Earlier this week, we reported that a young girl wrote a letter to The LEGO Group asking for more female minifigures to go adventures. LEGO has responded to that letter with pretty much what I wrote in my editorial. I stated that kids should starting making their own adventures with the vast variety of female minifigures already available to them. So to Charlotte and people supporting her, stop trying to push your political agenda to a company that has already been making huge strides the past few years to cater to both genders. Hopefully, this will be the last time I’ll be talking about this subject matter. Take a look at LEGO’s response below:
We are grateful that we have a product that so many children around the world engage with. Each year hundreds of thousands of children all over the world reach out to us after playing with our products, and give us positive feedback and suggestions for ways to improve. We reply to all consumers who reach out to us, and this answer is between us and the consumer unless the consumer decides to share our response of course.
We believe that LEGO® play appeals to children of both genders and all ages. Building with LEGO bricks fosters the creativity of children which is why it’s our mission to offer any child – regardless of their age, gender or interests – a relevant LEGO play experience.
LEGO play has often been more appealing to boys, but we have been very focused on including more female characters and themes that invite even more girls to build, and in the last few years, we are thrilled that we have dramatically increased the number of girls who are choosing to build. While there are still more male characters than female, we have added new characters to the LEGO world to better balance the appeal of our themes. Some examples are our new The LEGO® Movie sets where you will find Wyldstyle – a free spirit who loves pushing boundaries and being creative. In a LEGO Friends set Emma practices karate and later this year the LEGO Friends characters go on a rescue mission into the jungle. In our LEGO® Minifigure Collectibles line we have had female characters including a warrior, a surgeon, a zoologist, athletes, extreme sports characters, rock stars and a scientist.
We are constantly developing our product collection, and new roles appear for both male and female minifigures. The great thing about LEGO play is that you are always able to create whatever adventure suits your interest, using the LEGO minifigures as your guide.
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I hope it’s the last time you talk about this too. Stick to the news, we don’t need these caustic opinions.
Also it’s kind of hilarious Lego’s seriously gonna chicken and egg this thing by claiming they just happen to appeal to boys more. Gee it’s almost like the past twenty years of advertising have catered exclusively to that audience! Dinguses, the whole lot.
I disagree that they’re trying to “chicken and egg” the thing. Have they fallen prey to larger cultural norms? Heck yeah.
But, if you’re, say, making a set based on an action movie, it’s statistically likely that male characters are going to outnumber female characters. That’s not Lego making “boy’s toys”, so much as it’s a film with male characters (part of a larger societal conversation about tastes and gender roles). That the Lego set includes mostly male figures is a byproduct of some other group’s actions.
Actually, looking closer at all the themes, there is not a single theme that doesn’t have at least 1 woman in one of the sets. and I don’t think Lego has fallen prey to ANY social norms. They produce generic yellow people for the most part, include both genders, and are so open ended with the sets as to let the user engage in the use of I-M-A-G-I-N-A-T-I-O-N to create ANYTHING they want with the set.
One only has to have half a brain to take a female head and add it to ANY torso and leg set they want. Then that figure can be in anything that a person can dream up from a race car to a pony show.
Simply put, the parts are INTERCHANGABLE and anyone can make basically EVERYTHING that the human mind can dream up if it has the capacity to do so.
If so inclined, the girl can take a female figure and turn it into Glenda the corporate man hater who psychologically abuses the male staff instead of using any sort of talent to climb the business ladder of success.