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I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

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Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#71

Post by damoncali »

dgabriel wrote: post #30
bryanlarsen wrote: post #18

I'm having trouble understanding the backlash against the new Lego for girls initiative. As the father of a couple of pre-school girls, I'm loving the new initiative. It appears to consist of 3 things: - realistic looking minifigs. Not square and not oversexed. - additional brick colors, and not just pink. - sets not based on movie tie-ins, but in real-world locations like an inventor's workshop, a café, an animal ho…

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

Who plays with lego that way?

Little girls do.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#73

Post by Florin_Andrei »

ericabiz wrote: post #3

As a girl geek who grew up on Legos, this makes me really, really sad. From the NPR article linked to from the article above: "Lego also consciously aimed for boy customers when it embarked on its stunning turnaround. Boys were easier to sell to than girls." headsmash "The new Lego girl minifigures have names like Stephanie, Olivia, and Emma, and the building sets include a veterinary clinic, a hairdressing salon, a…

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

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

Nurture is also important, no doubt.

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#74

Post by gus_massa »

I don’t know how to fix this for the whole society, but it is possible to fix this for your daughter: Go and buy a generic Lego set, for example http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_355233462_11?ie=UTF8&#3...

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

My 9 years old daughter has:

* Her own chemistry set

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

* A Meccano-like metalic cosnstruction set.

* A Snap Circuits Jr electronic Set.

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

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

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

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#75

Post by [deleted] »

maximusprime wrote: post #45
cstross wrote: post #26

s/LEGO/toy manufacturers/ (There, I fixed it for you!) The trend towards highly gendered media-tie in toys that are designed to generate follow-on sales opportunities for accessories rather than to encourage kids to develop their imagination through semi-structured but open-ended play nauseates me. I am doubtless betraying my personal bias here, but the corporate discovery that the quickest way to a parent's wallet i…

BS @ trend. Go back 50 years and it was dolls and toy guns. Nothing has changed, boys still like building and destroying, and girls still like caring about things and craft things. You can try all you want to make boys play with dolls, and girls play at killing each other, but they won't in general, because it's not in their biological makeup to do so.

[deleted]

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#77

Post by tristan_louis »

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

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

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

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

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#78

Post by sunahsuh »

nostromo wrote: post #53

When I see these stories taking companies to task over why they sell what they do, I always wonder why nobody holds consumers to task. For example: why doesn't Lego sell to girls? Why doesn't Barbie have more realistic features? Why don't car manufacturers offer an electric vehicle? Why doesn't McDonalds sell salads instead of fries? Why do record labels offer such crappy music? It's easy to blame the companies -- bu…

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

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

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

edit: typos

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#79

Post by simcop2387 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #18

I'm having trouble understanding the backlash against the new Lego for girls initiative. As the father of a couple of pre-school girls, I'm loving the new initiative. It appears to consist of 3 things: - realistic looking minifigs. Not square and not oversexed. - additional brick colors, and not just pink. - sets not based on movie tie-ins, but in real-world locations like an inventor's workshop, a café, an animal ho…

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

Re: I'm starting to think LEGO is evil

#80

Post by oz »

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

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

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