have one side of the loop blaming the other side of the loop, where in fact each side is fine by itself; it's just the combination that's broken and seems to converge on something bad.

MartinCron3• 15 years ago

Why doesn't Barbie have more realistic features?

The conclusion that my wife (both a programmer and a female) came to is that she has to have the crazy features to make the clothes look right at scale and still have working fasteners.

With Barbie, the clothes are the real toy and the doll is just an accessory.

thejteam2• 15 years ago

It has never occurred to me that girls don't play with Lego. My five year old daughter loves them. Hardly a tomboy either, she uses Lego to build little rooms for some little dolls to play in. She has made little desks and beds. Then she play acts with the dolls like any little girl will.

Of course, it did start with me(her dad) having fond memories of Lego as a kid and wanting to make sure my daughter had a chance to build with them. But the fact that she actually likes using them is up to her.

afterburner• 15 years ago

"Why don't car manufacturers offer an electric vehicle? "

Really? After the early attempts were basically just cover projects doomed to be cancelled? After car companies bought up streetcar companies in the US in order to run them down and close them? You really think consumers should be taken to task over Big Oil and the Big Three?

rsheridan6• 15 years ago

Or maybe, just maybe, "why don't girls want to play with Legos?" Children aren't just blank slates to be shaped by their parents and advertisers.

mkramlich2• 15 years ago

> For example: why doesn't Lego sell to girls?

LEGO has and has long had a line of sets that are focused on girls and traditionally feminine fantasies/archetypes. pink and ponies and kitties and hair brushes, etc. and if anyone wanted to buy them they can, and if not, they don't. a guy could get a "pink" set and a girl could buy/get a guns/trucks/cops/ships set. there's no evil conspiracy or gun pointed at anybody's head, honest.

nazgulnarsil• 15 years ago

because facing up to the fact that other people have different values from you and most of them SUCK is intellectually easy to grapple with, but on a gut level not so much.

stewbrew• 15 years ago

Interesting list. Where I live there are electric vehicles, and McDonalds sells salad. There are even record labels that sell not so shitty music. You're probably rigth on a global level with respect to Barbie though.

sili• 15 years ago

I don't think companies are of the hook here, especially large ones who control large segments of their industry. It might be hard for them sometimes to change what consumers want, but at the same time they often are the ones resisting change. Often times change in market preferences means that the company has to do extra work and spend extra money to adjust and offer new products. Sometimes they see that it would be cheaper to disrupt the change instead. Marketing and lobbying, as others have pointed out, are tools they use for that purpose.

kghose2• 15 years ago

Oh, BTW, I just had to share this guy's work:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/marshal-banana/

Especially his sand crawler. I really liked that

http://www.flickr.com/photos/marshal-banana/sets/72157626809...

RexRollman• 15 years ago

Am I the only one who would love to have a real, life-size set of Legos, big enough to build an actual dwelling? That would be a dream come true.

neovive• 15 years ago

Here are some HN perspectives from 2009 (when Lego announced a large increase in profits (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=768093). The article is no longer available on Yahoo Finance, but can be found here (http://www.hartfordbusiness.com/news9940.html).

Branded, themed Lego sets simply sell really well and Lego is responding to the demand with increased capacity and more focus on these markets.

Here is a scenario of why it works: Visualize a parent and child walking down the toy aisle at a typical large retailer (e.g. Target, WalMart, ToysRUs, etc.). The shelves are full of dozens of single-focus, low cost, electronic toys that are flashy and are very appealing to kids. A big box of Lego bricks just doesn't provide the same instant gratification as a talking toy with a "demo" button. Although, the long-term value of the box of Lego bricks is clearly much higher, explaining that to a 4 year-old is very difficult as they are concurrently making a strong appeal for, an even cheaper, talking doll.

Lego has responded with purchasing shelf space in retailers for branded sets that offer instant gratification while also satisfying the parents need for a more creative toy. Regardless, most of the pieces from the branded sets end of in the "big box" of Legos :).

mhartl2• 15 years ago

You've nailed it on the head. Virtually all criticisms of this nature can be summarized as "Humans often want things that aren't best for them." Unfortunately, putting anyone else in charge of people's preferences usually ends up being even worse than letting them decide for themselves.

amirmc3• 15 years ago

It's not Lego that's "highly-problematic". They're simply trying to give the kids(parents?) of today what they want.

If you follow the NPR article linked in the article, you'll see that Lego clearly did their homework before embarking on this new line. In light of this, I think it's odd for them to be accused of reinforcing stereotypes when their research showed that this is how (most) girls like to play.

I do think it's sad that we now have 'boy-lego' and 'girl-lego', but (for the moment), that appears to be appropriate for the world we live in. Maybe some of those girls will want to do more than just play with handbrushes and handbags and check out the Technics or Mindstorms. Who knows.

NPR article: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/15/143724644/ith-new-toys-lego-ho...

LEGO product lines: http://www.lego.com/en-us/products/default.aspx

berberich• 15 years ago

Here's the article (Businessweek) amirmc is referring to:

http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/lego-is-for-gir...

po• 15 years ago

I read through this article the other day and it does a great job of showing the position Lego has worked themselves into and how they're trying to right the ship.

I think it is commendable that they are trying to go after the girl market with something other than princesses. I didn't like the new 'ladyfigs' at all at first either but then again, I was a little boy and I loved the minifigs. The part about boys playing with minifies in the third person but girls wanting to play in the first person really resonated with me. I never pretended that I was a minifig. If that's what I wanted to do, they should have had more individual personality. Like what they came up with.

I think the fact that they are willing to break from tradition to capture this market is a good thing. The fact that it doesn't appeal to me is probably also a sign they're doing it right.

amirmc3• 15 years ago

Just spoke my gf. She's doing grad research on children's play and is actually (partially) funded by Lego. I'll just quote her (but bear in mind that it's a soundbite - there's likely a whole PhD in boy/girl play behaviour).

"Generally speaking, boys will happily construct just for the sake of it and although girls will also build things, for them there's no point if they can't breath life into it."

wgrover• 15 years ago

LEGO's "Creationary" game always gives me pause. I suppose it's 3D "Pictionary" but the name makes me think it'll be about disproving evolution...

http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Creationary-3844

gus_massa• 15 years ago

I don’t know how to fix this for the whole society, but it is possible to fix this for your daughter: Go and buy a generic Lego set, for example http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_355233462_11?ie=UTF8...

The same rule applies for yours nieces. And for the (female) friends of your children (If you really want to look more normal, you can buy the "pink" box.).

My 9 years old daughter has:

* Her own chemistry set

* An "X-100" microscopy (It is really of my wife.)

* A Meccano-like metalic cosnstruction set.

* A Snap Circuits Jr electronic Set.

And this year, one of her "Christmas" present is an Arduinos Sparkfun Professional Inventor's Kit, because she wants to make a robot, but she didn’t want a robot kit. (I still don’t know we will complete the robot, but the idea is to start with something simple and iterate.)

If you think that it is important to give your daughter a good scientific formation (or if you think that it is the only sensible way to raise a children), you can fight back.

To see another example, go to the Sylvia's Super-Awesome Maker Show! : http://sylviashow.com/

tristan_louis• 15 years ago

This is, unfortunately, part of a trend against "make" culture. While it does impact LEGO (the tie-in stuff is pretty useless and the LEGO city sets still have more wholesome brick sets that can be used in more than one fashion), it is going on across many facet of toy manufacturing.

Those of us who are parents of young children now may remember the days in school when they taught us basic programming as part of computer training (either logo or basic, for example) which put us on the path to learning how to get the computer to do stuff we wanted it to do instead of consuming pre-made stuff on it. In today's world, a large amount of what's offered to kids is stuff that tied in to TV shows or movies, with little interest in helping develop the next generation of makers.

Sadly, LEGO's initial downfall was because it try to keep on focusing on the makers and its resurgence was on the back of pre-made, pre-imagined tools: when a kid is given a star wars or harry potter set, he/she is now letting his/her imagination run wild but is constrained by the pre-established story lines set in place by Hollywood (because let's face it, the tie-ins are to movies, not books).

The sad part is that the long term impact of this may be that it creates grown-ups further down the line who will feel that laws like SOPA are OK.

thejteam2• 15 years ago

I was thinking the other day how much I really miss GW-Basic. A relatively simple set of instructions that I used at age 10 or so to start simple programming. How do I teach a 10 year old to program now? Class instantiation? Grab a bunch of libraries off the internet and put them together?

Really sad that people don't want to build things anymore. I recently fenced in my acre yard(no I don't live in SV, couldn't afford an acre over there). Six foot privacy fence. Took me months. Everybody thought I was crazy, including the guy next door who makes a living doing commercial construction. My wife's friends thought she was crazy. They would never let their husbands keep construction materials around that long. But I remember my dad building a fence years ago when I was a kid so it just seemed natural I would do it as well.

einhverfr17• 15 years ago

I am starting my son with perl and C. Today is his 8th birthday.

Why perl and C?

1) Perl is very good at ad hoc programming, and it;s a very good language for learning very basic things.....

2) C is simple language for very basic stuff, but it is exacting and makes you think like a programmer.

Once he gets half-way decent with simple things in Perl, he's ready for Lego Mindstorms ;-)

oz• 15 years ago

" But if they’ve become toys marketed to a single gender, then we’re just reproducing the already awful gender imbalance in STEM education and employment."

Why is it we never hear anyone decrying the 'awful gender imbalance' in Human Resources, Nursing and Teaching?

dgabriel5• 15 years ago

Because you're in technology. There are a number of organizations dedicated to increasing the number of men in nursing and teaching.

tikhonj• 15 years ago

Because this is "Hacker" news so there is a very strong bias towards science and engineering. I imagine it might be different on a Nursing forum, but I've never seen one so I don't actually know.

philwelch• 15 years ago

Because when women dominate the workplace, it's "The End of Men" (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-...) and reason for smug, thinly-veiled gloating. Also, men can't be teachers because we're all pedophiles.

emp_• 15 years ago

I buy legos 1-2 a year for my four girls, I never get anything with themes tho.

Only basic blocks and let their skills do the rest, you'd be amazed what they can do.

jkeel• 15 years ago

My daughter loves legos and seems to really love the Harry Potter legos. I do agree that getting generic legos instead of boy centric seems more challenging but they are out there.

What I really connected with more in this article was the advent calendar with the cops and robbers. My wife told me a while back, "I got this cool lego advent calendar online". I was like, "cool!". Then I saw this cops and robbers theme and I told her, "Is this really what Christmas is about in the US now? <santa voice>Hey kids! Be careful out there as there are people that want to break into your house and steal your stuff!</santa voice>"

I know, I know... If I don't like it then don't buy it. I agree. I still think it's a strange advent calendar even though my son actually likes it.

brc2• 15 years ago

The cops and robbers theme is really just a play on the good v. evil theme that permeates most childrens books, stories, movies, etc.

I think it's pretty benign and just part of the process of helping kids make sense of the world through play and storytelling.

vacri• 15 years ago

This is not new. When I was growing up with lego in the early 80s, there was a line of lego marketed at girls which were sets of lego that you made jewelery with.

Also, what nonsense is this that you won't make anything with the millenium falcon because 1000 pieces is too many? What garbage. How can lego possibly fix the issue that you refuse to make anything else with a set with lots of pieces?

Anyway, lego sets aren't atomic - buy a lego set, play with it, then mix it with your other stuff. You've just waxed lyrical about an ad where you can 'just make stuff', right after refusing to do so with a large set, with no real reason given.

billpatrianakos4• 15 years ago

Eh, they don't make 'me like they used to, right? I hardly think LEGO is promoting gender stereotypes. The new girl products and what they sell to boys aren't the problem but a symptom of a larger disease. Gender stereotypes are created within cultures and companies like LEGO don't really have an agenda like people would try to have us think. Instead they market what sells. The culture at large has put boys and girls into their respective roles and companies simply ride the trends. If boys were supposed to be in flowers and wear underwear on their heads then they'd make little Lego flower kits that came with little Lego men with underwear as hats. Companies have to look out for their share holders. If gender stereotypes are the norm then that's what they'll sell. If we, as a culture, change those stereotypes the companies will follow. It's great to be able to commend a company for taking the lead on such issues but we can hardly expect it. That change has to come from families first.

harryf• 15 years ago

Side note but the ultimate evil present for parents of small kids is to buy the kid a Playmobil Castle for Christmas - http://www.amazon.com/Lion-Knights-Castle-by-Playmobil/dp/B0...

As a parent that spent over 16 hours assembling one last Christmas then watching it disintegrate again, the "joy" this gift brings cannot be described. A great present if you have a brother or sister with kids you feel compelled to annoy.

ianb• 15 years ago

Ah, but remember this castle? http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jX9QklC3G4E/TIRfrl9uVRI/AAAAAAAADK...

That was one really great toy.

jacquesm• 15 years ago

I'm an equal-opportunity lego distributor. Girls as well as Boys get just one kind of toy from me: Lego. Duplo for the urchins, 'regular' for 4 to 8's and technic for the older ones. Never seen a kid turn it down, whatever age or gender. For a lark I gave a bunch of it to some adults, claiming that I'd forgotten their birth dates. They ended up being at least as happy as the kids.

I've never given any 'themed' lego, just the plain stuff, no minifigs or other non constructive bits.

Lego is what made me see the power of building using re-usable blocks, the best possible primer for becoming a programmer that I am aware of outside of maths (and you typically don't start math beyond counting when you're a toddler).

seagreen• 15 years ago

I'd like to make a point that applies to some (but by no means all) of the comments above. Outrage isn't a very useful emotion. It's become the default emotion for things like this because politicians like to keep people in a state of frothy indignation. That's carried over to the rest of our culture but it's not a good thing.

Resolve is a much better emotion than outrage. What can I do to encourage better behavior? Buying good LEGO sets as presents for children and evangelizing about LEGO to friends spring immediately to mind. Or maybe getting involved with the 3D printing movement.

In summary, I'm suspicious that alternating between "intellectual curiosity" and "resolving to take action" is a much better way of reading articles on the internet than the alternate strategy of alternating intellectual curiosity and outrage.

tombell• 15 years ago

I feel the need to point out the obvious. It's LEGO not LEGOS or legos.

brc2• 15 years ago

Pet peeve number 1 for me.

There is no plural. 'Mum gave me a LEGO set' 'I want to go and play with my LEGO' 'I have a big tub full of LEGO pieces'

This was the official statement by the company: "LEGO® is a brand name that is very special to all of us in the LEGO Group Companies. We would sincerely appreciate your help in keeping it special by referring to our bricks as "LEGO Bricks or Toys" and not just "LEGOS". By doing so, you will be helping to protect and preserve a brand that stands for quality the world over."

ugh3• 15 years ago

This is not a new development. Lego has had sets loudly targeting girls (or better: stereotypes about girls) since 1991. Lego Paradisa set where sold all through the 90s. Here is the Poolside Paradiese from 1992: http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6416-1

The Lego Belville sets are similar and are still sold today. Here is the Pony Trekking set from 1997: http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=5854-1

It’s possible to go even further back in time for more stunning displays of sexism. In 1971 many sets had photos of kids on them. There was a boy pushing a truck or putting together a car. Now guess what the only sets with girls on them were. A kitchen and a living room: http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=261-4

All that does’t make it better. Yes, this is a problem that has to be remedied. But it is not a recent development.

In general I have to say that Lego improved massively since the dark ages (late 90s and early 2000s). I was just looking at some new Lego Creator sets and blown away by them. You couldn’t get cool stuff like that during my (late) childhood (i.e. late 90s and early 2000s). I still loved the heck out of Lego during my childhood but today’s sets are just cooler.

MikeMacMan• 15 years ago

I don't besmirch LEGO for doing what is an entirely rational for them: design products whose pieces, like puzzle pieces, don't have much versatility outside the context of that playset, leading children to tire of them quickly and want a new set.

Of course, LEGO still sells the general-purpose sets with instruction books to show you how to construct dozens of different buildings/vehicles/etc. My son prefers those, but every kid is different.

The No Girls Allowed theme is pretty easy to explain: mass-market films of the type that will have product tie-ins are almost universally aimed at boys, and LEGO is simply downstream from that trend.

There are toys that give kids' imaginations some exercise, and there are those that, like video games and Harry Potter LEGO sets, don't deliver quite the same workout. It's up to you to cultivate in your child a healthy appetite for the former.

EDIT: I would add that the Toy Story movies do a good job of echoing the nostalgia that adults feel for those older, simpler toys. My son and my affection for those movies has in some way conditioned us to stretch our imaginations and breathe new life into old toys.

ja27• 15 years ago

My daughter grew up with LEGO and still plays with them. She doesn't need pink or purple blocks or over-sized female figures. All she wants different is a few female minifigs once in a while. I don't think there is a single one in either advent calendar. There are almost none anymore except Hermione in the Harry Potter licensed sets. Somewhat ironically, one of the few we have is the female doctor from last season's FIRST LEGO League competition set.

codergirl• 15 years ago

This is offensive, I will just have to stick with my computer engineer barbie instead: http://gizmodo.com/5470587/computer-engineer-barbie-has-a-ph...

draggnar• 15 years ago

in america this is called having a niche

alanh• 15 years ago

I Made Things with LEGO blocks growing up. I loved the kits and the space themes. But I would always end up creating my own spaceship.

My young sisters build… but they mostly just build very simple props and then play with the LEGO people like dolls, inventing dramas and friendships and the like.

It’s the same set of LEGO bricks I used.

Is it evil to recognize this?

commieneko• 15 years ago

I've been a Lego fan for, what, 45, 50 years? I've never in that time bought a single "kit" from them. You buy bricks. And other parts. But kits? Why would I want to build someone else's design. The whole idea behind Lego, as I've understood since I was 5 years old, is that you make your own cool stuff.

I've built space ships and air planes and monsters. I think I even built a Starship Enterprise once. But designing the things yourself is part of the process.

When my nieces were prime Lego age, at the advice of their mother, I did look at some kits, but was horrified at the prices. The bricks are pricy enough. I converted my money into tubs of bulk bricks. You can never have enough bricks.

(Now I did make some Tinker-Toy machines from company plans, but only enough to understand the principle. I then adapted them to my own nefarious purposes. I did the same with balsa wood flying model airplanes later.)

jacobr• 15 years ago

If you want random bricks or just don't care to spend a fortune, look for used Lego and Duplo (big Legos) and just run it through the dish washer.

kin• 15 years ago

So I played the Lego board game series Heroica recently and at first I thought it was brilliant. It's pretty much a simplified version of D&D where you build the map with Legos. Then at the end I realized that the game-play pieces were set specific and you couldn't do what I thought was the point.

What I thought was that you could use any lego piece you want and add it to the set and use any lego figure and add it to the set and simply follow the same gameplay mechanics to a map limited only by your imagination. Let's play Heroica with Harry Potter pieces. Nope can't do that. You have to purchase their overpriced sets and only play what the sets let you do.

Looks like they're just looking for cash based off of numbers. Bummer.

joejohnson• 15 years ago

There are LEGO advent calendars!? That is so cool. I'm definitely getting one next year.

twodayslate• 15 years ago

What is wrong with Nerf? I love the new stuff they put out. I would have loved a Nerf Sword when I was a kid!

aaronmorey• 15 years ago

My questions is, what changed about Nerf? I'm not all that old, but most Nerf guns today just seem to be more powerful and more stylized versions of what they were making when I was a kid.

rglover• 15 years ago

“With New Toys, Lego Hopes To Build Girls Market.”

That, right there, is the problem. The people making the toys don't find value in making children happy or inspiring them to be creative/innovative; when all is said and done, girls are just another market.

acabal• 15 years ago

I've actually had similar thoughts about Lego in the past. When I was younger I used to love playing with the generic "space" Legos or the generic "castle" legos. Looking back, it was great because those sets where generic enough that you could imagine your own story for them. You wouldn't just be building sets, you'd be building universes.

Much of that is lost with movie-themed Legos. If a kid sees Star Wars and then goes to get the Star Wars Lego set, then the Luke Skywalker figure will always be Luke Skywalker, and the Vader figure will always be Vader, and you'll always need a Millenium Falcon around to join the party. Media tie-ins seem to greatly restrict (though of course not totally destroy) the potential for a kid to make up his own adventure. The universe is already imagined for you; in a sense, you become a participant, not a creator.

toast762• 15 years ago

I don't get it.

You complain that a 5000 piece lego set is movie themed, when the only thing movie themed are the minifigs and the box it came in.

As kids every single lego set we had was built into the "model" precisely once, and then dumped in with the rest of the lego. We kept the instructions, but would never rebuild the original set. That's hardly the point of Lego.

As an adult I have a huge collection of Star Wars lego sets, including the Imperial Star Destroyer and Death Star. When my son is old enough (he's not yet 3), they'll get dismantled and put in a bucket all together. From that day on they WILL be generic lego pieces. The fact that they came in a Star Wars box is then irrelevant.

stinkytaco• 15 years ago

Except so many of those pieces are not generic. There's dozens of color and shape specific pieces in there. Things that will never go on anything else.

That said, you can still buy generic lego boxes.

toast762• 15 years ago

No, actually. These days there are very few non-generic pieces. If we're talking bionicles, then yes. But 99% of pieces in any modern set (branded or otherwise) are generic. The exception is usually things like fighter windshields (if they're called that in space?).

e.g. The Star Destroyer engines are actually wheels presumably borrowed from some other set. The Death Star as far as I can tell has no "special" pieces, nor the AT-AT, AT-ST or X-wing. The millenium falcon has a few special bits, but even they look repurposed from some other set.

einhverfr17• 15 years ago

Except so many of those pieces are not generic.

That you think these pieces will never go with anything else shows you aren't thinking about what you can do with them, only what they are intended to be.

Thats the beauty of lego and imagination. The piece can be anything you want it to be. Is it the exhaust of a spaceship or the ear of an alien space monster? You decide!

betageek• 15 years ago

Lego's patent on the basic block design has run out so it's actually a pretty smart strategy of Lego to move to licensed properties over the last decade - what else could they do? I've already seen some Hello Kitty "minifigs" with Lego compatible blocks, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/expired-patent-of-the-day-l...

hugs• 15 years ago

LEGO is very closed source. I'm fixing that with my http://bitbeam.org project. It's an open source hardware Lego Technic compatible building toy that you can manufacture yourself. (I lasercut my bitbeams at TechShop in San Francisco.) My long term plan is to make a bitbeam-based CNC milling machine that can make more beams. I won't just sell the "bricks", I'll open source and sell the machines that make the bricks. Opening up the manufacturing process is something I suspect LEGO would never do. Also, I'd like to see a fully open source equivalent to Mindstorms - Arduino for the electronics and Bitbeam for the mechanics.

littlenag• 15 years ago

I've been extremely sad the past 5 years with lego. I graduated college in 2006 and when I got a real job I thought that for Christmas I would be getting my niece and nephew legos. I loved them growing up (technic for the win!) and wanted to get them started on this obsession as well. But try as I might the trend that I saw start when I was 10 or 12 has continued to almost completely corrupt what I recall lego as being. No longer is it a where you get to imagine and design, and then play, all the "work" of design and imagination has been removed leaving only the "play". That's all kids want right, to play? Aw well, at least I got to have some good times.

zyb09• 15 years ago

Buy the right thing for your daughter, that you think will influence her in the right way? How come the responsibility to raise a child lies not in the parents anymore, but rather in companys and what they want to sell to them. Nothing is stopping you from dumping a big pile of mixed LEGO pieces in her room for christmas.

mkramlich2• 15 years ago

two reactions:

1. yes and after you buy that specific-model-guns-ships set you can (b) build anything you want with it; (b) build model put on shelf never touch (or play with it); (c) build model then tear it apart and use pieces to make something from your imagination, etc. there are no rules. there are both generic brick-like pieces and special-purpose pieces and they can be put together in literally millions of ways, and now you can even see and share photos on the web, both for ideas and showing off.

2. girls really are different from boys, overall, and in the general case; I've lost track of the number of males I've known that like/liked LEGO and the number of girls/women that were like, "meh"; and I've seen first-hand, with my own eyes, over and over again, that my young nieces LOVE to play with dolls and dresses and princesses and jewelry, whereas LEGO's and guns? meh

LEGO is like a shining beacon in a sea of sludge and noise, in terms of educational value for kids and long-term replayability into adulthood, compared to most other toys. Criticizing LEGO is a bit like criticizing Michael Jordan for missing some shots in a game. It's Michael Jordan, mmkay?

Instructions show you how to build what's on the box. You are not required to do that, nor are you even required to buy LEGO at all.

gavanwoolery• 15 years ago

<sarcasm> Wait...a toy that is oriented primarily towards boys? It must be evil! </sarcasm> In that case, Barbie is evil, GI Joe is evil, Transformers are evil, My Little Pony is evil, etc...

rmc• 15 years ago

Yes, a toy that teaches bad things is evil.

Bad things including: "You are a boy, you must be tough and strong" or "You are a girl you must be pretty and not good at maths"

batiudrami• 15 years ago

I think you're confusing 'evil' with 'takes reasonable actions to ensure that it, as a company, is as profitable as possible'.

trout• 15 years ago

They've also got the 'Creator' line which is more of what I traditionally think of Lego.

So, when I bought a set that's the one I chose. Now, I did have to wade through the other 30 brands to find it, but I was happy they still had at least one choice.

Now more people should buy these if the market wants it - but I'll agree these aren't marketed enough.

brain5ide• 15 years ago

LEGO used to be a brand. Now it's more of a platform.

sceaj• 15 years ago

My daughter is 4. She loves LEGOs. She also loves bugs, snakes, sharks, dinosaurs, Star Wars, her train set, Barbies, princesses, fairies, puppies, and sneaking into her grandma's makeup.

My son is 11 months old. He's taken a liking to cars and balls, but he also loves his sister's Barbies. Particularly, he likes to pull their hair, but I think he's drawn to the (ahem, slight) humanness they possess. They look friendly.

Separating "boys' toys" from "girls' toys" is pretty much nonsense. Of course, older boys aren't going to want to play with Barbies. Not necessarily because they wouldn't enjoy it, but because they are marketed to girls, and, most importantly, they would get made fun of for doing so. Were it socially acceptable for boys to play with Barbies, I promise they would.

Realize that when we're shopping for toys for my daughter, the toy store is twice as big for her, because she's not aware that she isn't supposed to like action figures and rc cars.

I think the genderizing of colors is just crazy. What makes pink a "girl's color" and blue a "boy's color" ? I'm convinced it's just marking influence. Most girls' clothes are pinks and purples, and similar "girly" colors. With that, most of what my daughter wears is pink or purple. Of course she loves the colors; we drape her in them daily. She chose blue, green, and red for her bedroom, and we let her do that, instead of saying "No, no, those colors are for boys."

djhworld• 15 years ago

What I'm struggling to understand is, why are they releasing these new style girly minifigs?

I always thought Lego was supposed to be gender agnostic

ajuc• 15 years ago

I wonder if rep-rap can print good enough lego pieces?

gibsonf1• 15 years ago

For the most amazing building toy with great hackability, I highly recommend Uberstix - you can build planes that fly, boats that sail, robots, buildings, dynamic systems, catapults etc etc: http://www.uberstix.com/

RyanMcGreal2• 15 years ago

> We will put it together once and we will play with it a lot and that will be that. It won’t get remixed, won’t get hacked.

My kids have gotten their share of Star Wars and Harry Potter themed Lego over the years, and in every case the original set was eventually taken apart - usually bit by bit in a kind of salvage operation for needed parts - and incorporated into the Lego bin. Once the pieces go into general circulation, they're used to build an arbitrary collection of original ships, buildings and so on.

I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

Related Stories