Boy Legos and Girl Legos

[Bu🤠ns]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/06/28/196605763/girls-legos-are-a-hit-but-why-do-girls-need-special-legos

Specifically...

Lego Friends triggered the ire of Joy Pochatila, a scientist and mother of two small girls. Her first reaction to the line was dismissive. "Why can't they just play with regular Legos? Why does it have to be girl-driven?" she wondered.

Is this really an issue? I wondered because I've bought my daughter legos in the past--Spongebob Legos--which are pretty gender neutral.  We've gotten her some lego Friends but she never really embraced Legos like my son did.  Personally, I don't think that there's anything wrong with the Lego Friends collection as it increases choice.  Legos are cool. I STILL play with them.

I'm just  not sure if this is just inane social justice or if there's a legitimate thing here.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

It's more unnecessary gender segregation.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

I'm fine with it as long as the girl legos aren't dumbed down.

"Girly" =/= "taking shit off of people"

My daughter always had a lot of pink girly stuff and she's proof of this. 

The only problem I can see with this is if a boy wanted these, and he had asshole parents who didn't like fabulous.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Go check out a toy store or a toy section in some other store and see if you can spot the difference, Bu*ns. :P

Boys' aisle is all sorts of colors and lots of build-y toys, games, and action figures. Girls' aisle is pink and almost all dolls; Barbie, Bratz, baby, etc.

I suppose it has improved somewhat. There was a point in time I'd hear parents telling their kids they couldn't go to one aisle or the other because it wasn't for THEM. Not that many boys want to be in the pink doll aisle but lots of girls want legos and tinker toys and such.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

On the other hand, my daughter goes gaga over glitzy girls stuff. The more stereotypically girls something is, the more she loves it. That's just the way she is. We neither encourage or discourage it, we just take a lot of pleasure in seeing her decide for herself who she wants to be. So I don't object to girl Legos. It isn't like the package says Girls Only, or other Lego products say Boys Only. Not everything is intentional gender segregation. Some people love stereotypical girls stuff, so some people make it and sell it. Why can't it be that simple?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's more unnecessary gender segregation.

This.

What I object to is the binary marketing; there is absolutely no reason OTHER THAN THE WAY TOYS ARE ALREADY MARKETED that they couldn't have simply started incorporating a spectrum of figures and themes into their existing line. Changing gender-binary thinking and assumptions is a HUGE part of equality; right now society is still operating on more-or-less a "separate but equal" model of equality, and it's tremendously dysfunctional. The most obvious place you can see this separation visually represented is in the toy aisles.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Notice that pink isn't used ANYWHERE in "boy's" toys, aka "default" toys. Pink is ONLY used in girl's toys. The gender segregation is intense at that level, which means that from birth, little kids are indoctrinated with the idea boys and girls are fundamentally different. The most insidious aspect is the way "boy" toys are normalized, while "girl" toys are marked with PINK AND PINK AND PINK AND PINK, sending the message that girls can be regular people who play with normal toys, but ONLY GIRLS PLAY WITH GIRL TOYS.

Seriously, it's super fucked up, and it's so ingrained in our culture that most of us don't think anything of it.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

For shits and giggles, I Googled 'boy toys' and 'girl toys'. Here are the results.







I especially like the Jon Benet Ramsey make-up kit that popped up for girls. Super classy.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

So do away with the aisles, throw everything together and let the kids pick what they want.

I wouldn't PUSH a particular toy on a kid, but that works both ways. That Marlo Thomas "Forget girl stuff, don'tcha wanna be a FORKLIFT OPERATOR when you grow up?" shit is just bad as "No you CAN'T have a water gun, take these plastic high heels and STFU."

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

So do away with the aisles, throw everything together and let the kids pick what they want.

I wouldn't PUSH a particular toy on a kid, but that works both ways. That Marlo Thomas "Forget girl stuff, don'tcha wanna be a FORKLIFT OPERATOR when you grow up?" shit is just bad as "No you CAN'T have a water gun, take these plastic high heels and STFU."

Yeah. It sucks either way.

[Cuddlefish]

I recently started collecting Legos, and one thing I've noticed is that all the Legos go in one isle. They don't put the "girl" Legos in the "pink isle." So far, I'm actually pretty impressed with the company. There are clearly some sets that are specifically 'geared towards boys/girls' but there are loads of 'gender neutral' sets (the city sets are great).

But, regardless, I'm pretty sure that it's not so much the company (in this case, Lego) that makes these types of decisions; it's the retailer itself that decides where to place their products. In fact, some retailers have so much financial influence over individual manufacturers that I wouldn't be surprised to find that things like packaging decisions (pink boxes for girls) are made, at some level, by the retailers. Y'know, "We won't buy as much of your product unless you can sell us something that we can 'market' towards girls." And, by 'market towards girls,' they mean 'put it in a pink box.' Mainly because people in marketing actually have no working conceptualization of how the world really works. 

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

I recently started collecting Legos, and one thing I've noticed is that all the Legos go in one isle. They don't put the "girl" Legos in the "pink isle." So far, I'm actually pretty impressed with the company. There are clearly some sets that are specifically 'geared towards boys/girls' but there are loads of 'gender neutral' sets (the city sets are great).

But, regardless, I'm pretty sure that it's not so much the company (in this case, Lego) that makes these types of decisions; it's the retailer itself that decides where to place their products. In fact, some retailers have so much financial influence over individual manufacturers that I wouldn't be surprised to find that things like packaging decisions (pink boxes for girls) are made, at some level, by the retailers. Y'know, "We won't buy as much of your product unless you can sell us something that we can 'market' towards girls." And, by 'market towards girls,' they mean 'put it in a pink box.' Mainly because people in marketing actually have no working conceptualization of how the world really works. 

No, they just put the girl Legos in a pink tub or make sure the picture on the box shows that they're pink. :P It's weird how supply and demand has worked around this warped view of gender and toys. I'm sure there's any number of parents who wouldn't let their girls play with Legos because they were a boy's toy . . . until the pink Legos came out.

[Freeky]

I overheard something relevant to Cuddlefist's post a week or two ago.  My Friend Who Is the Game Shop (MFWIGS) was saying something about Walmart not carrying Games Workshop products like Citadel paints and Warhammer anything because GW won't drop their products' prices by 5% every year.  GW is big enough and has cornered their niche market well enough that they're free to give no fucks that general stores won't carry their shit, and their moneymaker, Warhammer 40K, is so popular that they can actually raise the prices every year and people will still buy, even if it means beggaring themselves.  It's such a problem that GW has screwed a lot of small business game store owners over with really shoddy and shady business practices, MFWIGS among them, and the small businesses continues carrying them because to drop GW is to lose the business.  It's fucked.


That turned out to be more tangential than I really wanted. :/

[Cuddlefish]

The interplay between creator/manufacturer and retailers can be pretty F'd. I used to collect transformers, until WalMart decided for Hasbro that every other figure needed to be a version of Bumblebee, or they can kiss their shelf space goodby. Stealth Bumblebee, Action Feature Bumblebee, Ultimate Bumblebee, Yet Another Bumblebee. It was terrible to watch those damn things just sit on the shelves, no doubt while WalMart was blaming Hasbro for the terrible sales (can't really sell someone something they already have, now can you? In this case, more Bumblebees). I think some people would be surprised at how much influence retailers like WalMart have on the products available, not just at WalMart, but at every other chain that competes with WalMart, what with the precedent having been set by bulk retailers like WalMart.

[Freeky]

Definitely.  Major retailers like WalMart, who must always have those low, low prices screw with those businesses who don't have the clout to say "It's like this or fuck off," and can't afford to sell at those prices.  And I never fully comprehended how disgustingly childish and selfish consumers are until I listened to MFWIGS try to tell a customer/tournament director, in three different ways, why they couldn't sell a new card game at the price he was saying they should (which was the price their major competitor is selling at) because they would like to keep their doors open and the power on.  It was appalling.