Ah, legos. The very name conjures up memories of childhood, building, making up stories, and trying not to step on them with bare feet. Legos have earned a well deserved place in the American childhood experience. A main reason for its longevity is the constant introduction of new and exciting products. However, a new theme called Lego Friends released in 2012 has caused significance public backlash and controversy. Specifically marketed to girls, many are outraged that the company is using strong gender stereotypes in its marketing. Well, see for yourself:
Where to begin… The ad starts out with two young girls making a heart symbol with their hands before diving into pink and purple sparkle happy funland- ah, I mean, “Heartlake City”. The ad is filled with stereotypically ‘girl’ colors, including bright pink, purple, light blue, yellow, white and other pastel colors. The sets are completely absent of the iconic bold colors of previous sets, like red, blue, green, black, orange, and other bright colors. The different color palettes make the division between ‘boy’ toys and ‘girl’ toys extremely visible. The ad continues by introducing each of the five characters that the Friends theme revolves around: Stephanie, Olivia, Emma, Mia, and Andrea. By far the most striking thing about Lego Friends in the new “ladyfigure” design. The new design is taller, skinnier, and has a lot more detail in the face, hair and clothes, compared than the standard minifigure. Although Friends is compatible with all other Lego products, the ladyfig design separates it from the rest of the Lego universe. The ad goes on to show off some of the new sets, including Olivia’s House, Stephanie’s Cool Convertible, the Butterfly Beauty Shop, the Heartlake Vet, and City Park Cafe. The majority of sets in Lego Friends deal with domestic activities like shopping, baking, taking care of pets and beauty activities. This is the worst offense. Lego is fully embracing gender stereotypes with these types of sets. There is absolutely no reason for the sets in Friends to exclusively have traditionally women’s activities. But why the sudden change? What caused Lego to make such drastic changes to their product?
It all comes down to business. In the early 2000’s, the Lego company was suffering heavy losses. Desperate, they employed a short-term strategy to market exclusively to boys. This change was more gradual than the sudden introduction of Friends, and the targeting to boys was less visible. In 2005, Lego City was introduced, and is one of the largest continuous them the Lego company has produced. Lego City has a number of different sets, including Construction, Police, Fire, Emergency, Train, Airport, Transportation, Cargo, Traffic, Coast Guard, Farm, Great Vehicles, Mining, and Space.
This particular ad is for the Lego City Police Collection. The setting of the ad in the huge and intricate Lego city. Viewer are thrown into the action by an urgent announcement, “The crooks are breaking out!” The police race after them in a high speed car chase, which takes place through the city street. In order to catch the ‘crooks’, they need the police helicopter (pretty impressive budget, Lego City PD). However, it’s still a pile of bricks on the ground, prompting you to “Build the powerful helicopter!” This calls for direct participation, and puts the power and ability to save the day in their hands. Compare this to the Friends ad, where the sets are built passively or pre-assembled. It seems like Lego is marketing a more involved and powerful role in playing with legos. The ad finishes off with a happy ending, the ‘crooks’ are behind bars until the next time they try to escape. All of the Lego City sets center around complex designs and action-based play. Most of the time Lego City sets are a higher difficulty level than Lego Friends sets, which can be seen in the two ambulance sets below. The most interesting part of this is that most all of the minifigures are male, even though the jobs are not gender specific. Lego could have very easily included female minifigures, but choose to stick with the male-dominated theme.
By marketing to boys, Lego was able to recover financially. In fact, Lego so successful that the company topped $1 billion in U.S. sales for the first time ever in 2010. Lego wanted to keep the momentum going, and started looking at how to expand the market to girls. The entire Friends theme was a product of extensive research on how young girls play. After months of studies, they found that girls tend to engage in storytelling and role-play. Girls are more likely to build slowly and rearrange the set at they go, rather than quickly building it all at once. As a result, Lego designed Freinds with a narrative in mind. The ladyfigures have names and individual backstories, and a friendly setting for story to take place. In an interview for Bloomberg Business, Lego design Director Rosario Costa states the reason for the ladyfigure design, saying that, “The girls needed a figure they could identify with, that looks like them.” It’s impressive how much time and effort Lego put into designing Friends. But then why does it rely so heavily on gender stereotypes? “If it takes color-coding or ponies and hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains,” says neuroscientist Lise Eliot. Playing with legos has been shown to develop spatial, mathematical, and fine motor skills, along with exercising a child’s imagination. Is it worth it to tolerate gender stereotypes in order for girls to finally experience the benefits of Legos?
Such a drastic trade off might not be necessary. For the majority of Lego’s history it has not been divided by blue and pink gender lines. On the contrary, looking at Lego’s past advertisements reveals that gender was never really an issue. A wonderful example is a famous magazine advertisement for 1981. It shows a little girl in sneakers, jeans and a t-shirt, proudly holding her very own lego creation. The caption reads “What is it is is beautiful.” The best part of the advertisement is the adorable smile on the little girls face, her expression of one of great happiness and pride. The purpose of this ad is to express that the main point of legos is that children can create something all by themselves. The sets are “Universal Building Sets”, for everyone to play with. Gender is not an issue. This ad, one of a series, focuses solely on the child themselves. The son of the inventor of Lego, Godtfred Kirk, actually listed “For Girls, For Boys” as number two on a list of “10 Important Characteristics” to guide all Lego product development. Lego was once a champion of non-gendered toys, how can it return to it’s former glory?
Well, the immense public backlash for Lego Friends should help steer them in the right direction. Social and conventional media exploded, with articles, blogs posts, Youtube videos, TV segments and radio shows were buzzing about Lego Friends when it first came out in January 2012. A Change.org petition was started by the SPARK Movement, an online organization working to end the sexualization of girls. The petition to The Lego Group was titled “Tell LEGO to stop selling out girls! #LiberateLEGO”, and received massive support, with 50,000 signature in just one month, and nearly 70,000 at the time the petition ended. The Lego Group responded promptly and in February agreed to meet with SPARK to discuss future advertising strategies, how to improve gender representation online an in products, and how to expand more Lego products to girls.
So how has Lego been doing? Let’s look at some more recent advertising to see if they have made any progress. In 2014, Lego released a magazine ad parodying the 1981 Lego ad that became famous in 2012. It is set up the same way. A young, but significantly older this time, girl, standing against a neutral background holding her lego creation. Even the clothes are similar, with sneakers, jeans and a blue shirt, with no pink in sight except…oh, yeah, the Friends legos she’s using. The wording reads “It’s a one of a kind as she is.” This ad is immediately gendered by the use of the word ‘she.’ The 1981 only mentions ‘children,’ neither boys or girls. Even though the ad is gendered, it is focusing more on some of the original founding principles of Lego, specifically #1 of the “10 Important Characteristics” of Legos: Unlimited play possibilities. The small text emphasises how essential imagination and creativity are to playing with Legos. I’ll call that progress. But Lego still has a long way to go. Bailey Richards from SPARK Movement did a representation audit of Lego’s website, counting male and female characters across all products. According to Richards, 25% is the magic number when it come to reducing gender stereotypes. But the audit revealed that only 16% of minifigures were female. So Lego has a lot of work to do, but it looks like it’s headed in the right direction.
Lego is an enormously fun and creative part of childhood. In recent years, Legos took a turn for the worst by unnecessarily gendering their products, especially with the introduction of the Lego Friends theme. Thankfully, the public made their view known, and Lego responded well with promises to reduce gender stereotypes and improve on gender representation across all products. However, the 2014 magazine ad and the relatively unchanged Friends theme tells us that Lego still has a long way to go. It is important to make sure Lego keeps trying, so kids have more options to play with toys based on their own interests and not solely on what is marketed to them.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my peer editors, Nadine Geller for her constructive criticism which let me strengthen and clarify my paper, and Jae Lee for suggestions on how to adjust my tone. Special thanks to my First Year Writing instructor Jessica Nelson, for reviewing my entire essay and for sharing my frustration over gendered toys. Thanks!
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Red Sparrow 