GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/16029337/goldieblox-the-engineering-toy-for-girls?ref=friends_backed

by tlrobinson • 14 years ago

135 107 14 years ago

eridius• 14 years ago

I can't figure out if this is a good idea because it encourages girls to explore traditionally male-dominated activities, or a bad thing because it reinforces the idea that traditional construction toys are intended for boys.

TWAndrews• 14 years ago

I think it accepts the fact that traditional engineering toys are boy oriented, and adds a girl oriented toy to the market. Seems less about changing prevailing attitudes and more about using presenting cool stuff about engineering to girls who have probably already been impacted by those attitudes.

In any case, I signed up for a couple boxes for my daughters.

Rolo03215• 14 years ago

Agree with TWAndrews. At the end of the day, if there are girls out there who would not be interested in playing with the boy-oriented sets but WOULD be interested in playing with GoldieBlox, and from there learn that engineering is cool - then the toy accomplished what it set out to do.

im3w1l2• 14 years ago

This seems to be a problem of "too much theory, too little data".

bunderbunder• 14 years ago

I'm somewhat reminded of an ill-fated attempt by the European Commission to attract girls to science with a music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g032MPrSjFA

Rolo03215• 14 years ago

I will file this music video under 'So Bad It's Good'. Almost died laughing. Thank you for sharing.

im3w1l2• 14 years ago

Of course, we have no idea if it would have worked, since it was pulled so quickly. I think it would have.

timr• 14 years ago

I get the desire for narrative and different colors...but this looks awfully simple-minded. Why can a boy age 5-9 play with erector sets and legos, but a "girl's" engineering toy must comprise such a primitive set of components?

jlgreco2• 14 years ago

I can see the concerns some people have with legos clearly focusing on marketing to boys, but erector set stuff does seem rather un-gendered to me. I don't know if it has changed, but the erector set stuff I had as a child was just a bunch of stamped out metal parts with nuts/bolts. Not much "themeing" at all. I suppose you can just buy "vanilla" lego blocks too of course.

Anyway, parents know what their kids want more than anyone else, so I think the option of gendered construction toys is great (so long as the market doesn't become dominated by them).

Tichy3• 14 years ago

That's what I get for switching from watching =3 to HN: can't help thinking that maybe that kit would sell better to girls if it wasn't called "erector set".

egillie• 14 years ago

If anything, the kids may not care, but adults picking out toys for a little girl will feel more comfortable buying this. People are always happier if they feel their choices were more "customized" for the person they're buying for.

Personal anecdote: when I was a girl I wanted this $50 erector set for Christmas which my dad said was too expensive, but then he bought me a some $50 stuffed animal for Christmas anyways. I guess he felt like it was a better gift.

trhtrsh3• 14 years ago

Construction toys are gendered. You just don't notice because it is the standard.

greendestiny2• 14 years ago

There is girls themed lego and duplo these days.

wtracy2• 14 years ago

And their sales numbers have been abysmal.

I haven't heard how the new "Lego Friends" line has been doing, though.

vacri• 14 years ago

There was in the early '80s, too. I remember seeing the product line in the catalogue but not the store shelves. The sets were for making jewellery out of and the like.

marquis• 14 years ago

In no way does it seem that this is the final product she will ever ship. This version is easy to manufacturer and easy to sell. She has an engineering degree: I'm sure this was not the first design and she whittled down from more complex designs, which she can get back to after she has a thriving business and marketing team. Personally, I think I would have been bored by this after one time at the age of 6 or 7, but it would have gotten my attention (and I was never a princess girl, I just liked puzzles). Think of the things that can spin from this: more technical puzzles, parts that the kids can use to invent their own games, story-telling and programming. I'm committing to her project because I see her as a long-term producer of products that could genuinely make a difference (and if not her, there's enough in here to spin a thousand ideas). Like someone commented on here: The Diamond Age could come from this, and who knows if it will be a girl in 25-50 years who builds it?

sthatipamala• 14 years ago

I couldn't figure out from the video what the "game dynamic" is of this toy. I see that one arranges the spindles so that the animals spin when the ribbon is pulled.

Is the pattern a puzzle for the kids to solve? Do the kids follow along based on the patterns shown in the story?

Either way, exciting concept. I wish they explained the game itself though.

Rolo03215• 14 years ago

The ribbon is actually a functional belt drive. It starts with spinning one animal/spindle, then builds up to spinning all five at once, the way a belt drive would.

For more info:http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/12/09/can-a-ki...

jpxxx2• 14 years ago

Can't hate, I love it. Even the pink and cuddly bits. If this product instead had a blue ribbon and alien figurines with the title "Cyber Drivetrain Blast Kit" it wouldn't raise an eyebrow as a gendered or pandering toy.

Legos are for boys when 95% of what's on the Lego shelf is boy pirates, boy laserbros, boy Batman, boy bio-alien-robots tearing the shit out of boy bio-dino-robots, etc.

vessenes• 14 years ago

My girls LOVE legos. They have a few of the new 'pink' ones but mostly play with our 20 year old lego collection. They don't think of the girly legos as 'real legos', for whatever reason.

It _is_ disheartening to go into a lego store and see almost solely boy-oriented sets, though. I note kids in Lego stores are roughly 60/40 boys / girls, but the sets are boyish.

scoot• 14 years ago

Your girls love Lego. So does mine, and houses, shops, cars figures, vehicles - the bulk of the Lego staple kits - are all gender neutral.

Turing_Machine• 14 years ago

Some of us find it disheartening that Lego makes "sets" at all.

What happened to kids using their imaginations?

ganley• 14 years ago

Mine too. I pointed out the Friends stuff last time we were in the Lego store, and they were unimpressed.

Tichy3• 14 years ago

So only 15% of girls liking engineering is a problem, but girls not liking pirates, batman and bio-alien-robots isn't? Where is the movement to get girls interested in bio-alien-robots?

jpxxx2• 14 years ago

It's busy pushing the same rock up a hill forever.

SoftwareMaven2• 14 years ago

Why should girls have to be interested in bio-alien-robots? Gender differences are real, so instead of trying to overcome them, we should do what this toy is trying to do: recognize them and work within them.

MartinCron2• 14 years ago

It would be a problem if there were a profound shortage of talent and diversity in the pirate, batman, and bio-alien-robot industries.

tete• 14 years ago

Well, I know some girls like pirates at least, but when I think about the old pirate movies... well, maybe old movies in general.

roguecoder3• 14 years ago

There are! http://geekfeminism.org/tag/wear-and-share-star-wars-day/

The problem appears to be the social backlash little girls face if they like those things.

Tichy3• 14 years ago

The idea to combine it with a story sounds great. Perhaps it would also work with classic toys, that is just write stories that use Lego, and skip the new toy?

Some examples as to what you can build with the toy would be great.

pnathan2• 14 years ago

I really hope that when I have kids, their interests and my location coincide so I don't have to buy them a Toy for Gender. I'd like to let them find out what they like to do.

SoftwareMaven2• 14 years ago

Odds are, they'll want a Toy for Gender. It's not 100% and I would never push my kids to have a particular type of toy, but gender differences are real.

I have four kids. I've bought many toys that matched stereotypes and several that didn't match. What surprised me the most was, even when we didn't buy toy guns or swords, my boys turned things into them; and no matter what game was being played (and how violent the boys wanted it to be :/), one of my girls always wanted to be the stereotypical girl (the other is a very interesting mix of incredibly girly and not).

We tried very hard to not overly bias our kids, but the bias is in their genetic code. What I like about this toy is it recognizes that while providing a creative play experience. There are few girl's toys that allow you to build something.

The bigger question: do the girls want it? My guess is that they do. Not all of them, but enough to make this kind of toy successful.

azakai• 14 years ago

> We tried very hard to not overly bias our kids, but the bias is in their genetic code.

Maybe you didn't mean this literally, but I think it's important not to promote this as-yet-unproven notion. There are tantalizing studies with conflicting conclusions here - we just don't know how much gender-stereotypical behavior is genetic.

JabavuAdams2• 14 years ago

There are differences, but so much is socialization. I.e. if green were a traditional girls' colour, and marketed as such, then girly girls would want to play with green toys. Parents would subtly encourage boys not to play with green toys.

Robots etc. are not inherently violent so an interest in / lack of interest in (non-weaponized) robots is better explained by socialization, rather than gender differences, IMHO.

shurane2• 14 years ago

Part of that could still be marketing; the commercials they seen on TV, online. Girls are princesses. Boys are knights. It's not like every kid is free of things like that.

pnathan2• 14 years ago

Odds are, sure.

But I'd like them to gravitate towards that, not be marketed to believe that they ought to be an X or a Y.

MartinCron2• 14 years ago

What if what they like to do aligns with what is specific to their gender? Or even if what they like is specific to the opposite gender.

My son and my daughter both like My Little Pony (as do I, it's awesome) and I don't see anything that I could do to stop it, even if I wanted to.

ck2• 14 years ago

Building what you see on the video is very clever.

alanfalcon• 14 years ago

One step closer to the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from Stephenson's Diamond Age. I approve.

bunkat2• 14 years ago

I think the toy is pretty cool and I'm sure lots of little girls will enjoy playing with it, but I'm not sure how this is supposed to get girls interested in engineering. There are none of the aspects of legos and erector sets that make those toys a stepping stone to becoming an engineer.

Legos let you build whatever you can imagine, including things like houses, bridges, buildings, cars, planes, etc that exist in the real world. This allows little kids to emulate real engineers which is critical to creating excitement in the discipline. It also promotes skills like math (2x4 blocks = 8 dots), physics (how tall can you go before it falls over, where should wheels be to make a car stable), symmetry, organization (keeping 3000 parts in order), and instruction comprehension. I don't see any of that with a toy where you put a ribbon around 5 spools.

It's almost like saying Easy Bake Ovens create more female chefs. Thing is, they don't. Girls that spend lots of time in the kitchen building skills and creating on their own become chefs, not girls that put brownies under a light bulb. I also thought it was funny that they couldn't even move away from the Barbie syndrome. Can't girls have any other role models than blonde hair, blue eyed, thin Caucasian women?

wtracy2• 14 years ago

You highlighted my main concern with this toy: It's not nearly as open-ended as "traditional" building toys.

bunkat2• 14 years ago

Not only is this set not as open-ended, I'm not sure buying additional sets will improve things since it sounds like every set will be rather self contained.

antihero• 14 years ago

I initially made a more crass comment, and then deleted to it, but what I'll say is that this got my feminist heckles up, and it seems like a pragmatic approach. However, in this case the pragmatic approach seems like building a castle on a swamp, as opposed to making any attempt to deal with said swamp.

Give girls lego.

polemic• 14 years ago

> "building a castle on a swamp"

Perfectly put.

My nearly-3 daughter loves megablocks and is getting into lego. I don't see any need whatsoever to get the 'gendered' version, especially stuff that is artificially simplified in the name of being 'girl friendly'.

The best way that I know of not inflicting the gender biases onto my child from a young age, is to NOT DO IT MYSELF. I mean, really, if parents aren't able to filter the marketing BS, how are children supposed to do it?

oneandoneis2• 14 years ago

Other kings said I was daft to build a castle in a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em!

languagehacker• 14 years ago

Interesting! The spools and ribbons are almost skeuomorphic in that toy's context, but still attractive under the existing girls' toy aesthetic. Smart idea.

DeepDuh• 14 years ago

Now we're applying the word 'skeuomorphic' back to real world objects? The sky is the limit for this new expression. Will it reach inception-esque levels?

Tipzntrix4• 14 years ago

Yeah, what does skeuomorphic mean here, its interface is made to imitate a real world drive belt? I hope it would be, if it's supposed to be an engineering toy.

connor• 14 years ago

Creating a more appealing activity for girls seems like a good step. An even better step might be trying to fix perceptions regarding the engineering centric activities out there for kids (lego mindstorms, fort building, etc).

Right now this solution feels like similar solutions being pursued in computer engineering to fix the gender imbalance- namely creating girls-only coding groups. This is good in some ways, but I feel like it breeds two standards (with the female standard being weaker). For me, the best type of progress is girls working alongside the boys, with both happy and comfortable.

cullenking• 14 years ago

All the naysayers out there are neglecting an important viewpoint best explained by a personal anecdote. I have a 4 year old niece that is so into princesses, pink, high heals, the whole 9 yards, that any present that isn't themed pink and girly will just get ignored, yet she's very smart and likes playing with puzzles. Something like this might actually work for her, where gender neutral legos or erector sets would never get played with.

grueful2• 14 years ago

My knee-jerk response to that: Do they make pink girly legos? Maybe there are reasons why that's the wrong approach, but I tend to regard interaction and packaging as two very distinct design components. If the packaging is the problem, fix that first.

Changing the interaction should come second. Dumbing it down is almost never the solution, yet it's often the first solution people turn to when trying to deal with a gender gap. It's as if they think the issues will go away if they speak very slowly and loudly.

(I admire the objective, but I believe I would like the project better if it said "an engineering toy" instead of "the engineering toy." The implication differs.)

bjt• 14 years ago

"Do they make pink girly legos?"

Why yes, yes they do: http://friends.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx

They're controversial for the same reasons people are complaining on this thread, but they're selling. (See http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/09/lego-friends-tr...)

dmor• 14 years ago

I almost wrote a comment about how it was basically just making erector sets pink, and what was the point of that. You've made me think twice.

However, I feel like parents who are inclined to buy this might not be likely to have princess-obsessed kids. But I am not a parent, so I don't know.

simon2• 14 years ago

I have two daughters ... both princess-obsessed. I trip over Barbies some days!

ary• 14 years ago

To this point there seems to be strong and widespread anecdotal evidence that many boys don't want to seem to much like girls by playing with "girly" toys and many girls feel the same way towards "boys" toys. There is perhaps (or perhaps not) a problem with this phenomenon that, over time, needs to be addressed. In the meantime things like this seem to be a great way to spread interest in science and engineering among both genders.

alttag• 14 years ago

It's not just anecdotal [1] (forgive the article for misspelling "light saber"). Toy companies have known this for some time. It's how they make money.

NPR had several interesting discussions regarding the controversy over girl-themed Legos, and gender in toys [2][3].

1: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1457051...

2: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1603654...

3: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/18/145397007/gender-controversy-s...

mibbitier4• 14 years ago

Buy Lego friends. They're pretty good 'girlie' sets.

officemonkey• 14 years ago

A friend's niece reports "LEGO Friends are too easy," but she's the kind of kid who builds the Grand Emporium all by herself.

Frostbeard• 14 years ago

My first reaction when I saw this campaign was to roll my eyes a bit, to be honest. My own daughter loves the gender neutral and even "boyish" construction toys, and even though she loves ponies and princesses and pink frilly things, she'd probably cast something like this aside.

On reflection though, I think anything that helps get girls interested in the concepts is fantastic. This simply wouldn't be of value to my own daughter (or my nieces for that matter), but I can see how it would be really helpful in getting girls like your niece interested, and that can only be a good thing.

neilk• 14 years ago

Good intentions yes, but is this even fun? She says she playtested it, but I can't imagine it holding anyone's attention for more than an hour. Maybe you can re-play it by reading the story again, though.

Tangent: I've had an idea for a while that the best way to teach girls programming would be to start not with math or games but with a chat server. You can handwave over how the networking works, with the right framework. And kids who are really interested can delve deeper. Maybe kids reared on that would learn TCP/IP before they ever had to slog through some dreary fibonacci exercise.

mkramlich3• 14 years ago

Wow. $100k pledged. For proposing to do something that LEGO's Pink sets are essentially already doing today, on the shelves, ready to buy.

Kickstarter is getting frothy. Reminds me of all the swill that was earning millions in the early days of the iOS App Store.

mkramlich3• 14 years ago

Now if we could solve the other great crime against humanity: why aren't there more dressup dolls and baby toys aimed at boys? That gender-biased oppression has got to end.

peteretep• 14 years ago

Have you thought about writing to the Lego corp and suggesting inch-high dolls? You could give them things like interchangeable heads and hair, or even legs. Maybe even tiny little hands that can grip on to things? I guess you could even do them themed ... pirates, knights, soldiers. Amazed Lego have never considered doing miniature dress up dolls for boys before. You could call them ... Hrm ... Lego Men?

But I guess that's not all! Think about all the fun people could have with dress up soldiers! "Men of Action", or, gee, "Joe who's a GI". You could give him a whole range of accessories and outfits and and and...

mkramlich3• 14 years ago

Dressup dolls != action figures or LEGO figs.

By dressup dolls I thought I clearly conveyed the idea of dolls whose design and accessories are all about dressing them up with clothing, makeup and fashion accessories. Not guns. Not tools. Not Batman-like gadgets/vehicles. Dressup dolls. Think Barbie dolls. The point being that dressup dolls and babies appeals to a large percentage of (but not necessarily all) actual real-life girls whereas action figures and guns appeal to a large percentage of (but not necessarily all) actual real-life boys. But you don't see people complaining about the lack of the latter for girls.

"Why aren't there more toy Glocks marketed for girls like my little Suzy?" - a concerned suburban mom, nowhere

meej2• 14 years ago

I am pretty sure both of my little brothers each had at least one Ken doll, at least one Cabbage Patch Kid, several Care Bears, etc... all kinds of toys that would be considered more gendered today. The eighties, man, they were a different time.

kylemaxwell• 14 years ago

Note: not all girls need pink and frills to love engineering toys, building things, or even LEGO. My 8yo daughter loves to tear apart electronics for the components and build new things, and so do several of her friends.

I get that she's not "typical", but I'm not sure that the problem is that LEGO and Erector are "for boys". I lean towards thinking that the problem is that we tell kids that, one way or another.

Rolo03215• 14 years ago

Not all girls do, but some do. GoldieBlox seems to be for the ones that do.

labizaboffle• 14 years ago

Mixed reaction.

As a father of two daughters, this makes me sick. I'm not a feminist, but I can't stand when people make "things for girls" that are pastel-ly and have ribbons. That does not help them, unless it is clothing or accessories.

To make girls want to play with tinkertoys, you make... tinkertoys. My youngest- she loves guns and trucks. I don't even own a gun or a truck!

Unfortunately, McDonalds sells "girl toys" and "boy toys". That makes me sick too. But they know their market. So- I think it is a good thing. There is a place for almost every toy. Just not with my daughters.

cadamez• 14 years ago

Younger me was in the same boat as your youngest daughter. It's almost as if girls don't get to have individual personalities and tastes; they have to be a Marketed Monolithic Girl Consumer.

roguecoder3• 14 years ago

The solution isn't to expect girls to play with toys that were designed and marketed specifically for boys, as tinker toys were and are. At least, not without putting the same onus on little boys. If boys were eager to play with pink tinker toys, after all, they would already exist.

DannoHung• 14 years ago

I like it, but I can't help but feel that the toy is sort of limited in the mechanics it can teach. :/

ttttannebaum4• 14 years ago

Why not call it "GoldieBlox: The Cute Engineering Toy"? Why enforce gender roles? Isn't the title kind of saying "Girls like cute stuff, boys don't ever like cute stuff, and the only way to get girls interested in engineering is to make it cute"? Couldn't we get females into engineering more easily if we stopped culturally delegating "cool" to little boys and "cute" to little girls?

[Or the real solution, just stop having gender identification entirely, but that's a ways away]

Tipzntrix4• 14 years ago

I think the answer to this has been no, females won't go into engineering more no matter how you culturally delegate personality attributes. Consider the sales of the toys and the admissions rates into engineering programs DESPITE the fact that more women are being admitted to university than men [1], and yet still engineering programs are 80-20 male-female[2], despite the gender neutrality motions taking place and the fact that it's no longer the 50s with openly sexist TV commercials and advertisements.

[1] http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-503-x/2010001/article/11542-... [2]: http://theblueandwhite.ca/article/2011/03/09/19/47/52/someth...

ttttannebaum4• 14 years ago

What gender neutrality motions are taking place? Specifically at the level of childhood environments and teachings?

roguecoder3• 14 years ago

In the 50s women were prohibited from entering engineering programs by policy, so commercials didn't have anything to do with it. It didn't become illegal for engineering programs to discriminate based on gender until the 70s.

If it were natural differences the number would be consistent internationally. Instead, it varies in Western countries from 9% (Luxembourg) to 31% (Iceland) and has been trending consistently upward, albeit slowly, in the US.

sanswork3• 14 years ago

This is actually the first kickstarter project I've tossed in for. My only regret is that it won't be ready for Christmas. I have 4 young female relatives at the moment that I'd love to get interested in engineering. Two of them already have good starts but all could use a fun toy to really bring out the interest. I'm not buying it to try to convince them to be engineers either, I'd just like all of them to have a fun technical toy to play with like the ones I remember fondly as a kid. Does it need to be girl specific? Nope, but I think it will help.

binaryseed• 14 years ago

I think this very in depth look at the history of gender targeting in Legos will help anyone think through these tough issues...

http://www.feministfrequency.com/2012/01/lego-gender-part-1-...

A key critique of what Legos have become is that they enforce oppressive gender roles - boys build fire trucks; girls build hair salons - and that goes much deeper than the color of the blocks.

To my eyes, this toy looks empowering.

icebraining• 14 years ago

How could Lego gone so wrong. In 1981: http://www.thekidworkshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Leg...

vidarh• 14 years ago

They've gone so "wrong" because they've been chasing sales. And it's working - the newest "Lego Friends" range is massively outselling their expectations.

So don't blame Lego - they're not the ones deciding what people actually want to buy.

brennenHN• 14 years ago

So I really like this idea, and I get the need to fit the tool into the social context, but it still feels a little bit problematic in its labeling.

modernerd• 14 years ago

GoldieBlox is exactly the sort of project that Kickstarter should be used for. Stories like, "I'm a talented engineer who's identified a real problem and used my life savings to develop a prototype that could fix it; I've tested it rigorously and gotten great feedback. Now I just need your cash to put in my first order of 5,000 sets." are easy to get behind.

Stories like "We've got an idea that seems pretty neat, and we'd like your cash to help us support ourselves while we flesh it out a bit; without your money we'll probably just make a few sacrifices, live a little less comfortably, and build it in our spare time anyway." are harder to rally behind.

Both of the female engineers I know got into engineering because their parents were engineers. It would be great to see people with more diverse sources of inspiration entering the field, and toys like GoldieBlox could be a great step in this direction.

mibbitier4• 14 years ago

This looks awful. Buy some Lego instead.

trhtrsh3• 14 years ago

Holy cow, the heroine/model image with impossibly skinny limbs undermines the entire project.

meej2• 14 years ago

Thirty years ago, when I was a six year old little girl, I had these: http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=400-1 http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=402-1

They were my favorite. It never occurred to me that they were for boys, and I don't think anyone else tried to tell me that, either. I loved building houses and hotels with my universal building sets and for a long time they fueled dreams of being an architect, until I discovered engineering.

I know there has always been some gendering of toys, but I feel like we've regressed from where we were as a society when I was a child, and it's terribly depressing.

GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls

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