LEGO... For Girls!!
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- Опубликовано: 20 апр 2022
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This video is intended for adult, and young adult, collectors- NOT children!
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"Neutrality is often mistaken for stereotypical masculinity-" PREACH. Omg,, I cannot tell you how much this frustrates me!
Ikr. We were buying my cousin , who was pregnant at the time, a souvenir from Disneyland for the baby. My cousin lives in India, so we didn't know what gender the baby was. My sister argued that we should get it a Mickey baby toy instead of a Minnie one, because we didn't know and Mickey was apparently neutral while Minnie was only for girls.
I belive it was Simone DeBeauviour who said maleness is considered default, and femaleness is the deviation from that default. It should be the other way around considering everyone started as female in the womb....
@@emmym9276 Simone spitting fax
@@emmym9276 We don't all start as female, we start as neutral, it's just that without the Y chromosome we would be female, whereas without the X chromosomes we would be dead. Humans are default female in that the Y chromosome makes you different from the template while the X chromosome is part of the template.
I'm a girl and loved LEGO police cars, dinosaurs, aquanauts and Bionicles (I had the Blue one, which was the female one- the best thing is that she didn't have female stereotypes whatsoever). I never found a girl to whom I could play with. If girls are receiving an education of pink, and princess everywhere that is not to blame to "stereotypical masculinity". Firemen exist, and it's so good to help your city by being one. There's no... "masculinity" there if you may. Firemen exist because they have to- they're not there to be turned into toys and entertain just boys.
I kind of disagree with the video... Still. I do agree that aesthetically they are not so "bubblegum pink"? Also there are astronauts... which you will never find in dolls (or at least the ones I know). IDK Maybe what most bothers me is the size of the dolls- they look like DUPLOs, which are the ones only babies play with. So girls... are babies?
Legos were only ever "gender neutral" in the wishes of the company. The ads appealed to boys and dads, showing them often playing together, or two boys playing together. They used the old adage of, "those who aren't boys wish they were," and they used ONLY boys in their ads, to play with the toys. The little sisters were only ever watching on in amazement, like, "I wish I could make those."
As a 59-year-old woman who was a "tomboy", I LIVED through those commercials, being shown over and over that those toys were not intended for girls like me. If you'd seen those ads, you wouldn't believe the "gender neutral" advertising crap at all.
There're also interesing studies that talk about how boys "identify" with non-human things, when they are not allowed to play with dolls; they turn their airplanes and cars into avatars for themselves. Kids who have dolls don't usually objectify themselves as inanimate objects like cars; they see themselves as humans INSIDE cars.
damn that's crazy I used to play like that all the time
Fascinating. Play really is just projection of the self onto inanimate objects.
Really? I'm a guy who never played with dolls, but I never identified myself with the cars to planes I played with. I would do flips and tricks with the car, but never thought of myself as the car or saw myself as a human inside of the car.
Rather, I thought of myself controlling the car like with a giant hand directing it or just observing it doing epic things (even though I was technically the one moving it). I believe I thought of the car as it's own animate thing that was separate from me, like it had it's own life and agency.
I was born in the y2k and I also recall Lego not really being as inclusive as it promotes it self to be: before Lego friends I had actually never had Legos (edit: thinking back, I actually had Lego Duplo & Hello Kitty themed Duplos as a toddler, but I don't really see them as the same thing as normal legos) and my main (if not only) exposure to the brand came from the animated shows they had, like Ninjago or Lego Knights, and while I liked them I think it's important to notice how all the main leads are male, aside from 1/2 girls who are always the sisters or the love interests, so I didn't really get to see myself truly represented by them and I think that's why I never thought of actually buying the toys... :(
We’re probably the same age-ish. I loved Legos both as a child and still now as an adult. I really enjoyed building homes with Lego as a child. So much so my parents entered me in a contest at the K-Mart she was working at for builds. I didn’t place, simply wasn’t good enough. Some of the builds were amazing. I also played video games on the Intellivision and Atari. Then, Nintendo, all the way up til today. Not all of us were influenced by gender marketing and just did what we wanted and had a blast! Still do. Now I have a blast with our grandson. We play video games, build Legos, shoot bow and arrows and air soft, and whatever else we want. I have never once stopped and thought, “oh, I can’t. I’m a girl.” We’re not all some kind of victim out here. I also love purses and shoes, making beautiful crafts and being a housewife, ftr. We don’t all fit into premade boxes.
The "this isn't what girls want" criticism is so weird to me... like some girls definitely do want to play with a beauty salon or a mall or whatever?
"this isn't what girls want, this is what girls are told they should want" is such an ironic statement to make
like the entire point of eliminating gender roles/stereotypes is to not dictate what kids should or shouldn't like, yes you can criticize Friends for advertising exclusively to girls but you can't criticize it simply for existing???
The beauty salon and mall should be in a set with the firetruck and helicopter- because that is how the world is. There is no town that only has one or the other. (Unless it's an Amish town or remote village where none of these exist)
Yup, like I personally did like Lego friends, but many of my friends wouldn’t have and that should just be ok
That argument died the moment the numbers of sales came out and Lego friends made big money
When I was younger I definitely loved both “boy” toys and “girl” toys. I loved having salons and “girl” things. So it’s definitely weird criticism because there are too many girls who do want those sorts of toys for the statement to be true. There is a good population of girls who like both and then a good population who like “boy” things. The statement never solves the problem.
as someone who was an 11 year old girl when lego friends came out I can say it actually really did get me interested in lego. I actually desperately wanted to have all the sets so i could have my own little city... only got one small set of it in my entire childhood sadly though :( personally i wish they kept the branding of the of the main brand and just added the cafes and concert sets with the normal girl minifigures tho.
same i had a waterfall set and i was OBSESSED w her
Me too, I think I was 7 or something and they were actually my first Legos ever and the only Lego tipe I ever had...
I had a small lemonade stand and a cabin set (I think) that came with a surfboard, car, and some other things I forgot
Yep same! Mine was a bedroom set.
I was so excited when I got my first Lego friends because PINK LEGOS
As a kid I remember legos always being in one of the “boys” toy isles. When shopping with parents or even on my own I always just kinda skipped that section. So even if girls would have been interested in them, they were not seeing them at all or being told subliminally by the store layout that legos were considered a “boy thing”. Now I’m pretty sure the Lego isle is one that bridges the gap between the pink and black sections
The Lego isle in the store I frequented as a kid actually wasn’t to bad. The toy isles were kinda like:
-Legos-
-Bikes-
-Girls-
-Boys-
Although the neutrality didn’t really help since I never took interest in legos until Elves
in my country the Lego section is usually behind the counter in toy stores, and they usually aren't divided into boys/girls Legos but just based on what franchise it was
Black is a neutral colour. Why do they use black for boys sections instead of blue (if they're going to use pink for girls section). Seems like they're trying to show typically male toys as default and typically female toys as a deviation or 'other'.
Exactly
@@Ri57490 Well, that’s why Beauvoir called women “the other”. Male is standard-female is a deviation.
I think the Lego Friends series is cute and I love girly stuff, but I think what rubbed me the wrong way about when Lego Friends when it came out is that Lego had previously gradually started ignoring their female demographic. Just gradually being more focused at targeting boys and when Lego Friends finally came out, it was like "Hey girls! I know you wanna sit at the table so we made you another table that you can sit at instead of a seat".
I liked when there were female characters in "traditional" Lego, I had one called the "Yeti's hideout", which had an female adventure character, trying to find a diamond and I loved it. I feel like Lego Friends can still exist, but I also would like more female character in other Lego Franchises, more stuff like Lego Elves, but also figures that don't need to have the Lego Friends model. I mean, Lego has lasted this long, the old design is classic, so I'm sure girl would a appreciate the option if they had more.
I agree that lego should absolutely include more female characters in regular sets because I also loved that growing up. I had more lego friends sets than regular sets but I didn't really mind the classic design or the lego friends design for the characters. Interestingly my brother largely prefers the friends design over the classic character models and so he only has lego friends sets. The lego friends model has very few boys but he really loves it when there are boys in it. so honestly I think both designs should just include girl characters and boy characters and not market either for specifically one gender.
Yes! I agree with everything you said. I had a preference for the regular sets (I actually remember disliking the LEGO Friends sets), I just wanted more female figures included in the regular style of LEGOs.
Don't worry, these days sets are almost guaranteed to come with at least on female character with many sets featuring more than one! The only exception are some of the license and action themes like Star Wars or Ninjago. But to be fair, it's hard to feature more female characters when the property you're adapting doesn't have many female characters to begin with.
Regardless, I think it's clear that Lego has been making a conscious effort to increase the amount of female minifigs in their sets. No little girl today needs to worry about not having a female character to play with. If they look at a store shelf full of Lego they are guaranteed to spot a set with a girl character without any trouble. ;-)
"i know you wanna sit at the table, so we made you another table you can sit at instead of a seat" rings so true
Yeah! Today there are way more & this is very cool! I was always upset that my cool Lego friends figures arent fitting with my brother "normals"
But what always annoyes me is the weird painted on silouette ... is there not a better solution?!
About your comment on how if someone sees the Lego Friends as "sexy" they belong on a watch list, I think the outrage came more from the fact that the girls have a faint hint of curves on their chest. This makes sense given the fact that the girls are pre-teen/teens, but sadly there are still plenty of people who prefer to keep their kids in the dark about how their bodies will develop as they grow and feel threatened by anything that even hints at such changes.
Keep in mind this is pure speculation on my part, but its based off my own experiences (not with my own parents thankfully, but with my peers) plus similar cries of outrange I've seen aimed at various doll lines and such.
I think you’re pretty spot on, actually. Parents got upset over Turning Red for the exact same reason.
Truly sad
Seeing this I can only remember the Barbie doll that had a puberty function (as in you'd spin her arm and she'd grow taller and grow breasts) and that toy caused such a massive outrage. Can't help but wonder why adult masculine features are presented to boys as a good thing, but women's bodies are "inappropriate"
@@LucasSantos-ss6ou it has to do with how sexualized women’s bodies are across cultures in general i think unfortunately. But idk
I mean it makes no sense, for that’s just natural anatomy. You see all of the “boys’” figures with abs, why can’t minidolls have curves?
Im 16 and I fckin LOVE Lego friends. I've always loved more stereotypically "feminine" toys and media. I'd b e g my dad to buy me Lego friends lmao. My older brother and I would combine our sets and play for hours. We had so much fun omfg. I watched the show religously too lol :)
I think the Lego friends toys kinda sucked imo, just the way they looked 🤷🏽♀️ but the show was kinda fire
I loved LEGO Friends when they came out too, but I also liked some of the ordinary LEGO sets, so I'd combine my own to play with. My brother wouldn't let me near any of his sets, except for his Bionicles, which we battled with sometimes.
@@Bella.Zafira SCRATCH THE 12 MINS AND GO BACK TO THE 20 MINS
@@Bella.Zafira the old one was better
personally the most appealing "for girls" lego theme to me is elves, mostly because i'm more drawn to fantasy settings than ones based in reality, but also because they were just more cohesive and prettier than most friends sets imo.
I was 9ish when lego friends came in and by that point I despised the idea of having pink sets aimed at little kids like I felt those were. I had previously been disappointed by the sets being all aimed at boys and my mum talking about how she used to love legos as a child so I definitely wanted to get into it, but not with lego friends. When I saw the lego elves sets I immediately loved them and I got all the dragons sets because they were so pretty and in a fantasy setting which I love anyway. While there is still ninjago that is somewhat similar, I'm still sad that they discontinued elves.
Lol same
It’s interesting that so many girls seem to really enjoy magic and fantasy style play, but Lego only really caters to “normal human role play:)))”.
Since you liked Elves, I’m interested to hear your thoughts on gothic fantasy Lego sets (a la the Harry Potter sets, or hypothetical twilight/teen wolf sets or other similar 2000’s properties)? Doesn’t need to be branded but I could see it bringing a lot of interest (assuming we are designing sets in the 2000-10s).
My theory is that if we’re going with the “girls are more concerned about the interior” data, then gothic fantasy is a no brainer. Lavishly furnished castles and mansions, secret rooms full of treasure, magic and werewolves in the woods. Rooms with stained glass windows, potion cabinets, exorbitant banquets and hidden passages. I feel like THAT is something that would really appeal to girls, but more importantly a wide range of play styles.
@@user-qp4th3ij7z I think for me the appeal of Elves was the fantasy theme, the nature that surrounded the builds, and the pretty colour combinations that I really liked (sort of like out of a cartoon or something). I also really enjoyed the aspect of collecting all the dragons which was really fun. The other benefit to the Elves sets was that the aesthetic matched lots of my other fantasy figurines such as the Schleich Bayala figurines. LEGO Friends has a similar colour scheme, but I am not really interested in city builds and any I would rather a more realistic palette if I did get any city builds (maybe I find it hard to suspend my disbelief that a city would be pink idk).
As for the Harry Potter sets, I do like them and I own several of them though I mainly prefer the sets that are more centrepieces, or at least are a bit more colourful as the castle sets are all rather bland due to the colour of the castle. I also personally much prefer sets that are more integrated into nature as I feel that allows even a small set to feel much more complete than half a building.
For me I don't really care about the interiors unless they are on display from the front of the set as I like to use sets to make a scene and usually the exteriors look a lot more complete than the interiors, except for when the interiors are incorporated into nature like I've previously mentioned.
Those are my opinions on the sets, and despite my love of the brighter Elves colours, I would also love some gothic fantasy sets provided they are nicely detailed and ideally would fit with the more natural surroundings that appeal most to me.
I miss Lego Elves. The dragons were so cool and I wanted them so bad. I still want them but it’s so hard to find them now.
So the thing I remember about the outrage over Lego Friends was not just that it was a gender neutral toy suddenly being marketed exclusively to girls, but that it was part of a larger trend of gender neutral toys disappearing altogether in the 90s and 00s. Even if companies had successful gender neutral toys, they would suddenly start splitting their marketing up with sets for boys and sets for girls, because it was an effort to eliminate competition and serve more targeted products. Why dilute your message trying to sell a toy to boys and girls when you can generate more sales by sending targeted marketing messages to ONE demographic? It's not surprising that Lego Friends sold better, it was designed to. I think sales isn't necessarily the thing to go by in terms of "was this a good thing or not" or "was this liked by girls or not" because ultimately if the stereotypes were harmful, if the dominating trend of "this is for you" enforced those stereotypes in every aspect of a girls life now including Legos, then it's not really a positive. That's just my two cents. Girls grow up in a world where these stereotypes already exist and still manage to have fun and imaginative play with gendered toys. It's not like Lego Friends singlehandedly created this. It was just like one more straw on the camel's back.
Parents are smarter now so this isn't working as well anymore, so the gendered toy thing is creeping back and gender neutral toys are more common again. Finally, like 30 years later. I guess you could say this also intimately impacted me as a girl growing up in this time period who did not at all fit the mold of "traditional femininity" but if I didn't want something pink I had to play with "boys toys" which was alienating and made it difficult to connect with my peers. As someone who has worked in gaming for a significant portion of my life, the marketing of video games as gendered toys for boys in the 80s and 90s has had significant and long lasting negative impacts on my life and career lol
Loved this response. I had the reverse experience but essentially the result is the same - if as a child you play with toys marketed for a gender that you are not identified as, you can expect to receive bullying from peers and parents. Therefore gendered marketing is bad because toys should just be things you play with. Likewise clothes are just things we wear. Except, they aren't in society, they are loaded with subtext. Personally I see the benefit of gendered marketing as a gateway into a style of play (I.e building) to girls who are ALREADY femme gendered, and who would otherwise have no interest in lego.
marketing is an inhumane business, they just want to take as much money as possible in a crude way :( but i must say those mass produced toys since the 50s were made for boys mainly (insecure boys who are afraid to be called girls) Most toys don‘t have delicate features and portray boring roles
I pray the separation stops. God bless 💓
This is definitely a first world problem.
@@TheWholeEntireCake I mean this *is* a video about Legos. I don't know what you expected.
Personally I was kind of upset with lego friends when it came out, just because suddenly there were two lego boxes at my grandma's house, one with the "boy lego" and one with the "girl lego", and it just did not sit right with me when my brothers got scolded for trying to play with the "girl lego". Like that divide just hadn't been there before. Also I found the sets kind of boring, I really liked Belville as a kid because of the fantasy theme, but friends was all just smoothie bars and girls' bedrooms, regular everyday places just wasn't it for me. If lego elves had been released earlier I would probably have appreciated friends more, because it wouldn't have felt like it was my only option and also I'd get to play with cool fantasy sets.
if your "gender-neutral" product excludes girls, it was never gender-neutral to begin with. it comes from seeing masculine as the "default" and feminine as an added accessory. i'd like to see more actual gender-neutral things
I never had the issue of never getting lego from my parents because I was female. But I have plenty of female friends whose parents would never get them lego even though they really wanted it, due to them believing lego was a 'boys toy'. One of my female friends have recently begun collecting, she got her first set at the age of 19! It was a dream of hers since she was a kid. I really hope this whole 'girls vs boys toys' mindset dies out with the next generation 😭
The thing that still frustrates me is the division of color. Girls get pastels lego sets and boys get all the other colors in there Lego sets. Is it too much to ask that I beable to purchase a set of Legos that includes pastel blue and purple, lime green, pink, yellow, blue, brown, black, and white!? I dare anyone to try and find a set that isn't harshly color divided.
I just want a big box of basic building block Legos I can get that has neons, pastels, and the traditional colors of lego in it 😭
I would say Lego Classic is good at giving you a vast amount of colors, and they are mostly the standard building bricks too.
If you want more specific builds the Creator, Icons and Ideas are good too, but they are realistic colored, example the tiger set will be orange and not purple.
It's a shame they discontinued LEGO Elves. The sets were beautiful and so was the animated series. Too bad it wasn't as popular as Friends.
I’m so glad there are more people who know it exists ;-; I always loved the aesthetic and character designs of that brand
That last line of, "Maybe I don't want to drag Minifigures out of a traumatic fire. Maybe I just want to bake cookies," really resonated with me as someone who wanted to do the opposite. I come from a long line of absent fathers. I had little male presence in my house as a kid and was raised by my great grandmother, grandmother, and mom along with my sister. I had no idea what it was like to be boyish or masculine outside of media. I didn't want to play with the feminine toys I was given, and begged for swords or Pokemon instead of Monster High or Littlest Pet Shop. I would never play house or vet or anything with my LPS. I would always load them up into the car/van playset and pretend that they were running away from natural disasters. It would be kind of funny what these isolating gender stereotypes do to us as kids if it weren't so sad.
Everything in Lego - from the professions depicted in the playsets to the ads to the GOD-AWFUL PACKAGING with "serious colors" - screams "BOYS ONLY". If it ever was gender-neutral as they claim, then where are the pink, purple, or pastel-colored blocks?? Certainly, muddy green and dark gray can coexist with these colors! Why some of these colors are considered alienating while others aren't, I wonder 🤔 🤔 🤔
I've only had Lego knock-offs as a kid (the real deal is crazy expensive in my country), y'know those buckets with simple blocks? And I loved them so much! Yes, the "gender-neutral" ones didn't have girly colors, but I still liked them 'cause the colors (the standard "baby-targeted" primary colors + bright green, black and white) were still cute and fun!
Throughout my childhood I've also come into contact with other sorts of building toys - from the simplest wooden squares with brick patterns printed on to those peculiar straw-like tubes with holes and spikes - and had a blast with them, not only because they were indeed fun, but because they didn't push a faux-seriousness with gritty colors or didn't depict "heroic", adrenaline-ridden professions (who coincidentally are also the ones pushed into boys' consciousness since they were little babies). They were building blocks. You build, you play. No need to alienate anyone!
I don't have a problem with traditionally feminine toys, but it's tiring to see them exist as a second choice, an afterthought, instead of toy companies questioning why the so-called neutral toys aren't being, well, neutral; and why toys depicting certain scenarios come accompanied with a number of gendered little details.
Hold up, why do the professions scream boys only? No profession is exclusively for boy or for girls, and Lego sets have had male and female characters of every profession. And if anyone can be any profession, how does that make it "boys only?"
As for the colors I don't think pastels, pinks and purples automatically make something gender neutral. Lego take a lot of inspiration from the real world and in the real world, pastel colors aren't that common in vehicles and buildings. I don't think Lego's color choices are less gender neutral than say, the color choices of a car dealership or construction company.
As Adult Female collector of Lego, I never got into Lego Friends even I was right age for it. Mainly because the figures, they didn’t look good with my rest of minfigures. But the sets were cute.
I had that problem too when I got Belville when I was younger. It wasn't up to scale with my brothers train set, and so we never played together. Mine was calles "girls lego"..
Yeah, the mini dolls were never something that appealed to me. Granted I'm a dude who has never been into dolls but the dolls just seemed so much more incompatible with the Lego world. Like you can't move their legs individually and their legs don't have any holes so you can't attach them anything when they are sitting down.
I vastly preferred minifigs because I could simulate walking and actually have them sit down. Mini-dolls are just objectively more limiting.
Yeah, almost all female collectors i know are the same. Personally i feel the only exception is the Disney Princess & Superhero Girls cartoon series minidolls are superior to the minifigs.
The minidolls creepec me out when i first saw them, but they grew on me. If they had been around when i was a child it would have been easier to get my parents to buy them
@@Obi-Wan_Kenobi As a person who really loved dolls growing up, it's still a no from me. The main point of lego is compatibility, and these minifigs are not it. Also they look a lot out of place as they aren't really blocky (which I get is the point, but it's not what I'm looking for).
Yes! Femininity has a right to exist! Thank you ! Another great video. You’re my favorite RUclipsr these days
When I was a young girl, I was so sad and disappointed that I cant combine the Lego Friends with other sets like Ninjago (was my absolute favorite, super happy when Nya was an OP ninja girl). I loved the sets, but only made my parents to buy one, then I never again asked for another solely because of the models. :
You make a good point. The minidolls are physically incompatible while the colors are aesthetically inconsistent with most Lego sets. And Nya is 100% awesome, especially in the most recent Ninjago season that came out last year (Seabound).
i dont mind having both Minifigs interact just like Lego Movie 2, but i dont use the Friends buildings & cars because they are too pink & lavender to exist in the real world. My main issue is the length of the Friends legs is 3 bricks (as opposed to the normal 2) which makes the chairs and vehicles not cross compatible.
Changing Friends to Regular is easier because you just have to change the length of the chair and add a steering wheel or controls. The other way is harder and involves a lot of custom rebuilding
Yes ... was always my big problem as a kid with this
Yes! I had a massive and elaborate lego city (in my poor mom's living room) already well established by the time the Friends line came out, and I bought a couple of the smaller Friends sets to incorporate in, but I remember being annoyed that the figures didn't match. The color palette also bothered me a bit, just because it didn't match with the rest of my city. There's nothing wrong with the Friends sets on their own aesthetically, but it doesn't sit quite right with me that you can't really mix your pink and teal cafe treehouse sets and your red and blue firehouse police sets. I mean, some kids may not care for the aesthetic mishmash, but I did. I think this is one of those things you just have to let be though.
i agree that Lego Elves should be talked about more! it's marketing was more gender neutral than Friends, and the builds were also sometimes more complex than Friends, with moving parts. it's a shame it was discontinued :(
I honestly love Ninjago. The legos and the show was a lot of fun. I never really thought much about gender norms/bias and that some things are mainly for boys or somethings are mainly for girls. I just played with whatever caught my interest. Lego Ninjago being one of them.
I'm always very surprising by how so many girls became fans of Lego Ninjago. I mean I don't think it's a bad thing at all, but I never expected the theme to garner such a large female fanbase. I think this fact can even be used as a argument for how in-spite of gendered marketing, kids still gravitate towards what attracts them.
And while Ninjago was certainly marketed more towards boys, it never excluded girls. If a girl wanted to play with and watch ninja in mechanized vehicles fighting giant snakes, ghosts, and bikers, so be it. Ninjago even recognized this an made a concentrated effort to add more female characters which was pretty successful. They also tired adding in a love triangle side plot because they thought girls would like this too but we don't talk about that. SERIOUSLY. THAT MOST HATED PLOTLINE MUST NEVER BE INVOKED!
@@Obi-Wan_Kenobi Agree. but i wish Nya had more than a handful of vehicles & mechs. The only one i remember is the Samurai mech and i think she had one that she shares with her brother. Boys would play with Nya if she had a stompy mech or tank. She is/was the one that built the vehicles for the team
@@orionhan2431 Yeah, I think Nya has a bunch of things working against her. As you said, they've never given her a chance to have a good mech or vehicle marketed as solely her vehicle. And because she was a new addition to the team, she doesn't have the same nostalgia factor as the main 4 ninja in particular.
Her brand also isn't that strong and that makes her less recognizable to kids. Like she doesn't even have a solid main color, she's shuffled between maroon, cyan, silver, grey and even red and blue at the same time. So from a marketing perspective, Nya is a mess. Someone says "Lloyd" and you think of green but someone says "Nya" and you can't think of a color. This might seem small but it matters to kids who identify and associate characters with colors. When Nya doesn't have a specific color, she becomes harder to recognize and therefore harder to sell.
I will concede that some kids probably don't buy her because she's a girl but I think Lego could still overcome that handy cap if they gave her better sets and made her more recognizable.
@@Obi-Wan_Kenobi I have seen one or two Ninjago episodes in my life and even as an older girl (teen) I still thought it was pretty interesting. I kinda want to get into it and watch the whole series.
I loved Ninjago and still do tbh
Hearing all the controversy surrounding Lego Friends really made me upset. I was around 5 when Lego Friends debuted, and me and my friends were obsessed with them. As a stereotypical girly girl, I always felt alienated by the darker colors, and more prominent "male" characters featured in the main LEGO sets. I loved animals and photography, but the main careers in other LEGO lines never featured those interests. Lego Friends will always hold a special place in my heart, and I'm really glad Lego has made efforts that extend to not only girls, but anyone who never felt like previous Lego sets represented their favorite interests, color palettes etc.
Lego friends really has gotten me into Legos. Yeah I would watch Ninjago or collect blind bags, but I never really wanted a set. But once Friends started coming out I would ask my parents to my me one. And I would play with those all day.
I had Lego sets before Lego friends but I really loved the line when it debuted. I felt like the figures looked more human and kinda prefer the stylized version. I had no problem with previous sets but Lego friends introduced me to so many new pieces. I loved having little sandwiches and birds that could decorate my creations.
I do kind of wish the normal minifigures made it through to the sets. One of my favorite things to do with Lego as a kid was customizing the characters, and I was always sad that I couldn't use Friends pieces in that process. No idea how people found them 'sexy', though!
I can't really articulate what I feel, I just get so frustrated over stuff like this. Yes it is "girly", that doesn't mean it's bad, dumbed down, worth less, or that we should ban it. Or at least it was not harmful in a way that would have given it a good reason for getting banned.
Thank you for making this video, I really enjoyed it ^^.
Honestly, I loved Lego Friends. I feel like the normal Lego sets weren't really reflecting my interests as a child, so I didn't really care about them. I was a very girly child, and most of the stuff the Lego Friends did was stuff that actually interested me. Not to mention how much fun they were to build with all the small details, and how you could actually move the dolls around inside. The normal Legos sets was just building replicas of building, Lego Friends was building a literal doll house. Not to mention the show, which I was obsessed with as a kid. I get that people don't like that it's "stereotypically girly," but the normal sets at the time were really "stereotypically boyish." Where else was a girl supposed to get a ballet studio or mall set? It's really just about what kids want to build, and Lego Friends gave them more variety.
I got both the “boy” legos and the “girl” legos. I had fun with both, and combined them to make a whole city! However, I will say that Lego Friends had cuter animals.
As a boy having played a lot with Legos as a kid, if something like the Elves line would have released in my time, I would definitely have been interested, irrespective of the marketing.
What I do however find irksome about, and what dissuaded me from ever getting into any of these girl-oriented sets, rather than the pink or the themes, is how they are essentially incompatible with most other Legos with the figures being so differently shaped and sized.
This very much always felt to me like a separating barrier between the "girl" Legos and the rest. Sure, that existed with stuff like Bionicles as well in explicitly boy-oriented sets, but for the most part, the standard Lego minifigure was the norm across themes and brands, allowing for a lot of creativity in play, which I feel like making the "girl" figures so different stands somewhat antithetical to.
As a girl who absolutely love Lego friends I kind of agree with this. I always preferred to use the Friends mini figures because they looked more like me, and the alternative was the normal “girl” Lego figures which had those atrocious cutouts for their waists. However, the Friends figures couldn’t sit properly like the normal legos. Either way, it feels like “girl” mini figures were always a poorly designed afterthought in the Lego world.
I was a girl who already had a lot of lego city sets when Friends came out, and I remember being disappointed that the figures wouldn't fit with my city. Even more, the color palette, while pleasing on its own, looked pretty bad alongside my red/green/blue/yellow/grey sets. So even if I wanted to have a cafe or vet clinic alongside my fire station and airport, it would look super out of place. Idk, something just bothers me about the incompatibility.
I always would go and stare at all the friends and elves sets when I was younger (but spent my money on monster high instead) and wanted to get into them so bad. It wasn't until my bf moved in with me that I actually started buying them! He's really into the more "masculine" sets, ninjago, bionicle, etc.
If you look at the recent 10th anniversary sets, you can really tell they're trying to be more gender-neutral with them. They don't even put the main girls on the boxes anymore. It's kind of disappointing. Like you said, it plays into girly = bad
I'm not so sure about how I feel about this new gender neutral approach. Like if girls really do like Lego Friends for the majority female characters and gendered marketing then why not let them have that? Dumbing down the "girly-ness" might make some girls less inclined to buy it, so why take away something that clearly appeals to people?
That extends to the other direction too. A lot of boys like conflict in their Lego City sets which is why sets about fighting fires, stopping robbers, or rescuing someone appeal to them. And the comet below me indicated that there is less of a focus on these aspects of city now. But if boys really like it, they entire theme should not be made less conflict focused for the sake of appealing to some girls.
There is nothing wring with having more role play City sets that would appeal to girls, I'm just saying that the traditional action/rescue sets shouldn't be completely pushed to the sideline for the sake of neutrality. Give the kids options. Open the door for sets that will appeal to girls while keeping the stuff the boys like.
Still, the set looks great
my brother had a TON of lego growing up that me and my sister weren’t allowed to touch, then lego friends came along and we were suddenly allowed to play with lego sets! it didnt matter to us that they were “girly”, we could build our own city and preform our melodramatic soap operas. ironically, we wanted more male lego friends characters so we could roleplay a fighting married couple who have a messy divorce that shatters the town... lmao. i actually had the lego friends ds game too and had alot of fun with that :)
I remember when Lego friends launched and as a very girly girl, so seeing “girly” Lego sets peaked my interest. I had (and still have) a bunch of the sets from the original launch and seeing the sets in the video makes me nostalgic. I remember when Lego elves came out as well but I never got into it despite the stunning character design
I’m so glad that my parents never had a narrow mindset when it dealt with toys. I always had a nice mix of so-called gender specific toys (action figures, various types of dolls) and that included Legos which in my case was mostly a bucket full of regular like pieces that I mostly made a house with. Also me and my dad are fans of the Lego Movie (and it’s sequel) and his favorite character is actually UniKitty. Keep in mind my dad’s not the kind of guy that be into cute things. So the fact he likes a pink cat with a unicorn horn over Batman, his favorite DC character really says something about UniKitty. And in total irony Lego Batman is actually my favorite character from the films because of how much fun he is to watch.
as someone who was a huge girly girl, lego friends was a dream come true. i loved that they made pink and “pretty colors” instead of the obnoxious colors lego used. i also loved that there was so much thought put into the girl’s hair and clothes, something that appealed to me. as a kid i never liked traditional legos probably bc they were so marketed to boys
I feel like people would definitely start arguing that “boys don’t look at Batman figures and think why don’t I look like that” which just undermine boys vulnerability to body image issues and suggest that girls are all stupid and impressionable and all girls are uncapable of looking at a Barbie and thinking “she’s a doll, that’s what dolls look like” which is what I thought as a kid. If we want to talk about unrealistic bodies we gotta start including boys too and stop thinking they’re invincible. As well as acknowledge that girls can recognize that their monster high dolls look like that because of stylization and not bc that’s what they should look like.
Or maybe just talk to your child about their thoughts on a toy before you assume or just ban it from the house
I'm actually working on a presentation for work about gendered marketing! I'm so glad you made this video bc I know very little about lego (didn't play with the sets because they didn't interest me and the pieces pinched my fingers) but I remember the impact lego friends had on the toy market. Do you mind if I reference this video as a source?
Sure, I'd be honored!
good luck with your presentation!!
You should bring up the fact that in the 1800 I think it was or a long time ago blue was for girls being more Delicate and pink for boys as it was closer to red.boys and girls also both wore dress as baby’s to make it easier to change diapers and buy less clothes if they grow out of pants.the reason it’s flipped now is because the used pink in in makeup products and it became the color of girls witch I don’t believe in as I’m a boy and love pink and I love dolls and am not apart of the lgbtq+ like the public would think seeing my interest and hobbies.
good luck w the presentation!
Good luck with your presentation you’ll do great!!
I'm a cis woman and there were always Legos in my house as a kid. My dad loved Lego and it was something I could usually convince him to buy if he had extra money.
We started getting the Lego catalogs when I was 9 or so. I wanted the girly sets BADLY. My dad was against how simplified a lot of the builds seemed to him though and he didn't like that the figures didn't match... So I never got to have the pretty colors, crystals, and other details that drew me to them.
I try my best to present a gender neutral approach to my daughter's toys but she does gravitate towards more "girls" toys. In her Lego sets she mainly uses her Friends over the regular mini figs (and some awesome Monster High Mega Blox!)
I would have loved Friends as a kid myself. I played with my big brother who had a space ship base while I made the town and families lol
Unfortunately even if you are “gender neutral” the rest of society and everything she interacts with will still enforce those ideas so that’s not surprising. It’s really hard to combat.
@@dinosaur___7209 Or perhaps that's really just what her daughter likes to play with. I don't see why a girl play with stereotypically girl toys is automatically a bad thing or it automatically means she being influenced/manipulated by society. Some girls just like playing with dolls and some boys like playing with trucks, that's just how some kids are.
@@Obi-Wan_Kenobi did I say it was a bad thing? I’m just saying there’s no way to separate what she would really like w/o sexist influences from what she likes currently. Sexism is so pervasive. I’m just saying we live in a society man lol
@@Obi-Wan_Kenobi and well, there are negative effects of girls having more limited options focused on preparing them for motherhood and beauty over careers and fun activities like boys get
@@dinosaur___7209 I think you are viewing as a negative thing, per your third reply and wording like "unfortunately" and "it's really hard to combat". But if that's what the kid likes then that's what she likes. If she likes toys associated with motherhood and beauty then I guess that's her call.
Nothing is necessarily stopping her from doing stuff related to careers or other fan actives since OP said that she parents with a gender neutral approach. And even if she plays with those toys at as a kid, it doesn't mean she won't or can't have a career or do other fun things when she gets older. There are lots of moms who have careers.
I don't know if this is relevant, but it feels like after Lego Friends that the main brand began doing more sets with an overarching story, like an alien invader themed line-up of UFOs and motherships, or my personal favorite -- Monster Fighters, which featured a leading female character and gave most of the protagonists a form of prosthesis or scarring as they battled Dracula and other famous movie monsters.
Yes! LegovFriends showed them that kids liked have a story and world built around their toys, definitely noticed this more in the mainline afterward too.
Lego Friend didn't start that. Lego knew for a long time that kids liked to have a backdrop of story for playing with their sets and the first major story themes being Lego Adventures (launched in 1999) the immensely successful Bionicle (2001-2010).
Over the last 20 years, there have literally been dozens of other themes with overarching stories. Just a few examples include Knights Kingdom (2004-2006), Exo-Force (2006-2008), and Atlantis (2010-2011). These themes and many more all came out before Lego Friends (launched in 2012). Even your example of the Alien invasion theme (Alien Conquest) came out a year before Lego Friends did. So the idea of story being important in Lego themes didn't start with Lego Friends, rather Lego Friends was just another theme in long line of successful story themes continuing a decade back.
Lego Friends did prove to Lego that there was a market for girls and several years into Friends's run they started adding more female characters to the other Lego themes (probably around 2018). But even decades back other themes had female protagonists. Lego Adventures had Pippin Read in 1999, Bionicle had Gali in 2001, Atlantic had Sam Rhodes in 2010. Now all these characters were outnumbered by their fellow male protagonists and plenty of other themes didn't even have female characters, but my point is that main female characters still existed before Lego Friends got on the scene.
But more than anything, I think Lego Friend's biggest influence was jump starting themes like Lego Elves and Lego Disney. Those themes were extremely popular and only exist because Friends was so successful. Now Lego has an actual market for female consumers, one that never really existed before. So I think Lego Friends was/is tremendously influential, I just don't think that evolving or creating story themes in Lego was one of its influences.
Ah, I remember Monster Fighters. My brother and I ate that shit up lol
thank you SO much for bringing up LEGO Elves, i literally followed you on twitter for having a LEGO Elves icon!! it's by far my favorite LEGO series and I'm still so sad to not see it in stores anymore :(
this was also just such a fun and interesting watch as a whole, I had no idea how much thought went into LEGO Friends as a brand!!
Yeah, I miss lego elves very much!
I am SO mad that I missed out on lego elves. I was just a bit too old to still be interested in playing with legos when they came out, but they look so fun and I lowkey want to scour ebay for a set just to experience them even though I'm 21 and I don't have the space to start a collection lol
Oh I remember watching the cartoons that Friends was based off of and loved the band that did some of their music. I am a BIG fan of the designs for the animated reboot they did as well.
As a person who used to hate LEGO Friends, I 100% agree. I do love the series especially the Girls on a Mission series, and their music, yes they're meaningful. I love listening to it all the time to calm me down...
I was obsessed with LEGO friends when I was a little girl. I loved the Tv show and the music.
… hello fellow bisexual who likes Malinda😂
@@clarascats1365 Not sure who that is lol My pfp is Karis Oka, a swing for Six the Musical Australia and New Zealand
@@krystalhuntress6795 oh rly? I recognised the Six costume on ur pfp and when I clicked on it to double check it also said you were subbed to Malinda lol sorry
I think the best way forward for Lego (and maybe this is something they're doing - I'm not familiar enough) is to make the "gender neutral but assumed male" toys more explicitly inclusive of girls. Bring back the "multiple genders playing" in the marketing and on the box. Give half the figures ponytails or eyelashes. Don't make it a huge marketing campaign but make it just how you normally operate.
I understand where you're coming from but the way Lego Friends looks is "a dollhouse, but with Lego bumps in the background" instead of "a building set, which can be used for play in a way that girls may like." The existence of a "Lego for girls" set also makes the "Lego is for boys" mindset a lot more explicit than it may otherwise be. Not disagreeing with your experience, but I think that is where the backlash may have come from, and it may have been more marketing-based.
I also wonder how this impacted the playsets that are just building blocks - I know that when shopping for my toddler nephew, each building block set will come in a blue/green bag or a pink/purple bag, and the girl version may have a few pink blocks, even though nothing about the toy is different. So there are more implications than the individual location-based playsets.
They actually have been doing that. All of Lego's commercials for the last 2-4 years have included both girls and boys playing with the toys. This includes more neutral themes (like architecture or city) for the boy targeted action themes (like Ninjago) and the girl targeted themes (like Friends).
They've also been including way more female characters in their Lego sets. Before I'd say the ratio of girls to boys in Lego sets were 1:4 or something even lower if it was an action theme. But these days, the split it much closer to 1:2, especially in themes like City. There are still more male minifigs in sets overall, but these days if a set has at least 2 minifigs, you can guarantee that one of them will be female. Why, Lego has even recently released sets where a female minifig is the only character! They are clearly trying to balance the ratio more.
Are we just not gonna talk about the wild rollercoaster that was Lego Belleville? 😭
As huge Lego fan and dude who never played with dolls and other stereotypically "girl toys", I have to give my honestly opinions of Lego Friends. which I feel is perspective that difference from your core audience of doll fans/collectors. Well, here it goes"
I absolutely hated Lego Friends. I acutely remember when Lego Friends was released and I could not stand it. I didn't like how the sets had such a high focus on fashion, how every single one was super pink and purple, of the minidolls which were vastly inferior to the variety, detail, customizability, and articulation of the standard Lego minifigure. I also didn't like the setting, because when I played with a toy I wanted there to be something cool for it to do. But going to the mall or having a pet puppy aren't really cool, that seems really ordinary.
But there's the thing, that's totally ok, _because Lego Friends was never meant for me._ It's meant for all the kids who want to role play with a doll house and have their characters go to the mall and it's making those millions of kids very happy. I don't like Lego Friends, but it has every right to exist because I'm sure there are millions of other kids (who don't like Ninjago or Bionicle or any of the themes I do like) who love Lego Friends. This is their theme and I'm very happy that it's their gateway into Lego and building.
So while you will never see me buying Lego Friends (unless there is an alien invasion of Heartlake City that the girls need to repel using mechanized robot suits), I am totally fine that it exists. I don't like it, but it would be selfish to deny its existence to millions of kids who certainly love it. (And your mention of Lego Elves rings true as well! I particularly loved the show. It was a cool fantasy world where all the characters had elemental powers, that's much more appealing to me than girls in the real world going to an animal sanctuary or attending a science fair.)
Well, that's just my perspective on the matter as a guy who's loved Lego for as far back as I can remember but never really liked Lego Friends. I don't like it personally, but it's totally fine because there are a bunch of other people who do. And I think it's totally fine that it was marketed towards girls, if it contains a bunch of stuff that appeals to them who am I judge? As long as kids aren't *excluded* from playing with certain things, I think gendered marketing is fine. As you said, the solution is having more options, not dumbing everything down so it's all the exact same. That's counterproductive, because we are all not the same and that's ok!
This comment is pretty funny to me, because I'm a girl who absolutely hated lego bionicle and ninjago as a kid 😂
I didn't really get the point of them, because the appeal to me of legos was the building process and designing my city. I wasn't very interested in imaginative or roleplaying with lego sets. I had a torn opinion on the Friends sets when they came out, because they clashed aesthetically with the city I already had established, but I liked some of the details included in them. I didn't have to worry about it long, though, because pretty soon after lego Friends came lego minecraft, and I started getting those sets instead. Lego minecraft is imo the perfect lego line: universally appealing and allows for a wide range of playstyles, or can just look cool for display.
My sister and I grew up with these sets. My sister’s favorite sets were lego Chima, she would connect the legs and arms together to make super tall monsters with super long arms and make them fight with each other. I (22F, 12 at the time) thought that the lego friends were really cool and secretly wanted them, but I never got any because I thought I was too old. Now I’m adult and I love dolls and legos lol.
god this video feels like it was pulled right out of my brain with how accurate you were with the topics you touched on! lego was MY toy of choice when i was a kid (around 2012 actually) and it was BECAUSE its this very creative, customizable tool you could create whatever you wanted with. i didnt realize i loved dolls until much later because of that good ole gender bias but i was fully making doll houses and playing with that interior play you described without realizing it lmao. nowadays theres a part of me that wishes i could start collecting those slept on girls toys you mentioned (ESPECIALLY ELLO because it was SO lit) because they're such an interesting and overlooked niche in toys.
I had legos as a kid, notably a few generic set of random parts and a Harry Potter themed set that had a Hermione mini fig; I can definitely recall my play habits and relate to the study that the excitement of playing with legos for me was the construction and interior decoration. I liked to build kind of fantastical 'cities' with no roofs so the insides of buildings could be accessed. It did tend to annoy me though that there weren't more items to decorate said interiors with or mini figures I found super aesthetically pleasing (because I was mostly a doll and dress up clothes kid.). The HP set was definitely better because it had cute mini versions of magical items like a snowy owl.
I definitely would've been into Lego Friends, and definitely Elves, not just for the look and the fantasy but I always gravitated to lines with unique characters with thoughtful personalities. Those angry adults tend to have their criticisms based in the world of masculine = gender neutral without really giving it thought. They seem very out of touch with how kids think, especially. Currently I work as a tee designer for a licensed t-shirt company and one of our partners is Lego. I made a few designs for Lego Friends specifically, using their character art, and my boss didn't get it - he felt it wasn't 'lego' enough and had never heard of the brand. In general I tend to have to fight for a lot of our very cutesy brands that are not just aimed at girls but are seen as brands for the too young OR too old (see, also Gabby's Dollhouse, Bratz, and Precious Moments.). If I didn't fight for these we'd just make Marvel tees all day (I'm exaggerating, but only a bit.)
I was a 10 year old girl at the time who already played with Lego when "Friends" came out, I absolutely hated it. People knew I liked Lego so I would previously get the CITY sets, Harry Potter, or starwars but after it came out I only ever got Lego Friends. I appreciated the more colourful blocks but hated the figures and all the "Lego for girls" vibes they were giving off
I was in basically the same situation, but my saving grace was that lego minecraft came out at almost the same time, so I asked for those instead. I had a couple lego friends sets, and I loved the detail in them, but hated that they weren't compatible with the city I already had set up.
Omg I also remember Ello, yes!!! I could never remember what it was called (lost the box and most of the pieces ages ago), and the tactile feel/sensory experience of all the pieces and building with them was straight-up top notch lol. To this day I actually still have this weird little Ello jewelry display rack sort of thing sitting on my dresser
Honestly I think we get too upset at gendered marketing like this. If you don't like it or, you don't support it simply don't buy it. Parents can say no to their kids. There's a lot more gender neutral marketed toys now so, you have options. If a kid likes something they will want it no matter what anyone else thinks.
I grew up in the 2000s and while I loved my pink princess Barbie and my cool Bratz dolls and taking care of my Webkinz I also was a huge fan of video games like Pokemon, Mario and, LOZ. I also liked toys made "for boys" I remember I played with GI Joes like Barbie dolls and used Hot Wheels for my smaller Polly Pockets as their pretend cars. I also loved water guns and fake weapon toys like light sabers because I loved pretending to be in a movie with my friends even if I wasn't a fan of whatever it was made for. I got bullied by my peers for this but, I didn't care.
If Lego Friends existed when I was a kid I probably would've loved it. I had no interest in building a police station but, a cafe? With cute figures to hang out in? I would've been begging my parents for weeks.
Also what is with parents sexualizing anything feminine???? It's concerning and in my experience those who hold that view should be put on a watchlist seriously. I know of too many creeps who used that to try to hide their own crimes and seem "pure" to the outside world.
I was 12 when Lego friends came out and I was so vocal about hating the line. I think the real reason I hated it so much was that it just wasn’t for me. Family members and family friends who already knew I liked Legos would start getting me Lego friends instead of the sets that I enjoyed playing with. I played with a mix of toys in terms of gender, I remember lining up my trucks and tucking them into bed right alongside my dolls. I think if people never bought me Lego friends for holidays I would’ve been way less cranky about it
I'm now a teenager, and I have such fond memories of Lego Friends. I had an extensive collection of sets that I would build and play with with my sister and my friends, and all I ever wanted for my birthday or Christmas was more Lego Friends. People that say that it "isn't what girls want" are wrong. There are all types of girls out there.
No problem with having "girly" lego but what I love about the iconic proportions and yellow is that it can represent anyone. It's not the same with the same slim barbie looking characters.
I think that's more or less the point. I don't think it's necessarily a gendered thing, but some kids like having "blank slate" characters and some like having established characters to role play with. LEGO Friends provides the second. It just comes down to catering to different playstyles- though it would be nice if they would integrate some of Friends's styles into standard LEGO and provide what it does also with the regular minifigures as well. Surely LEGO city could use some cafes or kitschy apartment buildings?
@@DarlingDollz yeah, the only way to get cafes and more city feeling street is the huge molecular series that like over 200 bucks per set (tho they do bring wonderful detail and seems to fit well with normal city sets). I have seen criticism from lego city for having to many police and Firemen sets and lego have been trying to push way with a one set per year for lego city not being based around that. (Sorry if that sounded off)
@@DarlingDollz Funny you mention cafes or kitschy apartment buildings, because as a young girl I had a massive lego city, with the big police station, a fire station, and houses, but my favorite building was a pizza parlor with an apartment upstairs XD
I remember there being precious few lego city sets that weren't police or fire based and would allow for the sort of roleplay or scene designing I was into. When lego Friends came out, I bought a few sets specifically for the props and details in them, like the set with a piano and microphone.
i loved lego friends as a kid and i ended up being transmasc. playing with feminine toys isn’t going to shape kids’ views on reality- sometimes it’s just nice to play with dolls that you see yourself in.
LEGO Friends and Disney sets are actually what brought me back into the hobby from my “dark ages”! I found Frozen castle set at a discount store and have been back in love ever since 💖
I'm a male, I love lego friends, specially male minidolls, I love how more realistic they look 😀. Some Minidolls are kinda off, like too doll-like, but they are ok if you remember the original purpose of the toyline.
I used to make the minidolls a superhero team and saving the boy minidolls😊😂
Some stuff for lego (accessories) be exclusive for friends sets only.
I remember getting my first legos when I was three. It was just a basic loose set and it came in a yellow bucket with a blue lid. I'm glad my mom let me have "girl" and "boy" toys. The concept was always silly. Some days I wanted to play house and others I wanted to play war too.
My kids had quite a few Ninjago and Friends sets growing up. They frequently combined them, which was pretty interesting.
17:21 This part made me so happy to hear someone else say that I immediately clicked the subscribe button lol.
As a cisgender boy who grew up LOVING "girly" things like Lego Friends it always made me super sad to hear about people trying to cancel it. I've never been into police or fire trucks or other "boyish" things so having Lego sets of regular buildings and places I could play with always made me so happy. I will always be really glad and thankful my mom always let me get dolls and other pink and "girly" toys as a kid because it would've sucked if I was stuck with Nerf or Marvel toys or whatever else people besides my mom insisted on getting me for my birthday.
It's always kind of weird to me how people will complain about toys aimed at boys as not being marketed to girls, but then no one bats an eye when Barbie commercials never show boys playing with them. Like it's fine for pink/"girly"/frilly/cutesy things to never be marketed to boys because they're expected to all just like the gender neutral and "boy" toys. I think in an ideal world everything would be considered/marketed as neutral (no matter how "boyish" or "girly" it is) and individuals would just pick whatever they liked the most. But I guess we're still a long way away from society reaching that point \:
i had a lego friends set when i was little, it wasn't "dumbed down" at all. the building aspect of it was actually really cool.
I'm a bit older, so I had Belleville. My grandfather would buy all sets and then build them with me. Seeing lego friends, and especially the rollercoasters (which both I and my grandfather love) makes me want to time travel. I wish they had it when I was small so I could have build it with him. Seeing all the friends sets makes me want to be a mother/auntie just to have an excuse to play with them. My heart just jumps when I see all this girl lego. I started out having only 2 female lego figures once.... and now look at this!
I loved Lego Friends when I was younger, more so than actual Legos. I know, me being a girl n' all that sounds kinda lame, but I remember them fondly. I had a TON of the sets, still kept em to this day even, and even bought a few. For me growing up, I loved building the sets, I would say they even took a long time just like standard Legos depending on how big it was. I do hold a place in my heart for them.
I loved Lego Friends! The fact is Lego Friends also was a paveway to my introduction for Ninjago and my love for the smol bricks and figurines, and without Lego Friends, I wouldn't be introduced to Lego at ALL.
Im 18 years old, but I was about 7-8 when Lego Friends came out, so I was the target demographic at the time. I was completely unaware that there was so much backlash towards the brand when it came out, and I was honestly surprised because back then i LOVED Lego friends so much! I was so excited for when it came out, and it was the first time in a long time that I was excited to buy a Lego set. I used to all the time with my brothers when I was younger, but as they grew out of it I didn't have much interest to keep playing with them because all the sets were about spaceships and Transformers and things I didnt care about.
As a young kid at the time I found Lego Friends so much more approachable. I wasn't a particularly girly or feminine child (Im a transgender man now!) and I never owned dolls or makeup sets or anything like that, but I saw myself more represented in Lego Friends then from other toys. I loved the construction part the most and I'd get mad if anyone tried to play with them lol. I loved Olivia because we shared the same name and she looked like me too (before the redesign) and even though I was never someone interested in science it piqued my interest a bit. Mias interest in veterinarian science even made me consider being a veterinarian when I grew up.
Just because something is traditionally feminine doesnt mean its promoting something bad in children. Theres nothing wrong with pinks and pastels and things young girls can relate to. I love the idea that Lego could be gender neutral, but it never felt like that growing up.
That Ello shoutout just awoke a deep-seeded memory in me.
Also I would've been all for Lego Elves if it came out when I was a kid.
i loved the "boy" legos as a kid and when lego friends came out i liked them too. i liked how you could mix and match the wigs and accessories on the regular lego figures and the lego friends figures
I never really understood gendered stereotypes for Lego's, as my family got most of our toys as handmedowns from other families since my mom was single with 3 kids. We had a huge box of those Polly Pocket mini playsets and this HUGE lego-esque playset where you had a base and square rooms you stacked into three hotel towers. Meanwhile, we also had a (racially insensitive) "Cowboys vs Indians" duplo play set that I used in the same ways I used my Polly Pockets and Lego's. (My favorite of that set was the native american woman cause she had the smolest Duplo baby I'd ever seen in her papoose. She was the main character always lol.)
I wish Lego Friends could use their aesthetic but for different themes, typically themes that are assumed to be "masculine" and more "chaotic" and yes I am aware that I can just buy normal Legos. But it would be interesting to see the Friends branch out on new concepts and territory!
I believe that's what Lego Elves did. They have a Lego Friends aesthetic applied onto a fantasy setting.
It's SO important for us to talk about bias whenever we talk about criticism of girl-targeted stuff. It goes both ways. Some products are obviously catering to a stereotype, but there's nothing wrong with being a person who fits some of those stereotypes. Especially when it comes to something objectively neutral like femininity. Softness, pink, anything we put under the umbrella of "feminine..." There's nothing wrong or right about any of that. Either you like it or you don't. The main thing I'll point out that companies are bad at is including an equal number of boy and girl (and god forbid nonbinary!) characters. Just as with Lego mainline having a surplus of male-coded characters, their Friends line and especially fashion dolls in general have a surplus of girls.
Thank you for such a great video. Honestly as a kid I used to use my legos to build houses for my polly pockets (the rubber clothing ones), and if I had some of those like pastel bricks to make their houses I would have been over the moon. I love the comparison between outrage over female-branded products versus male-branded products, you made some interesting points that made me think!
If you look at these dolls and think sexy…….well, you probably deserve to be on some watchlist….
I’m going to giggle about that comment all day! Thank you for the video and for that gem! ❤️🌺❤️
What if i look at the regular minifigs and think it's sexy, hahaha. Example Nya, Wyldstyle , Poison ivy???
Hey! Lego minifigs have to be able to fall in love with each other too.
... Also i wont be surprised someone out there has the Harley Quinn minidoll in a c** jar
Ah, those images of the playsets bring back memories of playing with Lego Friends while blasting Adele and Taylor Swift's albums from an Ipod to create a complex jukebox musical soap opera. Good times.
I never had Lego friends as a kid but when I saw the Disney princess Lego sets where they basically use the Lego friend molds I absolutely loved them only had one but I absolutely loved it Maybe for my birthday I’ll get one because I think the modern day such a pretty cute avatar the house is that for certain characters
I do appreciate that LEGO took the time to research how girls play with their toys because I feel like a lot of times toys markets at girls have no idea what girls actually do with their toys. They tend to be like "You can dress up this doll in different outfits!!" whereas when girls actually play with dolls it tends to be much more along the lines of this doll has a routine and an ongoing conflict in her life and every outfit change is necessitated by the ongoing story line I have made up in my head. My memories of playing with Barbies involve them all switching outfits so they could disguise themselves as each other to avoid being murdered by the evil Barbies. Detail oriented is correct.
And even as an adult the LEGO sets I like the most are the ones with secret compartments and hidden details-- the ones you can actually imagine the minifigures living in as opposed to being a backdrop. It's something that I never really noticed the difference on before but LEGO really did nail that attention to detail on the friends sets.
when lego friends came out it introduced me to two of my lifelong interests, interior design, and building! my sister and i spent hours and hours playing and designing houses:) such a lovely topic
Lego Belville was amazing, I had the desert set and was absolutely in love with it. Later on I got a wedding cart set, and I did not play with that one at all. I just converted the cart to a hut, and set the horse free. The only criticism I would have of lego Elves is that it came out just too late for me to enjoy in my childhood (luckily I now have adult money). I also still want that Belville witch and fairy set!
I just want to say, that in Denmark and Sweden our advertising and marketing for LEGO was very different than what it seems to have been in America. I also wonder where that survey was done because growing up everyone I knew had LEGO regardless of genders.
This video feels like it more just applied to America rather than a general global thing like the video is scripted.
My only issue with LEGO Friends is that it outsold the other girl-focused LEGO line, LEGO Elves, which was more my cup of tea.
Great video! I've always had some mixed feelings on Lego Friends, mostly because I always felt like they could have taken all that research and just incorporated it into the mainline sets, but at the same time these came out at a time when gendered marketing was at it's most polarized, and it was clear that Lego's model for "neutrality" really just meant "not girly." Which has been a big issue with many so-called neutral toys over the last 20-30 years. It's very telling to the way people collectively view things with a masculine lean as the default.
I appreciated that they took the time to actually find out what girls wanted to see from their toys and that they created sets that were just as enriching to put together as standard Lego. The sets are incredibly eleaborate! My partner is a grown man and lego enthusiast and he owns some of the Friends and Elves sets, although he uses the standard figures with them to make them cohesive with all his other Legos.
I'm happy that in more recent years Lego has begun to take the things they've learned from Lego Friends and is better incorporating them into mainline Lego finally, as well as working on more neutral marketing for the Friends line Itself.
At the end of the day, Lego Friends are quality toys that speak to a lot of kids and they've more than earned their place in the Lego aisle.
This was such a great video!! As a girl, the biggest drawback to Lego Friends were the figures: I much preferred a standard minifig with long hair. The sets, however, looked super fun!
growing up I liked standard minifig but I preferred how the lego friends looked way more I just wished the legs were separately movable. My brother however loved the lego friends figures way more than regular legos because the characters look better and more realistic in his opinion. He gets especially happy when we get a friends set with a boy character in it.
i remember the thing i hated about lego friends when they came out was that they didn’t fit the way i played with legos, which was coming up with my own creations out of basic legos. i would have loved more pink and female characters in my lego collection, but the lego friends sets only had like 5 basic legos and the rest were very much meant for a specific purpose. i think because of that lego friends felt honestly insulting to me, like i as a girl ”wasn’t good enough for that amount of creativity and i should just build and play with the sets that have been designed by others for me”.
i guess a lot of ppl just do that tho??? build the sets and then play with them??
I love your perspective on this. In a way I expected there to be like a heavier criticism of the Lego Friends brand, as Ive gotten so used to people talking about how gendered products are god awful, but then you mention how that opened the doors for girls to be given the chance to love Legos too. This makes gendered marketing so mjch more layered than most people seem to think of it as, and Im thankful you gave your perspective and helped change how I saw it. I too am against it to an extent but when thinking about how traditional type families tend to work sometimes... its like yeah this definitely is a necessary evil. I loved this vid a lot ans your voice is very nice to listen to! Thank you for this awesome content
As a kid who grew up with lego friends and was never really into “feminine” toys I’m surprised that I absolutely loved them. From what I remember the sets were unique and interactive which was why I was super surprised to hear people calling them simple and dumbed down as I got older. Before Lego friends came out I remember feeling super left out when it came to legos. The cars and planes were never appealing to me, and when lego friends finally came out I remember playing for hours with my sisters and cousins. While I don’t think toys should be gendered, I’m glad lego came out with sets that catered to audiences with other interests.
i was a real big bionicle kid and i loved the world and lore of it (and that all american rejects ad? mwah) so for me interest in lego has always been "do i care about these characters?" which is why when i buy city sets i always put my bttf, lego movie, and ninjago figs in there and kinda. throw out the generic ppl. i like these characters i want THEM to go to this fire station or take a roadtrip in this vw bug. even then i can acknowledge the sets w/ characters and lore like ninjago and bionicle. while they have SOME girls theyre mostly an afterthought in terms of character development. its only been in the last couple seasons Nya from ninjago got to rlly rise above her fairly shallow characterization and do heroic things like the guys have been the whole time. Also the first female bionicle was literally named Gali...bro...
So much respect for mentioning the All American Rejects Ad. I will never stop moving along because of that commercial!
@@Obi-Wan_Kenobi that was my introduction to the band and i wouldn't have it any other way 💜
oh man, i had LOADS of legos growing up. i was raised as a girl, but my parents were pretty lax and got me toys aimed at boys and girls, so i would play with ninjago sets and lego friends sets simultaneously and i've gotta say, lego friends sets did NOT stay together like traditional legos did. idk what went wrong but man, they just did not stick to the base, and oftentimes would break apart in large pieces. and trust me, i'm certain they were built right, cuz my dad usually helped me build them. they just, were less durable than normal legos? disheartening, but my ninjago sets were wayyy better quality.
Ninjago sets 👌
I’m glad my parents were like “you want LEGO Indiana Jones? Knock yourself out.”
Oh my god I remember LEGO Elves! I can definitely say that me and my cousins used the dragons and toys more like dolls to roleplay with than things to build. The building part was still fun, but I liked to play with them after as well.
I loved lego friends sm as a kid (still do) and had a bunch of their sets. I always heard about the outrage and adults would ask me if I wanted something else like.. no?? People think you're forced to be a girly girl but I really thought I had to be masculine to be normal and cool (which led to my not like other girls phase). Thankfully I'm out of that now and I am glad to be a girly girl who still likes some traditionally masculine things without forcing it on everyone, lol. This was an awesome video :)!!
When I was little, my brother and I would play legos together all the time. I had such a fun time creating new things and building whatever I thought was cool. I do remember one of the problems he and I would have was the lack of girl figures. It was a problem for me because when I wanted to make a figure to represent me, I always ended up with the wrong colored hair, hairstyle, etc because we only had 2 “girl” hair sculpts. It was a problem for my brother because he wanted to make his figure a Lego girlfriend LOL. We’d usually have to share our one girl head for both of the characters as none of the other heads would’ve worked (my brother was specifically into Lego Indiana Jones or Lego Star Wars so the majority of the faces either had beards or weird scaring 💀). I remember my feelings of frustration how he had such an easy time making a figure to represent himself but I had such a hard time.
A while later, my cousin (female) started getting into legos and we had such a fun time. She liked Lego ninjago, specifically the dragons, and I did as well. We’d play with the dragons all the time. In one instance she was gifted a Lego friends set, a horse stable or something like that. We ended up keeping the horses and never using the girl figurine. We thought it was weird how she looked different from our normal Lego figures.
I’d say the mold they used for the girls was the main reason it didn’t appeal to me. I feel like Elves was more suited to my specific taste since I like more mythical stuff, but again, I didn’t like the molds of the people. It’s a shame cuz these sets are really cool, but everyone has their cup of tea. Luckily, legos been getting better with their marketing/female inclusion as you mentioned. The blind bags are a reall easy way to get more female presenting figures for your collection, which I’m sure young me would’ve appreciated.
I remember always wanting to build new stuff for my lego figures and LEGO Friends just really helped me! There were so many houses to build, beautiful shops and stuff, and the fact that there were main characters made me extremely happy because I could just change their clothes. I had a lot of fun because I could play with my older brother and we both would have fun, he'd build a car shop and I would build a cafe sometimes. I have many great memories thanks to the sets and I see nothing wrong with them
I use to watch your videos because I was interested in creating dolls. I was going to try a doll, kit, but dressing dolls and adding hair is not making dolls that that is playing dress up. I have given up on doll making. My careers are a children’s book writer/illustrator, cartoonist, and part time filmmaker. So all that studying I did can be used for character design.
I was 13 when Lego friends came out and I was embarrassed that I loved them. I had the tree house set and I didn’t feel like it was overly “girly” and it was complicated. Plus what I hated about legos was the blocky mini figures, but after seeing these dolls I loved legos. I even liked the standard sets because I could use my Lego friends figures with them, although they felt less detailed.
Holy crap I forgot all about Ello!! They were amazing!!
I like your channel man, fashion dolls are so interesting to be reviewed cuz they’re so pretty and their outfits are too
My dad LOVES Lego. He kept all his pieces from childhood in the 70s. When you described the part about how boys like to build the structures while girls like the details, it perfectly describes how I’d play Lego with my dad. He’d build me houses and buildings, and I’d go in making furniture, mainly for my Polly Pockets (the early 2000s ones with the rubber clothes)
Currently a minutes in and I just want to throw my hat in the ring, I’m a 17 year old girl so I’m pretty sure that I have opinions about Lego friends. I had personal really like the earlier sets of Lego but had much preferred Lego chima and ninjago shows(all 3 came around the same)but didn’t really like the sets(found them to be somehow both too simple but also too mechanical) I find it a fascinating difference because I legitimately don’t understand why I didn’t like the shows/sets. Also looking forward to seeing your opinions on the RH series 4 leaks because I have some… thoughts.
Edit: also shout out to the snakes from ninjago and Cragger from chima for almost making me a scalie when I was ten lol
Sort of off topic for Lego Friends but on topic for gendered marketing, my dad's worked at Mattel since the late 80s and apparently they used to start all of their marketing meetings with the phrase "Boys love guns and girls love stickers!" They've stopped saying that since, of course, but Mattel is still split up by people who work on "boys toys" and people who work on "girls toys" - if Mattel wanted to make a "gender neutral toy" they'd literally have to make a whole new division lol
The gender bias at Mattel is actually crazy. Like, completely removed from reality. There's so much stuff they wouldn't allow them to do with Monster High for instance- they had to fight to make Frankie Stein have green skin because marketing straight up told them "girls don't like green."
omg PLEASE do a video on ello if you can! I was absolutely obsessed with those as a kid they were really really fun to build with. Tbh I assumed they were part of LEGO until this video!
I had a couple Belville sets as a kid and I really loved them. I adored the articulation of the bigger figures and the intricacy of the sets and parts it came with. The main issue in playing with them was that the scale was not the same as the regular lego sets so we couldnt often combine them with our regular sets to play.
Seeing some of the Lego friends sets in this vid gave me the biggest nostalgia boost ever oh my god. And that thing about Lego friends being like a gateway into Lego for young girls is so true. As I got older (and explored my Gender identity a bit more lol) I got into other Lego sets. It’s really interesting.
What I love the most about Lego Friends besides it’s design philosophy and characters, are the absolutely INCREDIBLE new molds and brick colors it introduced and how they bled they’re way into other Lego themes. Friends not only helped Lego appeal to girls, but broadened the possibilities that other themes can adopt immediately, color wise, piece wise, and design wise.
Something I do want to say about the more recent traditional lego sets with standard minifigures the number of female characters is going up in them, Even in Speed Champions, a line based around real world super cars is including more female drivers. Point is Lego is offering options and I've been tempted by a fair few friends sets (My love of giant robots has persisted even after realising I'm Traps XP) Probably would own an Elves set if the line was still going. Or a Disney princess set if the prices weren't insultingly bad for the price per piece count.
If you like giant robots, you'd love Ninjago. They have some of the coolest mech sets I've ever seen, there are few things cooler than building a robot that over's a foot tall and basking it's towering, mechanized mass!
the whole masculinity = neutrality thing was so real for me..... as a kid/tween girl, i usually wanted to pick the boy avatar in games because boy characters just felt like more of a "blank canvas" in my mind. i'm aro/ace, and although i identify as a woman i rarely think much at all about my gender, so i doubt it was about gender/sex, but i think i probably just absorbed the idea that a male character is more versatile and a female character is inherently less interesting simply because i consumed a lot of media that prioritized the development/characterization of its male characters. (when i was young i was into star wars, super mario, penguins of madagascar, avatar: the last airbender... dora the explorer was the odd exception) even today, the characters i project onto the most are masculine, and i have a tendency to make lots of masc-presenting OCs :0
Omg, I was part of the product testing for LEGO Elves when I was younger and totally forgot about it until now!! They presented us with all these different ideas and themes: the other ones I remember specifically were a team of spy girls that were half human and half animal, and some kind of underwater sea creature one.
But me and the other kids were so fascinated by the dragons of the Elves set and I can’t believe it actually got made!
Great video by the way, I don’t collect dolls anymore but I found your channel the other day and I love your content!
omg that's so cool! You helped make one of the best LEGO themes happen!!