31–40 of 113 posts
I get the desire for narrative and different colors...but this looks awfully simple-minded. Why can a boy age 5-9 play with erector sets and legos, but a "girl's" engineering toy must comprise such a primitive set of components?
There is girls themed lego and duplo these days.
I haven't heard how the new "Lego Friends" line has been doing, though.
I think the toy is pretty cool and I'm sure lots of little girls will enjoy playing with it, but I'm not sure how this is supposed to get girls interested in engineering. There are none of the aspects of legos and erector sets that make those toys a stepping stone to becoming an engineer. Legos let you build whatever you can imagine, including things like houses, bridges, buildings, cars, planes, etc that exist in th…
Can't hate, I love it. Even the pink and cuddly bits. If this product instead had a blue ribbon and alien figurines with the title "Cyber Drivetrain Blast Kit" it wouldn't raise an eyebrow as a gendered or pandering toy. Legos are for boys when 95% of what's on the Lego shelf is boy pirates, boy laserbros, boy Batman, boy bio-alien-robots tearing the shit out of boy bio-dino-robots, etc.
Can't hate, I love it. Even the pink and cuddly bits. If this product instead had a blue ribbon and alien figurines with the title "Cyber Drivetrain Blast Kit" it wouldn't raise an eyebrow as a gendered or pandering toy. Legos are for boys when 95% of what's on the Lego shelf is boy pirates, boy laserbros, boy Batman, boy bio-alien-robots tearing the shit out of boy bio-dino-robots, etc.
My girls LOVE legos. They have a few of the new 'pink' ones but mostly play with our 20 year old lego collection. They don't think of the girly legos as 'real legos', for whatever reason. It _is_ disheartening to go into a lego store and see almost solely boy-oriented sets, though. I note kids in Lego stores are roughly 60/40 boys / girls, but the sets are boyish.
I think the toy is pretty cool and I'm sure lots of little girls will enjoy playing with it, but I'm not sure how this is supposed to get girls interested in engineering. There are none of the aspects of legos and erector sets that make those toys a stepping stone to becoming an engineer. Legos let you build whatever you can imagine, including things like houses, bridges, buildings, cars, planes, etc that exist in th…
You highlighted my main concern with this toy: It's not nearly as open-ended as "traditional" building toys.
Interesting! The spools and ribbons are almost skeuomorphic in that toy's context, but still attractive under the existing girls' toy aesthetic. Smart idea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is girls themed lego and duplo these days.
And their sales numbers have been abysmal. I haven't heard how the new "Lego Friends" line has been doing, though.
Right now this solution feels like similar solutions being pursued in computer engineering to fix the gender imbalance- namely creating girls-only coding groups. This is good in some ways, but I feel like it breeds two standards (with the female standard being weaker). For me, the best type of progress is girls working alongside the boys, with both happy and comfortable.
I initially made a more crass comment, and then deleted to it, but what I'll say is that this got my feminist heckles up, and it seems like a pragmatic approach. However, in this case the pragmatic approach seems like building a castle on a swamp, as opposed to making any attempt to deal with said swamp. Give girls lego.
Perfectly put.
My nearly-3 daughter loves megablocks and is getting into lego. I don't see any need whatsoever to get the 'gendered' version, especially stuff that is artificially simplified in the name of being 'girl friendly'.
The best way that I know of not inflicting the gender biases onto my child from a young age, is to NOT DO IT MYSELF. I mean, really, if parents aren't able to filter the marketing BS, how are children supposed to do it?