New Lego Friends

[vonfirmath]

My dd3 has a Bellville set that never sees the light of day. The Star Wars, Kingdom, and Sponge Bob sets are played with everyday and are permanently out in the living room. DD is probably not the norm. But she did circle the new Lego sets in the catalogue as a want...

Your DD is one of the 8% of girls that actually plays with Legos right now.
Lego is trying to reach the other 92%. You can continue to buy Star Wars, Kingdom, Sponge Bob. they won't mind! Honest

Lego Friends has a discussion thread in the Toys subtopic:
http://windsorpeak.com/vbulletin/sho...d.php?t=421351

I am very excited about these! And I don't even have a daughter old enough yet. I have bought the Inventor's Workshop and the Beauty Salon (for the 'Sarah' character) so far. I want the treehouse and the House and the Design Studio and the piano/stage one. Plus several of the upcoming summer sets! (including the plane!)

And there's a huge house looking thing that makes me wonder if I should hold off and see if I want that instead of the current house.

[Binkandabee]

DD#1 will play with whatever suits her and she generally does not like things to be overly girlie (see my above post). She'd much rather have something neutral than girlie.

DD#2 on the other hand is obsessed with making a distinction between boys and girls. She does it with songs on the radio by asking me if its a boy song or a girl song because in her mind if a male is singing the song, it's for boys. She does this with just about everything, colors, books, tv shows, you name it. The only way for Lego to reach her is to make legos pink. Otherwise she is not going to touch it, plain and simple. I would imagine she is not the only girl like this, either.

Same family, same upbringing, just very different, inherent personality traits.

[Percycat]

Your DD is one of the 8% of girls that actually plays with Legos right now.
Lego is trying to reach the other 92%. You can continue to buy Star Wars, Kingdom, Sponge Bob. they won't mind! Honest
.

This is so true. I am currently coaching my DD's Jr. First Lego team which consists of six 6/7 year old girls. Only two of these girls had EVER played with legos before joining the team. We spent several of our first meetings just having free builds with the group divided into two smaller groups. One group worked with my daughter's pink legos and the other group worked a larger set of legos we received through a grant.... we had to take turns because everyone wanted to work with the pink set. I like that an ice cream shop is one of the models in the sets targeted for girls because that is one of the creations that was frequently built during our free builds.

It has been amazing to see the girls' creativeness, problem solving skills, and building abilities grow these past few weeks. The girls are now building an old fashioned ice cream machine, with a round canister, a dasher, and gear/crank mechanism as their Jr. FLL project. Its pretty cool to see what these girls can do. : )

[alien_host]

DD has been playing with LEGO since she was about 4 and she is almost 7. She never showed interest in Belleville so we didn't buy those sets. She loved City, Toy Story. Last year she got into Cars, Star Wars, Atlantis, Pirates and Pirates of the Caribbean. I would buy a set if it was super discounted and she would be happy to build any theme. I myself really enjoy LEGO and buy some sets for me

I had mixed feelings about Friends since it has the mini-doll vs minifigure, although they are very close in size. We have 2 of the medium sized sets and they are really fun. I personally like the bright colors...especially after building a few of those drab Star Wars sets with her!

DD loves princesses, dress-up, and other girlie things. She also has always been a Cars fan, Scooby Doo and anything "spy" too. She used to be the one on the floor in a princess dress playing with her Cars diecast back a few years ago.

I think it is good that LEGO is attempting to reach more girls, I really do think LEGO is a great product for kids (girls and boys) and adults! Oh and DD has attended a few of the monthly Club meetings where she was the ONLY girl there, she didn't mind and can hold her own.

Here's a pic I snapped of one of the girls hitching a ride with Mater. DD got a Cars 2 set for Christmas and was paying with both the Friends set and Cars 2 together.

[kijip]

Your DD is one of the 8% of girls that actually plays with Legos right now.
Lego is trying to reach the other 92%.

I can't help but think that it would be easier to reach the other 92% if the trend in toys the last 5-7 years or so hadn't been to sell everyone the classic one as a boys thing and a pink one as a girls thing. The FP phone? The popcorn popper? It's silly.

More girls playing with Legos is great but why can't the marketing get more inclusive and diverse of theme interests rather than more segregated? Why did all of us do just fine with plain open ended Legos without regard to gender? part of what gives me pause is seeing that little girl in plain clothes and hair from the old ad. In ads now all I see are very girly, very pretty girl, representations of girls. We have gender-ized our denim play pants with embroidery and skinny cuts and bedazzling beads.

I just have really mixed feelings about this.

[alien_host]

This is so true. I am currently coaching my DD's Jr. First Lego team which consists of six 6/7 year old girls. Only two of these girls had EVER played with legos before joining the team. We spent several of our first meetings just having free builds with the group divided into two smaller groups. One group worked with my daughter's pink legos and the other group worked a larger set of legos we received through a grant.... we had to take turns because everyone wanted to work with the pink set. I like that an ice cream shop is one of the models in the sets targeted for girls because that is one of the creations that was frequently built during our free builds.

It has been amazing to see the girls' creativeness, problem solving skills, and building abilities grow these past few weeks. The girls are now building an old fashioned ice cream machine, with a round canister, a dasher, and gear/crank mechanism as their Jr. FLL project. Its pretty cool to see what these girls can do. : )

This Group sounds fun. Is it something you started yourself or was it an existing group? Is it through your DD's school? I'd love some more details.

[sarahsthreads]

I'm mixed on this. On one hand, if girls like it, then what's the problem? As someone that wanted Legos as a child, I rarely got any. Mainly because they were all 'boy' themed and my parents and grandparents couldn't get past that. I did have a few - the kitchen set, a space one and a fire station, but not nearly what I would have liked. I would say that the sets now are so overly aimed at boys with boy characters (even in the non-licensed sets), that there are few that appeal to a wide range of girls. These may be the 'gateway drug' to get many more girls interested in Legos.

OTOH, I don't like the general 'must pinkify' part - they could have made most of these with regular lego colors, even the lighter shades of what is out, and appealed to all kids, but the pastels are a bit overdone and I know my boys will reject them as 'too girly'.

I also have somewhat mixed feelings about the "pinkify" bit, but I think the point behind the whole new line was that they did some research into how girls play with legos and discovered that they tend to use the minifigs as avatars and the building bit is simply to wind up with something they can role-play with. Whereas boys (generally?) are more into building for the sake of building. I totally see this with both of my girls with duplos. They'll build something vaguely house-like or barn-like and then use the people and animals to play in it like a dollhouse. If I took out all of the duplo people and animals and gave them just the bricks they'd never, ever play with them.

So we've dabbled in "big kid" legos a bit, but DD1 is just not that into building. We've had better success with the lego advent calendars because they have a proportionately higher number of minifigs.

However, after seeing this line, DD1 chose to spend her Christmas money from my ILs on the vet clinic set - it should be arriving in the next few days, and we'll see then how these work out for us! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she loves them, because then birthday and Christmas gifts will be easy for the next few years!

Sarah

[alien_host]

I understand what people are saying about "pinkify". I do think that manfacturers do it because they believe that is what people want. And if if people buy it then they will keep marketing that way. I never saw the need to buy a pink version vs non-pink version of those Fisher Price toys (stacking rings etc). I think with LEGO it is different, aside from the pink brick box, these Friends sets are not a "pink" version of another set, it is a completely new line with new colors in bricks and new accessories (dog brush, bows, pink ipod). It is not Star Wars in pink.

I really think that in the past LEGO was afraid to do a whole line for "girls" since girls will buy "boy-themed" sets but boys generally would not buy "girl themed sets". I am very curious to see how this does. LEGO is finally making an attempt to compete with Hasbro and Mattel and the makers of Barbie and Polly Pocket etc. in the girls arena. I do think these are better quality toys than Polly Pocket (I hate those things!).

I'd love to see a Cinderella's Castle set or Rapunzel's Tower...that would be fun! FWIW, I have noticed slightly more girl minifigures in other sets such as City (one of the sanitation workers is a girl). The Series (mystery) minifigures still are prominately male characters. I did see one 10 year old boy get very upset at the LEGO Store that the one he got was a girl figure...it seems like the boys have a harder time dealing with LEGO catering to girls at all than the girls do about LEGO in general.

ETA: Check this out...http://www.brothers-brick.com/2012/0...3-3936-review/ a space ship with some of the parts from Friends.

[jenmcadams]

I also have somewhat mixed feelings about the "pinkify" bit, but I think the point behind the whole new line was that they did some research into how girls play with legos and discovered that they tend to use the minifigs as avatars and the building bit is simply to wind up with something they can role-play with. Whereas boys (generally?) are more into building for the sake of building.

Sarah

The article from Bloomberg business was really interesting...the company has tried a lot of things, but really hasn't had much luck. I think with things like HP sets, there's been more gender cross-over, but it sounds like this new line is based on some pretty extensive market research...If anyone's curious, here's a link to the article:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...-12142011.html

[twindad]

Am I the only one here who finds this trend coming to Legos a wee bit sad? My husband linked this picture on his FB and it makes me wonder. http://m.smh.com.au/opinion/society-...226-1paf1.html

I get gender differences. I don't get needing differently colored versions of the same toys. Also, why not add things like treehouses and pet shops for all kids, rather than targeting them to only girls?

I'm with you.