Written for Afsane Rezaei's Folk Art and Material Culture course in Spring 2021. I exceeded the length requirement by a fair amount.
Can we model a way to Lego of gender stereotypes, or are they built in?
By C. Randall Nicholson
Short Abstract
Folklorists have written extensively on how gender is portrayed in toys such as Barbie dolls and GI Joes, and subverted (or not) by the children (and adults) who play with them. Ostensibly more gender-neutral toys such as Legos have received less attention until recent years. In this paper, I show that the Lego Group’s current philosophy of marketing to boys versus girls, while successful, it is not without its pitfalls. I argue that it should aim for more gender-inclusive marketing and to produce more diverse and numerous female minifigures (or “minifigs”) in the first place.
Long Abstract
Folklorists have written extensively on how gender is portrayed in toys such as Barbie dolls and GI Joes, and subverted (or not) by the children (and adults) who play with them. Ostensibly more gender-neutral toys such as Legos have received less attention until recent years. On the surface this makes perfect sense. Traditional Lego minifigure (or “minifig”) bodies are shaped the same, male or female, and are obviously not meant to approximate real human body types, exaggerated or otherwise. Nobody has any concerns about them promoting unrealistic body image. The Lego Group also has a policy against including realistic modern weaponry (a category which does not cover swords, cannons, lightsabers, squid launchers, etc.) or glorifying realistic violence in its sets.
However, there are still notable differences in how often male and female minifigs appear, how they are dressed, and/or their roles in the storylines that accompany some product lines. It is also well known that the Lego Group markets most of its products far more heavily to boys on the assumption that they will be more interested than girls. Product lines marketed to girls (e.g. Belville, Friends) use minifigs shaped more like traditional plastic dolls and focus on stereotypical “girl” colors, settings, and plotlines. This raises the question of whether the Lego Group is correct in its assumptions about male and female interests, or is excluding many potential customers based on debatable cultural constructs.
In this paper, I show that the truth is somewhere in the middle – its recent girl-marketed products have been very successful, but girls could be more receptive to the mainstream sets than the company supposes. Current product lines could also send negative messages about what girls should or shouldn’t prioritize (e.g. makeup vs. science) that could affect the target demographic into adulthood. The Lego Group should strive for more gender-inclusive marketing and to produce more diverse and numerous female minifigs in the first place. In this, the Lego Group is following a broader cultural trend of gender-specific toy marketing, but could and should use its influence as the most profitable toy company in the world to make a change.
Legos, even more so than Barbies, lend themselves to many varieties of creative play for children and adults alike. By design, the bricks and other pieces in any Lego set can be reconstructed into other things contingent on the builder’s imagination, and the company actively encourages this. It often showcases builders’ creations and sometimes sponsors contests. In recent years the internet has provided a larger venue than ever for people to share “My Own Creations” (MOCs) and brickfilms, stop-motion films with the added advantage of including a clear story and personalities for the minifigs involved. Children and adults are not limited by the narratives being put forth by the Lego Group. I touch on a few examples, though space constraints and the difficulty of determining gender ratios through the anonymity of the internet have limited this aspect of the paper.
Folklorists have written extensively on how gender is portrayed in toys such as Barbie dolls and GI Joes, and subverted (or not) by the children (and adults) who play with them. Ostensibly more gender-neutral toys such as Legos have received less attention until recent years. In this paper, I show that the Lego Group’s current philosophy of marketing to boys versus girls, while successful, it is not without its pitfalls. I argue that it should aim for more gender-inclusive marketing and to produce more diverse and numerous female minifigures (or “minifigs”) in the first place.
Long Abstract
Folklorists have written extensively on how gender is portrayed in toys such as Barbie dolls and GI Joes, and subverted (or not) by the children (and adults) who play with them. Ostensibly more gender-neutral toys such as Legos have received less attention until recent years. On the surface this makes perfect sense. Traditional Lego minifigure (or “minifig”) bodies are shaped the same, male or female, and are obviously not meant to approximate real human body types, exaggerated or otherwise. Nobody has any concerns about them promoting unrealistic body image. The Lego Group also has a policy against including realistic modern weaponry (a category which does not cover swords, cannons, lightsabers, squid launchers, etc.) or glorifying realistic violence in its sets.
However, there are still notable differences in how often male and female minifigs appear, how they are dressed, and/or their roles in the storylines that accompany some product lines. It is also well known that the Lego Group markets most of its products far more heavily to boys on the assumption that they will be more interested than girls. Product lines marketed to girls (e.g. Belville, Friends) use minifigs shaped more like traditional plastic dolls and focus on stereotypical “girl” colors, settings, and plotlines. This raises the question of whether the Lego Group is correct in its assumptions about male and female interests, or is excluding many potential customers based on debatable cultural constructs.
In this paper, I show that the truth is somewhere in the middle – its recent girl-marketed products have been very successful, but girls could be more receptive to the mainstream sets than the company supposes. Current product lines could also send negative messages about what girls should or shouldn’t prioritize (e.g. makeup vs. science) that could affect the target demographic into adulthood. The Lego Group should strive for more gender-inclusive marketing and to produce more diverse and numerous female minifigs in the first place. In this, the Lego Group is following a broader cultural trend of gender-specific toy marketing, but could and should use its influence as the most profitable toy company in the world to make a change.
Legos, even more so than Barbies, lend themselves to many varieties of creative play for children and adults alike. By design, the bricks and other pieces in any Lego set can be reconstructed into other things contingent on the builder’s imagination, and the company actively encourages this. It often showcases builders’ creations and sometimes sponsors contests. In recent years the internet has provided a larger venue than ever for people to share “My Own Creations” (MOCs) and brickfilms, stop-motion films with the added advantage of including a clear story and personalities for the minifigs involved. Children and adults are not limited by the narratives being put forth by the Lego Group. I touch on a few examples, though space constraints and the difficulty of determining gender ratios through the anonymity of the internet have limited this aspect of the paper.
Introduction
The Lego1 Group has produced one of the most iconic and recognizable toys in the world, a revolutionary system of construction and imagination that has become ubiquitous today. This system has made it the most profitable toy company in the world, surpassing Mattel in 2014 after the success of its first theatrical movie.2 In any given year it produces hundreds of play sets, some generic and many divided into various themes and storylines, but encourages children and adults alike to use their imaginations and repurpose the pieces into whatever they can come up with. These creations are often dubbed My Own Creations (MOCs). The internet now allows entire online communities to share unsolicited brick pics of their MOCs,3 Lego-based webcomics,4 and even stop-motion videos known as brickfilms.5 The Lego Group’s Fair Play guidelines allow for almost fan activity that doesn’t imply affiliation with or sponsorship by the company.6 It has made some innovations in the age of digital technology, but for the most part maintains the same simple yet unique approach that’s worked for decades.
This approach is ostensibly aimed at everyone. In 1974, Lego dollhouses came packaged with a letter that read:
This approach is ostensibly aimed at everyone. In 1974, Lego dollhouses came packaged with a letter that read:
To Parents
The urge to create is equally strong in all children. Boys and girls.
It’s the imagination that counts. Not skill. You build whatever comes into your head, the way you want it. A bed or a truck. A dolls house or a spaceship.
A lot of boys like dolls houses. They’re more human than spaceships. A lot of girls prefer spaceships. They’re more exciting than dolls houses.
The most important thing is to put the right material in their hands and let them create whatever appeals to them."7
These words were so progressive for their time that when they resurfaced forty years later, people doubted their authenticity. A series of photo ads in 1981 continued Lego’s egalitarian commitment by showing a girl building alongside a boy,8 or even on her own.9 Yet Legos have garnered a reputation – once a neutral observation, perhaps, but now decidedly unflattering – as a “boys’ toy”. Bloomberg News has even claimed that a deliberate strategy of marketing to boys since the early 2000s is responsible for the Lego Group’s revenue increasing 105% in a few years and exceeding $1 billion for the first time in 2010.10 The company’s own data showed in 2008 that 90% of sets were being purchased for boys.11 So has the Lego Group stayed true to its original vision? It’s complicated, but no.
As a child I extolled the perceived superiority of my Legos over my sister’s Barbies. My mother probably would have agreed, at least when I wasn’t leaving bricks on the living room floor, as she got so frustrated at the constant sight of naked Barbies that she threatened to sew their clothes on. Certainly in the adult world, the Lego Group escaped the scrutiny aimed at Barbies for their portrayal of body types and gender roles. For that matter, it escaped the backlash against G.I. Joes for promoting violence and war to young boys, as it has long followed a policy “to avoid realistic weapons and military equipment… and to refrain from showing violent or frightening situations when communicating about LEGO products.”12 But in more recent years, since I became an adult, some controversy has emerged. The Lego Group is itself a product, a product of culture. However ostensibly gender-neutral it may have once tried to be, that hasn’t been the reality historically or today.
I don’t have access to data on the proportion of boys and girls (or men and women) who play with Legos now or at any given time, and the anonymity of the internet makes it impossible to accurately gauge the gender ratios of MOC and brickfilm creators. However, there is a metric that might give some limited insight. I looked through most issues of Lego Mania magazine from 1998-2001,13 the years when I came of age as a Lego fan myself, and consulted the pages where children shared photographs of their MOCs. To the best of my ability, excluding contest winners who sometimes appeared on the same pages, I counted 259 boys, 41 girls, and five undetermined.14 Ignoring the latter provides a ratio of a little under 6.32 boys for every girl. It’s not exact, of course, but it gives an idea. In light of the Lego Group’s statistic published a few years later, I hypothesize that many of these girls were using bricks originally purchased for a brother.
I see six possible non-exclusive reasons for this: 1. The Lego Group actively discriminated against girls who sent in their pictures to the magazine. (I consider this unlikely.) 2. Girls were more self-conscious about sharing their MOCs with the world. 3. Despite the Lego Group’s earlier assertion, the urge to create is not equally strong in all children, and this style of play does not appeal as much to girls. 4. The particular set themes produced by the Lego Group prior to and during this time period did not appeal as much to girls. 5. Parents were less likely to buy Lego sets for girls, on the assumption that they were “boys’ toys” or that their daughters wouldn’t be interested. 6. The Lego Group failed to market most of its products equally to girls.
Another piece of intriguing anecdotal evidence comes to mind. When I registered on lego.com, I chose the username alien, but it had already been taken several times and I had to go with alien236. (This is now my handle on Twitter, Instagram, and reddit because nostalgia.) My sister chose the username doll. She ended up with doll4. (She rarely if ever played with actual Legos, but she wanted to play the online Junkbot game about a robot that eats garbage.)
As a child I extolled the perceived superiority of my Legos over my sister’s Barbies. My mother probably would have agreed, at least when I wasn’t leaving bricks on the living room floor, as she got so frustrated at the constant sight of naked Barbies that she threatened to sew their clothes on. Certainly in the adult world, the Lego Group escaped the scrutiny aimed at Barbies for their portrayal of body types and gender roles. For that matter, it escaped the backlash against G.I. Joes for promoting violence and war to young boys, as it has long followed a policy “to avoid realistic weapons and military equipment… and to refrain from showing violent or frightening situations when communicating about LEGO products.”12 But in more recent years, since I became an adult, some controversy has emerged. The Lego Group is itself a product, a product of culture. However ostensibly gender-neutral it may have once tried to be, that hasn’t been the reality historically or today.
I don’t have access to data on the proportion of boys and girls (or men and women) who play with Legos now or at any given time, and the anonymity of the internet makes it impossible to accurately gauge the gender ratios of MOC and brickfilm creators. However, there is a metric that might give some limited insight. I looked through most issues of Lego Mania magazine from 1998-2001,13 the years when I came of age as a Lego fan myself, and consulted the pages where children shared photographs of their MOCs. To the best of my ability, excluding contest winners who sometimes appeared on the same pages, I counted 259 boys, 41 girls, and five undetermined.14 Ignoring the latter provides a ratio of a little under 6.32 boys for every girl. It’s not exact, of course, but it gives an idea. In light of the Lego Group’s statistic published a few years later, I hypothesize that many of these girls were using bricks originally purchased for a brother.
I see six possible non-exclusive reasons for this: 1. The Lego Group actively discriminated against girls who sent in their pictures to the magazine. (I consider this unlikely.) 2. Girls were more self-conscious about sharing their MOCs with the world. 3. Despite the Lego Group’s earlier assertion, the urge to create is not equally strong in all children, and this style of play does not appeal as much to girls. 4. The particular set themes produced by the Lego Group prior to and during this time period did not appeal as much to girls. 5. Parents were less likely to buy Lego sets for girls, on the assumption that they were “boys’ toys” or that their daughters wouldn’t be interested. 6. The Lego Group failed to market most of its products equally to girls.
Another piece of intriguing anecdotal evidence comes to mind. When I registered on lego.com, I chose the username alien, but it had already been taken several times and I had to go with alien236. (This is now my handle on Twitter, Instagram, and reddit because nostalgia.) My sister chose the username doll. She ended up with doll4. (She rarely if ever played with actual Legos, but she wanted to play the online Junkbot game about a robot that eats garbage.)
Minifigs
Lego minifigures, known to true fans as “minifigs”, have for the most part followed the same template since they were designed in 1978 by Jens Nygaard Knudsen to interact with the Lego bricks already available.15 This template includes cylindrical heads with studs on top to connect to hats or hair, blocky torsos, claw hands for gripping accessories, and blocky legs with holes along the back and on the bottoms of the feet to connect to the studs on bricks – all interchangeable so that Lego people, like Lego sets, can be customized in limitless variations. This body shape remains the same for male and female minifigs. They have never been accused of promoting an unrealistic body image.
For eleven years after this development, all minifig faces were also the same; yellow with two black dots and a line to represent eyes and a little smile. They were deliberately made without sexual or racial characteristics so that the child could decide them as he or she saw fit.16 In 1989, however, they started to become more specialized as the Lego Group branched out into more distinctive themes.17 This original proto-face is still seen on occasion, but in the context of all these other faces, it now follows the societal trend wherein male is interpreted as the default and vice-versa. To be seen as female, it must have eyelashes and/or red lips. The Lego Group hardly deserves to be singled out for following the same pattern as every character from Minnie Mouse to Mrs. Pac-Man, but it is worthy of note.
Minifigs, indicated by the clothing they wear and the sets they come in, fill various roles in their world – construction worker, chef, firefighter, astronaut, the list goes on. Some of them are generic, often reusing the same stock faces. Others are more unique, more iconic. They have names and backstories that the Lego Group includes in promotional materials, magazines, online games, and other tie-in materials. More casual builders may not be familiar with all of this information, but it’s part of the marketing tactic, to get children (and sometimes adults) more invested in the various themes. Obviously a child (or adult) at play is free to swap out parts, change names, and create his or her own stories that have nothing to do with the ones given by the company. But from the moment he or she receives a set with one or more minifigs, generic or unique, he or she also receives a message. This message becomes the starting point whether he or she realizes it or not – the foundation that future assumptions are built on, as it were.
For eleven years after this development, all minifig faces were also the same; yellow with two black dots and a line to represent eyes and a little smile. They were deliberately made without sexual or racial characteristics so that the child could decide them as he or she saw fit.16 In 1989, however, they started to become more specialized as the Lego Group branched out into more distinctive themes.17 This original proto-face is still seen on occasion, but in the context of all these other faces, it now follows the societal trend wherein male is interpreted as the default and vice-versa. To be seen as female, it must have eyelashes and/or red lips. The Lego Group hardly deserves to be singled out for following the same pattern as every character from Minnie Mouse to Mrs. Pac-Man, but it is worthy of note.
Minifigs, indicated by the clothing they wear and the sets they come in, fill various roles in their world – construction worker, chef, firefighter, astronaut, the list goes on. Some of them are generic, often reusing the same stock faces. Others are more unique, more iconic. They have names and backstories that the Lego Group includes in promotional materials, magazines, online games, and other tie-in materials. More casual builders may not be familiar with all of this information, but it’s part of the marketing tactic, to get children (and sometimes adults) more invested in the various themes. Obviously a child (or adult) at play is free to swap out parts, change names, and create his or her own stories that have nothing to do with the ones given by the company. But from the moment he or she receives a set with one or more minifigs, generic or unique, he or she also receives a message. This message becomes the starting point whether he or she realizes it or not – the foundation that future assumptions are built on, as it were.
Influential Themes from My Childhood
A comprehensive analysis of all Lego themes past and present would be impossible, but I would like to give an overview of the ones I was most familiar with in the late nineties and early zeroes, and how they portrayed women. I will exclude the licensed Star Wars and Harry Potter themes because they were obviously based on existing characters and storylines. The minifig of Princess Leia in a bikini with a chain around her neck wasn’t the Lego Group’s fault. I don’t think playing with Legos hugely impacted my views of gender – certainly not compared to the more overt and pervasive influences also in my life – but I am interested, nonetheless, to think about the messages I may have taken away from them. See Appendix A for pictures of the female minifigs discussed here.
Adventurers (1998-2003)
Years before I knew the Indiana Jones franchise was a thing, and a decade before Lego acquired the license to produce actual Indiana Jones sets, I received this kid-friendly pastiche for Christmas. It went through four subthemes – Egypt, Amazon, Dino Island, and Orient Expedition – and focused on a central trio of characters: the swashbuckling Australian Johnny Thunder, his elderly mentor and sometimes uncle Dr. Kilroy, and World magazine reporter Pippin Reed.18 The latter was the token female of the entire theme until Dino Island introduced Alexis (or Alexia) Sinister (or Sanister), the main villain’s equally villainous sister, and Orient Expedition introduced Jing Lee, a Chinese freedom fighter shown to be more than capable of dispatching the soldiers of false Emperor Chang Wu in hand-to-hand combat.
Pippin functioned as just another member of the team, with no attention drawn to her gender aside from one online comic where she plugged a hole in a raft, causing Johnny to remark, “Who else but Pippin would think to bring lipstick along on a rafting trip?”19 In the English-speaking world, at least, she was never depicted as a love interest for Johnny. (Her name in Germany, Linda Lovely, seemed to highlight the importance our society places on women’s physical attractiveness, and a radio drama on a cassette tape contained with some sets there included “einer Prise Romantik” – a pinch of romance).20 This was in stark contrast to nearly every woman depicted alongside Indiana Jones in his various media. I never saw it become a major theme, but I noted that brickfilms about the Adventurers sometimes portrayed Johnny and Pippin as a couple or at least exchanging flirtatious banter, even though the official storyline never did.21 I believe, though I’m not certain, that all the brickfilms in question were made by boys.
A small but devoted Adventurers fandom persisted for years after the theme ended. At least two of its most devoted fans were women. The largest fan site on the internet, Adventurers.dk, was run by a woman named Kecia who used Pippin Reed as her avatar. She updated it into November 2011,22 also covering the Indiana Jones sets and the spiritual successor theme Pharaoh’s Quest (which also had one female character among the adventurers). As a teenage girl and then as an adult, Elizabeth – under the pseudonym TLFScarheart, with TLF standing for “True Lego Fan” – posted Adventurers fan fiction23 and brickfilms24 that retold and expanded upon the canonical stories with what she dubiously claimed to be insider information from a Lego Group employee. In her version, the main villain betrayed and murdered Johnny’s father and three other adventurers when Johnny was a child. Pippin ran away from home at age 17 and has anger management problems. In one story, her estranged movie star parents team up with the main villain to kill her friends, whom they consider bad influences, but he betrays and nearly kills them too. Pippin then separates from them in court. In the Dino Island story, Alexis Sinister is trampled to death by Stegosauri. This is probably not the feminine touch the Lego Group would expect her to add to its stories.
Knights’ Kingdom (2000; not to be confused with the 2004 theme of the same name, colloquially known as Knights’ Kingdom II)
This iteration of the long-running Castle theme included two female characters, Queen Leonora and Princess Storm. Queen Leonora’s torso piece was the same shape as any other minifig’s, but the printed details gave her prominent breasts and a slender waist. Instead of legs, her lower half was a triangular brick to simulate a dress trailing behind her. In contrast, her daughter wore a black and silver suit of armor with red pants. Princess Storm wanted to be a knight and secretly trained with another character, John of Mayne. They had a thing for each other, but it wasn’t a huge part of the story. With Leonora, the Lego Group strayed further than usual into stereotypes of femininity, though this was arguably justified given the time period and social class being portrayed. She may well have been wearing a corset. With Storm, though, it went in the opposite direction – perhaps as a conscious feminist statement or perhaps simply to hold the interest of young boys who didn’t want to play with princess toys. It is noteworthy that neither of these women ever needed to be rescued by the male knights.
Lego Studios (2000-2002)
Imagine an age before everyone had a cell phone with a camera built into it, an age without YouTube, an age when my parents wouldn’t get the Lego Studios Steven Spielberg Moviemaker Set for me because we didn’t even own a computer. Lego Studios was both fictitious and real. The sets were made to look like movie sets, with unnecessary lights, directors (patterned after Steven Spielberg), stuntmen and so on, but the Lego Studios Steven Spielberg Moviemaker Set also came with a camera and software to make actual stop-motion movies, sparking the brickfilm craze well before YouTube made amateur filmmaking a routine pastime. Johnny Thunder and Pippin Reed first crossed over into this theme as “actors” alongside more generic minifigs. Johnny appeared in the thirty-second promo brickfilm “Jewel Quest” where he ran away from a baseball in a parody of Indiana Jones’ most iconic scene.25 Pippin was absent from the film – but in fairness, Dr. Kilroy didn’t even appear in Lego Studios to begin with.
A couple of subthemes included sets from the then-current movies “Jurassic Park III” and “Spider-Man”. (These were always considered part of the Studios theme, unlike most licensed themes which have stood on their own.) The minifig of Mary Jane Watson, though obviously patterned after her live-action counterpart, introduced a new innovation for Lego: a normal smiling face was printed on one side of her head, while a frightened clenched-teeth face was printed on the other. Her role as a damsel in distress had been codified into her very being. Her frightened face was always nearby even if one chose to keep it hidden beneath her hair. Indeed, the same face was quickly reused for a similar but unnamed actress in an unnamed horror film Studios subtheme, enabling this other character to scream appropriately at the mad scientist, Frankenstein’s monster, and/or werewolf. (In one of these sets, she also had a triangle dress similar to Queen Leonora’s.) But Lego chose to take an egalitarian approach. Her male counterpart in these sets had a frightened face printed on one side of his head, too.26
Alpha Team (2000-2005)
Alpha Team was unique in that it started life as a computer game by third-party company Digital Domain which inspired physical sets the following year. The reminiscences of lead game designer Tom Mott give some rare insight into the Lego Group’s actual marketing approach in practice:
Adventurers (1998-2003)
Years before I knew the Indiana Jones franchise was a thing, and a decade before Lego acquired the license to produce actual Indiana Jones sets, I received this kid-friendly pastiche for Christmas. It went through four subthemes – Egypt, Amazon, Dino Island, and Orient Expedition – and focused on a central trio of characters: the swashbuckling Australian Johnny Thunder, his elderly mentor and sometimes uncle Dr. Kilroy, and World magazine reporter Pippin Reed.18 The latter was the token female of the entire theme until Dino Island introduced Alexis (or Alexia) Sinister (or Sanister), the main villain’s equally villainous sister, and Orient Expedition introduced Jing Lee, a Chinese freedom fighter shown to be more than capable of dispatching the soldiers of false Emperor Chang Wu in hand-to-hand combat.
Pippin functioned as just another member of the team, with no attention drawn to her gender aside from one online comic where she plugged a hole in a raft, causing Johnny to remark, “Who else but Pippin would think to bring lipstick along on a rafting trip?”19 In the English-speaking world, at least, she was never depicted as a love interest for Johnny. (Her name in Germany, Linda Lovely, seemed to highlight the importance our society places on women’s physical attractiveness, and a radio drama on a cassette tape contained with some sets there included “einer Prise Romantik” – a pinch of romance).20 This was in stark contrast to nearly every woman depicted alongside Indiana Jones in his various media. I never saw it become a major theme, but I noted that brickfilms about the Adventurers sometimes portrayed Johnny and Pippin as a couple or at least exchanging flirtatious banter, even though the official storyline never did.21 I believe, though I’m not certain, that all the brickfilms in question were made by boys.
A small but devoted Adventurers fandom persisted for years after the theme ended. At least two of its most devoted fans were women. The largest fan site on the internet, Adventurers.dk, was run by a woman named Kecia who used Pippin Reed as her avatar. She updated it into November 2011,22 also covering the Indiana Jones sets and the spiritual successor theme Pharaoh’s Quest (which also had one female character among the adventurers). As a teenage girl and then as an adult, Elizabeth – under the pseudonym TLFScarheart, with TLF standing for “True Lego Fan” – posted Adventurers fan fiction23 and brickfilms24 that retold and expanded upon the canonical stories with what she dubiously claimed to be insider information from a Lego Group employee. In her version, the main villain betrayed and murdered Johnny’s father and three other adventurers when Johnny was a child. Pippin ran away from home at age 17 and has anger management problems. In one story, her estranged movie star parents team up with the main villain to kill her friends, whom they consider bad influences, but he betrays and nearly kills them too. Pippin then separates from them in court. In the Dino Island story, Alexis Sinister is trampled to death by Stegosauri. This is probably not the feminine touch the Lego Group would expect her to add to its stories.
Knights’ Kingdom (2000; not to be confused with the 2004 theme of the same name, colloquially known as Knights’ Kingdom II)
This iteration of the long-running Castle theme included two female characters, Queen Leonora and Princess Storm. Queen Leonora’s torso piece was the same shape as any other minifig’s, but the printed details gave her prominent breasts and a slender waist. Instead of legs, her lower half was a triangular brick to simulate a dress trailing behind her. In contrast, her daughter wore a black and silver suit of armor with red pants. Princess Storm wanted to be a knight and secretly trained with another character, John of Mayne. They had a thing for each other, but it wasn’t a huge part of the story. With Leonora, the Lego Group strayed further than usual into stereotypes of femininity, though this was arguably justified given the time period and social class being portrayed. She may well have been wearing a corset. With Storm, though, it went in the opposite direction – perhaps as a conscious feminist statement or perhaps simply to hold the interest of young boys who didn’t want to play with princess toys. It is noteworthy that neither of these women ever needed to be rescued by the male knights.
Lego Studios (2000-2002)
Imagine an age before everyone had a cell phone with a camera built into it, an age without YouTube, an age when my parents wouldn’t get the Lego Studios Steven Spielberg Moviemaker Set for me because we didn’t even own a computer. Lego Studios was both fictitious and real. The sets were made to look like movie sets, with unnecessary lights, directors (patterned after Steven Spielberg), stuntmen and so on, but the Lego Studios Steven Spielberg Moviemaker Set also came with a camera and software to make actual stop-motion movies, sparking the brickfilm craze well before YouTube made amateur filmmaking a routine pastime. Johnny Thunder and Pippin Reed first crossed over into this theme as “actors” alongside more generic minifigs. Johnny appeared in the thirty-second promo brickfilm “Jewel Quest” where he ran away from a baseball in a parody of Indiana Jones’ most iconic scene.25 Pippin was absent from the film – but in fairness, Dr. Kilroy didn’t even appear in Lego Studios to begin with.
A couple of subthemes included sets from the then-current movies “Jurassic Park III” and “Spider-Man”. (These were always considered part of the Studios theme, unlike most licensed themes which have stood on their own.) The minifig of Mary Jane Watson, though obviously patterned after her live-action counterpart, introduced a new innovation for Lego: a normal smiling face was printed on one side of her head, while a frightened clenched-teeth face was printed on the other. Her role as a damsel in distress had been codified into her very being. Her frightened face was always nearby even if one chose to keep it hidden beneath her hair. Indeed, the same face was quickly reused for a similar but unnamed actress in an unnamed horror film Studios subtheme, enabling this other character to scream appropriately at the mad scientist, Frankenstein’s monster, and/or werewolf. (In one of these sets, she also had a triangle dress similar to Queen Leonora’s.) But Lego chose to take an egalitarian approach. Her male counterpart in these sets had a frightened face printed on one side of his head, too.26
Alpha Team (2000-2005)
Alpha Team was unique in that it started life as a computer game by third-party company Digital Domain which inspired physical sets the following year. The reminiscences of lead game designer Tom Mott give some rare insight into the Lego Group’s actual marketing approach in practice:
The initial idea was to freely mix-and-match themes…. LEGO Media flew myself and the senior producer to their offices in London to present what we were doing. They hated it. The mix-and-match aspect just didn’t fit in with how they market LEGO themes. We were pulling bits and pieces from themes targeted at 5 year olds, 8 year olds, boys, girls, etc. They told us they wanted to completely revise the idea to base it around a 'Mission Impossible' style 'Spy' team. Keep it all very blue and black and 'boy' oriented. More of a focus on cool gear and gadgets."27
So Alpha Team was always meant to be a “boy” theme, even though “the urge to create is equally strong in all children.” Yet only four of the six agents in the titular squad fighting against the evil Ogel (Lego spelled backwards because he’s the opposite of fun, get it?) were male. Thus they had the same gender ratio as the main Adventurers protagonists, but these women got more one-on-one attention than Pippin. The online flash game “Evil Music” followed male team leader Dash and female motors expert Cam Attaway, and in the next one, “Into the Deep”, they were joined by female lasers expert Radia. In the latter game, they were also given their mission by a woman from the “World Council” whom Dash addressed as “Madam President”.28 TLFScarheart also wrote some Alpha Team fan fiction in which 44-year-old Crunch had a crush on 26-year-old Radia, and 30-year-old Cam had terminal cancer.29
Life on Mars (2001-2002)
Life on Mars was the first and last Space subtheme to depict humans and aliens coexisting peacefully. Three human male astronauts (one a child who got to go to Mars because he won a contest) encountered as many as ten named Martian characters, nine male and one female. The Martians were still humanoid but had a different body shape from the mold first used for Star Wars battle droids. They had spade-shaped heads with no place to attach headgear, and came in varying shades of green. Cassiopeia, daughter of Rigel – they were all named after stars or constellations – could be visually identified as the lone female by her eyelashes. In fairness, the series never revealed much about Martian demographics or society. Perhaps the astronauts only stumbled upon one polyandrous family. Cassiopeia left it all behind, though, when she accompanied them back to Earth.
Bionicle (2001-2010, revived 2015-2016)
One of the most popular Lego themes of all time, Bionicle is credited with saving the Lego Group from bankruptcy after the expense of licensing its Star Wars sets.30 Instead of standard minifigs, the characters were biomechanical beings that looked nothing like people, were closer to traditional action figure size, and were constructed from several Technic-style parts – they, and the various monsters they had to deal with, were the sets. This theme was by far the most story-driven of any before or since. During its initial run, the bi-monthly Lego Club magazine was accompanied by a Bionicle comic book written and inked by professionals from Dark Horse. The theme also spawned seven video games (not counting myriad online games), four series of chapter books31 (in addition to several reference books), and four direct-to-video animated movies.
In brief, the story began with six heroes known as Toa32 who fell from the sky to rescue the island of Mata Nui from the grip of the evil spirit Makuta. Each Toa corresponded to a region of the island with its own village based on a certain element. Five of the six Toa and all of their corresponding villagers were male. Only Gali, the Toa of Water, and the villagers of Ga-Koro were female. (Ironically, they were blue, not pink.) Though the theme changed locations and characters many times, the elemental pattern and gender ratio usually remained consistent, at least for the protagonists. Gender was only relevant on occasion in the first couple years when the Mata Nui Online Game and a few early flash animations showed that Ga-Koro villager Macku and Po-Koro villager Hewkii33 had a thing for each other. Other than that, romance or family dynamics were nonexistent, and by the end of the theme’s first run it became clear that all the sapient inhabitants of the Bionicle world were built, not born, bringing into question why they needed to be male or female in the first place.
Perhaps not by coincidence, I would regard Bionicle as the most stereotypically “masculine” of all Lego themes. Though it adhered to the letter of company policy by “avoid[ing] realistic weapons and military equipment”, it got as dark and violent as official Lego content ever got. The tone of silliness pervading most content was absent here, and the humor was mostly derived from characters being snarky with each other (often in the middle of combat). I don’t think it’s a stretch to guess that boys were the assumed audience. Because of its unique status, Bionicle has spawned few MOCs with actual setting or implied story (as opposed to just a new character), but more fan fiction than any other theme. Of course life is too short for me to survey all of it, but I can say that for the most part it maintains a similar tone and focus to the official content and doesn’t make gender a bigger deal than it was originally. Almost by definition, anything that does so verges into joke/parody territory, like the sprite comics posted on various forums in the mid-2000s where (among other things) Toa or other characters sometimes married and raised families in modern middle-class human environments.34 Most sprite comics were made by boys, though I remember with some fondness a mostly serious serialized story by a female user calling herself Nukora. Dory Holtzman also made a hand-drawn comic starring her original character Poharex the dinosaur. She later abandoned her Bionicle roots and made an entire series about him.35
Though this analysis is far from comprehensive, it’s enough to pick up on a few trends. Boys were the assumed primary audience for these, and therefore male minifigs were their primary focus. Women were portrayed positively and fairly, in my opinion – competent, not objectified (except in the literal sense of being plastic objects), and not solely love interests or damsels in distress for the male protagonists to save – but they lacked in overall representation. The contrast is especially stark in Life on Mars and Bionicle. These themes went so far as to portray women (albeit alien and cyborg women) as a departure from the clear default state of being male, all the more noticeable for their rarity. This issue was of course far from unique to the Lego Group. Everyone knows that women have always been underrepresented in movies, for example, and this status quo has not improved, or has even gotten worse, well after the Lego themes in question were phased out.36
Life on Mars (2001-2002)
Life on Mars was the first and last Space subtheme to depict humans and aliens coexisting peacefully. Three human male astronauts (one a child who got to go to Mars because he won a contest) encountered as many as ten named Martian characters, nine male and one female. The Martians were still humanoid but had a different body shape from the mold first used for Star Wars battle droids. They had spade-shaped heads with no place to attach headgear, and came in varying shades of green. Cassiopeia, daughter of Rigel – they were all named after stars or constellations – could be visually identified as the lone female by her eyelashes. In fairness, the series never revealed much about Martian demographics or society. Perhaps the astronauts only stumbled upon one polyandrous family. Cassiopeia left it all behind, though, when she accompanied them back to Earth.
Bionicle (2001-2010, revived 2015-2016)
One of the most popular Lego themes of all time, Bionicle is credited with saving the Lego Group from bankruptcy after the expense of licensing its Star Wars sets.30 Instead of standard minifigs, the characters were biomechanical beings that looked nothing like people, were closer to traditional action figure size, and were constructed from several Technic-style parts – they, and the various monsters they had to deal with, were the sets. This theme was by far the most story-driven of any before or since. During its initial run, the bi-monthly Lego Club magazine was accompanied by a Bionicle comic book written and inked by professionals from Dark Horse. The theme also spawned seven video games (not counting myriad online games), four series of chapter books31 (in addition to several reference books), and four direct-to-video animated movies.
In brief, the story began with six heroes known as Toa32 who fell from the sky to rescue the island of Mata Nui from the grip of the evil spirit Makuta. Each Toa corresponded to a region of the island with its own village based on a certain element. Five of the six Toa and all of their corresponding villagers were male. Only Gali, the Toa of Water, and the villagers of Ga-Koro were female. (Ironically, they were blue, not pink.) Though the theme changed locations and characters many times, the elemental pattern and gender ratio usually remained consistent, at least for the protagonists. Gender was only relevant on occasion in the first couple years when the Mata Nui Online Game and a few early flash animations showed that Ga-Koro villager Macku and Po-Koro villager Hewkii33 had a thing for each other. Other than that, romance or family dynamics were nonexistent, and by the end of the theme’s first run it became clear that all the sapient inhabitants of the Bionicle world were built, not born, bringing into question why they needed to be male or female in the first place.
Perhaps not by coincidence, I would regard Bionicle as the most stereotypically “masculine” of all Lego themes. Though it adhered to the letter of company policy by “avoid[ing] realistic weapons and military equipment”, it got as dark and violent as official Lego content ever got. The tone of silliness pervading most content was absent here, and the humor was mostly derived from characters being snarky with each other (often in the middle of combat). I don’t think it’s a stretch to guess that boys were the assumed audience. Because of its unique status, Bionicle has spawned few MOCs with actual setting or implied story (as opposed to just a new character), but more fan fiction than any other theme. Of course life is too short for me to survey all of it, but I can say that for the most part it maintains a similar tone and focus to the official content and doesn’t make gender a bigger deal than it was originally. Almost by definition, anything that does so verges into joke/parody territory, like the sprite comics posted on various forums in the mid-2000s where (among other things) Toa or other characters sometimes married and raised families in modern middle-class human environments.34 Most sprite comics were made by boys, though I remember with some fondness a mostly serious serialized story by a female user calling herself Nukora. Dory Holtzman also made a hand-drawn comic starring her original character Poharex the dinosaur. She later abandoned her Bionicle roots and made an entire series about him.35
Though this analysis is far from comprehensive, it’s enough to pick up on a few trends. Boys were the assumed primary audience for these, and therefore male minifigs were their primary focus. Women were portrayed positively and fairly, in my opinion – competent, not objectified (except in the literal sense of being plastic objects), and not solely love interests or damsels in distress for the male protagonists to save – but they lacked in overall representation. The contrast is especially stark in Life on Mars and Bionicle. These themes went so far as to portray women (albeit alien and cyborg women) as a departure from the clear default state of being male, all the more noticeable for their rarity. This issue was of course far from unique to the Lego Group. Everyone knows that women have always been underrepresented in movies, for example, and this status quo has not improved, or has even gotten worse, well after the Lego themes in question were phased out.36
Themes Marketed to Girls
The Lego Group obviously has access to more comprehensive demographic data than I do. In 2011, the Lego Group’s UK managing director, Marko Ilincic, said that girls aged 2-5 were playing with Legos as much as boys, but this interest tended to fade as soon as they started attending school. He said the company was taking steps to address this discrepancy:
We're very conscious of the skew towards boys; most of [our] themes are to do with aliens, Star Wars, police stations and fire stations. And they rely heavily on construction, which appeals to the boys. Girls like the creative play Lego offers, but are far more interested in role play, pay greater attention to detail, and like collectibles like dolls…. We're looking for the right balance of creativity that appeals to girls and construction. We don't want to take the construction away altogether, but there are degrees of 'constructability', and simply producing a pink version of the boys' products is not enough. An understanding of how gender patterns differ is key."37
The Lego Group had already produced a small number of “girl-oriented” themes over the years, even before the dollhouses that came with the aforementioned letter. The first was called Homemaker (1971-1982). Yes, really. At least Lego sets gave a whole different meaning to “homemaking”. Modern minifigs weren’t invented until late in the theme’s run, but between 1974 and 1978 the various settings could be populated by precursors built of actual bricks with heads on top. After a decade without singling out the female demographic, the Lego Group released Paradisa (1992-1997) as a subtheme of Town, with a focus on beach vacations and horseback riding and a much higher proportion and diversity of female minifigs than other sets. It also introduced pink and lime green bricks for the first time. Scala (1979-1980, revived 1997-2001) focused in its first iteration on making jewelry and accessories out of Lego bricks, while the revival introduced dolls that were essentially Barbie knockoffs with more joints and somewhat more realistic proportions.38 All three of these themes, especially Homemaker, have fallen into obscurity today.
Belville (1994-2009) was the one familiar to me a kid, because I read every listing for every item in every Lego catalog multiple times. It returned to actual Lego sets, but also had figures that looked more like Barbies and stood twice as tall as the minifigs we know and love. One male reviewer, Dave Pickett, conceded that they were “highly articulated figures for Brickfilmers”39 and used one for that purpose himself.40 Lots of pink, lots of princesses. I vaguely remember Clikits (2003-2004) with its accessories and beauty products and little figurines that to my knowledge couldn’t even move. Most recently we have Friends (2011-present). Normal brick-based Lego sets again, but with a lot of pastel colors, and new minifigs that have been designated “minidolls”. Dr. Lisa Wade derisively described them as “taller, thinner, and more feminine, with boobs”, but acknowledged, “There is no innovation here; it is the exact same makeover that we’ve seen in recent years with Dora the Explorer, Strawberry Shortcake, Holly Hobbie, Lisa Frank, Trolls, Cabbage Patch Kids, My Little Pony, Rainbow Brite, and Candy Land”.41 Minidolls are also used in the licensed Disney Princess theme launched around the same time and the Elves theme launched in 2015. For the sake of brevity I will lump them all together.
This brief overview of themes I was never personally familiar with shows a pattern – not only has the Lego Group assumed that only certain themes and color schemes will appeal to girls, it has assumed that only characters resembling traditional dolls will appeal to girls. After Paradisa, real minifigs were abandoned. Paradisa, incidentally, reinforced the notion that underrepresentation of women is the default, that it only needs to be rectified or compensated for if one is specifically trying to reach a female demographic. Friends has done the same thing, as the first theme to center around five female protagonists. A theme with five male protagonists (like Bionicle) would just be normal for the products ostensibly marketed to everyone.
Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with making different kinds of themes for different demographics. Maybe girls really do play differently than boys, and maybe Friends et al is a necessary solution to their lower level of interest in Lego products. In fact, it was the result of four years of research alluded to by Marko Ilincic, which found that while “males tend to build things in a ‘linear’ fashion – rushing to replicate exactly what’s on the box – females prefer a more personal, less rigid approach. Girls create their own environments, develop personal stories around them, and even imagine themselves living inside the things they build.”42 For example, after a team of boys and a team of girls were each assigned to build a castle, the former staged a battle with the edifice as a backdrop while the latter focused on the interior and its lack of furnishings.43 Friends has been a smashing success. In its first full year, it sold twice as well as expected, and overall Lego sales to girls tripled.44 Yet a longstanding question remains – to what extent are boys’ and girls’ preferences determined by intrinsic biological differences, and to what extent are they determined early on by parents, media, and toy companies?45 Even taking these research results at face value, could they have been addressed differently with perhaps fewer unintended consequences?
Friends is the first Lego theme I’m aware of that experienced any significant backlash for perceived sexism or promoting stereotypes – and it started as soon as the first sets were unveiled. A change.org petition by Bailey Shoemaker Richards and Stephanie Cole, circulated online under the hashtag “LiberateLEGO”, urged the company “to stop selling out girls!” They wrote,
Belville (1994-2009) was the one familiar to me a kid, because I read every listing for every item in every Lego catalog multiple times. It returned to actual Lego sets, but also had figures that looked more like Barbies and stood twice as tall as the minifigs we know and love. One male reviewer, Dave Pickett, conceded that they were “highly articulated figures for Brickfilmers”39 and used one for that purpose himself.40 Lots of pink, lots of princesses. I vaguely remember Clikits (2003-2004) with its accessories and beauty products and little figurines that to my knowledge couldn’t even move. Most recently we have Friends (2011-present). Normal brick-based Lego sets again, but with a lot of pastel colors, and new minifigs that have been designated “minidolls”. Dr. Lisa Wade derisively described them as “taller, thinner, and more feminine, with boobs”, but acknowledged, “There is no innovation here; it is the exact same makeover that we’ve seen in recent years with Dora the Explorer, Strawberry Shortcake, Holly Hobbie, Lisa Frank, Trolls, Cabbage Patch Kids, My Little Pony, Rainbow Brite, and Candy Land”.41 Minidolls are also used in the licensed Disney Princess theme launched around the same time and the Elves theme launched in 2015. For the sake of brevity I will lump them all together.
This brief overview of themes I was never personally familiar with shows a pattern – not only has the Lego Group assumed that only certain themes and color schemes will appeal to girls, it has assumed that only characters resembling traditional dolls will appeal to girls. After Paradisa, real minifigs were abandoned. Paradisa, incidentally, reinforced the notion that underrepresentation of women is the default, that it only needs to be rectified or compensated for if one is specifically trying to reach a female demographic. Friends has done the same thing, as the first theme to center around five female protagonists. A theme with five male protagonists (like Bionicle) would just be normal for the products ostensibly marketed to everyone.
Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with making different kinds of themes for different demographics. Maybe girls really do play differently than boys, and maybe Friends et al is a necessary solution to their lower level of interest in Lego products. In fact, it was the result of four years of research alluded to by Marko Ilincic, which found that while “males tend to build things in a ‘linear’ fashion – rushing to replicate exactly what’s on the box – females prefer a more personal, less rigid approach. Girls create their own environments, develop personal stories around them, and even imagine themselves living inside the things they build.”42 For example, after a team of boys and a team of girls were each assigned to build a castle, the former staged a battle with the edifice as a backdrop while the latter focused on the interior and its lack of furnishings.43 Friends has been a smashing success. In its first full year, it sold twice as well as expected, and overall Lego sales to girls tripled.44 Yet a longstanding question remains – to what extent are boys’ and girls’ preferences determined by intrinsic biological differences, and to what extent are they determined early on by parents, media, and toy companies?45 Even taking these research results at face value, could they have been addressed differently with perhaps fewer unintended consequences?
Friends is the first Lego theme I’m aware of that experienced any significant backlash for perceived sexism or promoting stereotypes – and it started as soon as the first sets were unveiled. A change.org petition by Bailey Shoemaker Richards and Stephanie Cole, circulated online under the hashtag “LiberateLEGO”, urged the company “to stop selling out girls!” They wrote,
Marketers, ad execs, Hollywood and just about everyone else in the media are busy these days insisting that girls are not interested in their products unless they’re pink, cute, or romantic. They’ve come to this conclusion even though they’ve refused to market their products to the girls they are so certain will not like them. Who populates commercials for LEGO? Boys! Where in the toy store can you find original, creative, construction-focused LEGO? The boy aisle! So it’s no wonder LEGO’s market research showed girls want pink, already-assembled toys that don’t do anything. It’s the environment and the message marketers have bombarded girls with for over a decade because, of course, stereotypes make marketing products so much easier. But we remember playing with and loving LEGO when we were little girls."46
The petition garnered nearly 70,000 signatures before it closed. Later in the year, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood nominated a Friends set for the Toys Oppressive And Destructive to Young Children (TOADY) award.47
Three cousins of mine, Natalie, Hannah, and Lucy, have several Disney Princess and Elves sets. Ironically, their brother Jaden has no Legos that I’m aware of. They have no standard minifigs, but perhaps as many as eighteen minidolls – it’s hard to say, since the majority are in separate pieces at any given time. I have had a few occasions to visit and play with them. My most recent was in December 2020. My cousins always find it funny when I make bad things happen to the minidolls, like having them eaten by a dragon, accompanied by falsetto screaming. On this occasion I got a unique glimpse into their mode of play when I’m not around. We were just playing like normal when ten-year-old Hannah asked, apropos nothing, “Who wants to get drugged?” Surely, I thought, I must have heard her wrong. But no. She went into her room and retrieved an MOC she had kept separate from the communal Lego stash: a “drug shop” where minidolls could go to “drink drugs” out of a Lego saxophone. Each time a minidoll drank drugs, she grew an additional head. I don’t know where Hannah learned that, but I’m willing to bet it wasn’t from the marketing team behind Disney Princess or Elves.
Within Lego fandom, minidolls (and earlier “girly” minifig variants) have not become popular for publicly displayed MOCs or brickfilms, although a woman named Claire is so enamored with them that she has devoted a website and a YouTube channel (with 123,000 subscribers as of April 2021) to customizing and showing them off.48 Her custom designs, by definition, go outside the boundaries set by the Lego Group in ways that the average builder couldn’t. They often incorporate known celebrities and franchises for which the Lego Group does not have a license. At age 12 and then at age 14, Paige Johnson made two Friends brickfilms with her father, which attained decent view counts but remain a minority. They adhere pretty closely to the Lego Group’s intentions for the theme – first we “[s]pend the day with Stephanie & Emma as they visit all the shops in Heartlake Mall”,49 then “the most popular girl in school suddenly realizes that she doesn't have a date for the biggest dance of the year”.50
From 2013-15, the Lego Group published a separate magazine for girls, but retained the non-gender-specific title of the original magazine even though it was now for boys.51 This not only segregated boys and girls and told each what they were supposed to play with, but drove home further the message that boys were the company’s default and more important audience.
Three cousins of mine, Natalie, Hannah, and Lucy, have several Disney Princess and Elves sets. Ironically, their brother Jaden has no Legos that I’m aware of. They have no standard minifigs, but perhaps as many as eighteen minidolls – it’s hard to say, since the majority are in separate pieces at any given time. I have had a few occasions to visit and play with them. My most recent was in December 2020. My cousins always find it funny when I make bad things happen to the minidolls, like having them eaten by a dragon, accompanied by falsetto screaming. On this occasion I got a unique glimpse into their mode of play when I’m not around. We were just playing like normal when ten-year-old Hannah asked, apropos nothing, “Who wants to get drugged?” Surely, I thought, I must have heard her wrong. But no. She went into her room and retrieved an MOC she had kept separate from the communal Lego stash: a “drug shop” where minidolls could go to “drink drugs” out of a Lego saxophone. Each time a minidoll drank drugs, she grew an additional head. I don’t know where Hannah learned that, but I’m willing to bet it wasn’t from the marketing team behind Disney Princess or Elves.
Within Lego fandom, minidolls (and earlier “girly” minifig variants) have not become popular for publicly displayed MOCs or brickfilms, although a woman named Claire is so enamored with them that she has devoted a website and a YouTube channel (with 123,000 subscribers as of April 2021) to customizing and showing them off.48 Her custom designs, by definition, go outside the boundaries set by the Lego Group in ways that the average builder couldn’t. They often incorporate known celebrities and franchises for which the Lego Group does not have a license. At age 12 and then at age 14, Paige Johnson made two Friends brickfilms with her father, which attained decent view counts but remain a minority. They adhere pretty closely to the Lego Group’s intentions for the theme – first we “[s]pend the day with Stephanie & Emma as they visit all the shops in Heartlake Mall”,49 then “the most popular girl in school suddenly realizes that she doesn't have a date for the biggest dance of the year”.50
From 2013-15, the Lego Group published a separate magazine for girls, but retained the non-gender-specific title of the original magazine even though it was now for boys.51 This not only segregated boys and girls and told each what they were supposed to play with, but drove home further the message that boys were the company’s default and more important audience.
Status Today
In 2014, reddit user fryd_first posted the Lego Group’s 1974 letter to parents, which went viral. Spokeswoman Emma Owens said, “The text remains relevant to this day - our focus has always been, and remains to bring creative play experiences to all children in the world, based on the Lego brick and the Lego system - ultimately enabling children to build and create whatever they can imagine.” Many people disagreed. They saw the letter, instead, as proof of how far Lego had fallen from its original vision and how much worse gender-specific toy marketing had become.52 And in contrast to Owens’ statement, professor of innovation David Robertson had argued a couple months earlier, “If Lego was still marketing sets the way it used to, it'd be out of business…. If you believe Lego is a healthy toy for kids to play with, why not make different stories that appeal to different people?”53 Lego has long been perceived as a “boy’s toy”, but since the Friends backlash it’s been scrutinized like never before. Of course, we as a society are far more alert to such things now than when I was a kid. Are we just noticing it more? Has it actually stayed consistent, gotten better, or gotten worse?
The number and diversity of themes, sets, and minifigs has skyrocketed since I was a child, more than I could have dreamed of, more than they had done between my childhood and the original invention of the minifig. In late 2019, one writer claimed that the available legs, torsos, heads, and hairpieces could be swapped out into at least 864,993,504,100 different combinations.54 I didn’t bother to check his math, but even if he was off by a few thousand, that number will surpass a trillion in the near future. I am hopelessly out of touch with the Lego Group’s current offerings and what kids these days are playing with, so I will only personally analyze one theme, if it can be called that.
Since 2010, the Lego Group has released successive waves of exclusive standalone characters in the Minifigures series. (I will focus only on the main series, not the spinoffs dealing with sports stars, movies, and TV shows.) Most of these minifigs are entirely unique, though some tie in to existing themes, and they also include upgraded re-releases of Johnny Thunder and the original 1978 Police Officer – the latter still with his generic male face, smiling because he knows you know he has qualified immunity. They’ve been quite a success. My own mother proudly displays a Chicken Suit Guy given to her by a friend (also a middle-aged woman) who collects them. By my count, as of April 2021, the main Minifigures theme includes 228 male minifigs, 100 female, and five gender-neutral.55 Unbalanced though these numbers are, they give a ratio of 2.28 men to every woman – far closer to parity than any theme I’ve mentioned thus far. Some female minifigs are in stereotypical roles (e.g. Ballerina, Mermaid), some are counterparts to male minifigs released in earlier waves (e.g. Cave Man and Cave Woman, Disco Dude and Disco Diva), and some just happen to be in roles that could easily go either way in most people’s minds (e.g. Zookeeper, Surgeon).
By this metric – and I do think it’s noteworthy – the Lego Group has improved quite a bit since the turn of the century. Alas, that’s only part of the story. These minifigs can easily be incorporated into existing sets, but they don’t come with existing sets, or backstories, or even names (with the exception of Johnny Thunder). Dr. Stephanie Reich et al did a more rigorous analysis and comparison of gender portrayals between City sets and Friends sets, both through the contents of the sets themselves and the descriptions in their online marketing materials. (City is a decades-old Lego genre with almost zero named characters and no real storyline, which is why I didn’t include it in my discussion of themes from my childhood. I wouldn’t know one Lego construction worker from another.) In summarizing their findings, they wrote:
The number and diversity of themes, sets, and minifigs has skyrocketed since I was a child, more than I could have dreamed of, more than they had done between my childhood and the original invention of the minifig. In late 2019, one writer claimed that the available legs, torsos, heads, and hairpieces could be swapped out into at least 864,993,504,100 different combinations.54 I didn’t bother to check his math, but even if he was off by a few thousand, that number will surpass a trillion in the near future. I am hopelessly out of touch with the Lego Group’s current offerings and what kids these days are playing with, so I will only personally analyze one theme, if it can be called that.
Since 2010, the Lego Group has released successive waves of exclusive standalone characters in the Minifigures series. (I will focus only on the main series, not the spinoffs dealing with sports stars, movies, and TV shows.) Most of these minifigs are entirely unique, though some tie in to existing themes, and they also include upgraded re-releases of Johnny Thunder and the original 1978 Police Officer – the latter still with his generic male face, smiling because he knows you know he has qualified immunity. They’ve been quite a success. My own mother proudly displays a Chicken Suit Guy given to her by a friend (also a middle-aged woman) who collects them. By my count, as of April 2021, the main Minifigures theme includes 228 male minifigs, 100 female, and five gender-neutral.55 Unbalanced though these numbers are, they give a ratio of 2.28 men to every woman – far closer to parity than any theme I’ve mentioned thus far. Some female minifigs are in stereotypical roles (e.g. Ballerina, Mermaid), some are counterparts to male minifigs released in earlier waves (e.g. Cave Man and Cave Woman, Disco Dude and Disco Diva), and some just happen to be in roles that could easily go either way in most people’s minds (e.g. Zookeeper, Surgeon).
By this metric – and I do think it’s noteworthy – the Lego Group has improved quite a bit since the turn of the century. Alas, that’s only part of the story. These minifigs can easily be incorporated into existing sets, but they don’t come with existing sets, or backstories, or even names (with the exception of Johnny Thunder). Dr. Stephanie Reich et al did a more rigorous analysis and comparison of gender portrayals between City sets and Friends sets, both through the contents of the sets themselves and the descriptions in their online marketing materials. (City is a decades-old Lego genre with almost zero named characters and no real storyline, which is why I didn’t include it in my discussion of themes from my childhood. I wouldn’t know one Lego construction worker from another.) In summarizing their findings, they wrote:
[B]oys are encouraged to 'investigate,' 'explore,' 'build,' and 'repair' whereas girls are enticed to 'relax,' 'primp,' 'hang out,' 'shop,' and 'work on your tan.' Instead of placing imaginary play in a 'high-tech laboratory,' 'space shuttle,' or 'coast guard boat,' as it typically is located in the series marketed to boys (i.e., City), female players are encouraged to enact stories in 'bakeries,' 'malls,' and 'beauty salons.' … Girls are encouraged to serve, clean, entertain, and care for others. If they aspire to professions, it should involve retail of food and clothes or vocations of beauty and entertainment… From these analyses, it is clear that LEGO® encourages imaginary play that position [sic] girls in highly gender stereotypic roles. This stereotyped gender positioning of male and female players is in-line with other content analyses of Halloween costumes, Valentines, action figures, dolls, websites, movies, and commercials…
In LEGO® narratives, girls are offered explicit messages about how to be kind, helpful, relaxed, and pretty whereas boys are offered messages of the appeal of heroism, urgency, and professionalism. Implicitly, girls are told to be domestic but social, and that is it appropriate, or even expected, to not yet be good at activities from hobbies to jobs. Girls are not offered visions of professions that are prestigious, physically challenging, or risky or that require extensive training or skills… whereas boys are actively enticed into such play. Although prosocial behaviors are featured in both series, for boys this means facing danger to rescue others and 'save the day!' whereas for girls this means helping animals, sharing, and caregiving. These findings are congruent with other content analyses of toys for children that find that girls’ toys typically focus on encouraging nurturance and attractiveness."56
Even with such experts weighing in, who could be more authoritative voices on the toy industry than kids themselves? One girl went viral for giving the Lego Group a piece of her mind. She wrote,
Dear Lego Group:
My name is Charlotte. I am 7 years old and I love legos but I don’t like that there are more Lego boy people and barely any Lego girls. today I went to a store and saw legos in two sections the girls pink and the boys blue. All the girls did was sit at home, go to the beach, and shop, and they had no jobs but the boys went on adventures, worked, saved people, and had jobs, even swam with sharks. I want you to make more Lego girl people and let them go on adventures and have fun ok!?!
Thank you. from Charlotte."57
A few years later, an even younger girl was even more to the point: “To Lego Magazine people, can you put some more girls in your magazine please?” In response, she was invited to edit an upcoming issue. The Lego Group was “confident that she can help us improve the magazine and that we can learn a lot from her… after all, children are our role models.”58
Even the little girl from one of the 1981 ads has spoken up. After it went viral and someone recognized her, Rachel Giordano, aged 37, agreed to recreate the ad holding a recently released Friends set. The original ad with her MOC of standard bricks said, “What it is is beautiful.” Her new one with a pastel-colored TV news van centered around baking and makeup said, “What it is is different.” She told the editorial site Women You Should Know,
Even the little girl from one of the 1981 ads has spoken up. After it went viral and someone recognized her, Rachel Giordano, aged 37, agreed to recreate the ad holding a recently released Friends set. The original ad with her MOC of standard bricks said, “What it is is beautiful.” Her new one with a pastel-colored TV news van centered around baking and makeup said, “What it is is different.” She told the editorial site Women You Should Know,
LEGOs were ‘Universal Building Sets’ and that’s exactly what they were…for boys and girls. Toys are supposed to foster creativity. But nowadays, it seems that a lot more toys already have messages built into them before a child even opens the pink or blue package. In 1981, LEGOs were simple and gender-neutral, and the creativity of the child produced the message. In 2014, it’s the reverse: the toy delivers a message to the child, and this message is weirdly about gender….
[G]ender segmenting toys interferes with a child’s own creative expression. I know that how I played as a girl shaped who I am today. It contributed to me becoming a physician and inspired me to want to help others achieve health and wellness. I co-own two medical centers in Seattle. Doctor kits used to be for all children, but now they are on the boys’ aisle. I simply believe that they should be marketed to all children again, and the same with LEGOs and other toys."59
And the message goes beyond toy aisles. In March 2015 one mother, who had grudgingly accepted the Friends theme because it got her daughter interested in Legos, complained that her daughter’s “sudden concern with her hairstyle ‘looking great’ comes courtesy of her new Lego Club Magazine, which included ‘Emma’s Beauty Tips’... She is 7. My little girl, the shape of her face, and whether her haircut is flattering are none of Lego’s concern. It wasn’t even her concern until a toy magazine told her to start worrying about it.”60 In a December 2019 magazine comic, the protagonists need to get into a meeting of scientists to spy on the villain, but one points out that “we won’t be able to just walk right in. A group of girls among researchers – we’ll stick out like sore thumbs!” She then realizes they can dress up as bakers and hand out muffins at the meeting, at which the others rejoice. Later, as they eavesdrop outside, she remarks, “What a load of scientific jargon.” A friend says, “Booooooring! Time to do some baking!” Needless to say, this did not go over well with a lot of people. The Lego Group responded, “With this story we were trying to show that girls have lots of different interests and passions including science but we appreciate that some of the language we used missed the mark this time and we apologise.”61
The people who wrote and drew the comic are probably not the same people who originally designed the Friends theme. Their views should not be assumed to reflect those of the whole company. Nonetheless, I find it alarming that the Lego Group could “miss the mark” so badly, so recently, and not see the backlash coming a mile away. This misstep laid bare some otherwise implicit assumptions behind its toy marketing, and proved that it has indeed taken a step backward. Female minifigs may have been less common in certain roles when I was a child, but I never heard anything from any Lego material suggesting that girls shouldn’t be interested in certain roles (like science) or should be interested in other roles instead (like baking) because of their gender. This is the message the Lego Group sends to children with its girl-specific marketing, even if it’s usually a little less obvious. It may have a lasting impact on how girls see themselves and what they aspire to well into adulthood.
The people who wrote and drew the comic are probably not the same people who originally designed the Friends theme. Their views should not be assumed to reflect those of the whole company. Nonetheless, I find it alarming that the Lego Group could “miss the mark” so badly, so recently, and not see the backlash coming a mile away. This misstep laid bare some otherwise implicit assumptions behind its toy marketing, and proved that it has indeed taken a step backward. Female minifigs may have been less common in certain roles when I was a child, but I never heard anything from any Lego material suggesting that girls shouldn’t be interested in certain roles (like science) or should be interested in other roles instead (like baking) because of their gender. This is the message the Lego Group sends to children with its girl-specific marketing, even if it’s usually a little less obvious. It may have a lasting impact on how girls see themselves and what they aspire to well into adulthood.
Ideas to Build a Better Future
Ironically, the Lego Group passed up a partial solution to this exact dilemma years ago. In 2012, geochemist Ellen Kooijman started posting concepts to Lego Cuusoo62 (later Lego Ideas), a website where people could essentially design virtual MOCs, and any that got 10,000 votes from the public within a certain timeframe would be considered for production as an actual limited edition set. Dr. Kooijman designed several vignettes of women in various fields of science, consciously trying to offset the limited number and narrow scope of female minifigs she had noticed.63 The result was a set called “Research Institute” featuring a female astronomer, a female paleontologist, and a female chemist with their accessories – telescope, star chart, dinosaur skeleton, microscope, and assorted beakers and vials. The Lego Group added lipstick to all three women and gave the astronomer a pink scarf, but otherwise stayed true to Dr. Kooijman’s original concept.64 Here, at least, were a few women who could send the message to little girls that scientific jargon isn’t “Booooooring!” But the set sold out, and because it was a limited-edition item, the Lego Group never manufactured it again or took a hint from its popularity.65
As long as the Lego Group remains the most profitable toy company in the world, it won’t likely make drastic changes to its philosophy. Spokesman Michael McNally said, “I think there’s been a lot of momentum around this idea that everything should be gender neutral. That’s not what we’re striving for. We don’t see anything wrong with the natural ways that children are choosing to play. We try being gender inclusive.”66 However, there are adjustments that the company could make within the current framework to reduce harmful gender stereotyping on impressionable children while still allowing for the possibility that boys and girls prefer different kinds of play.
The biggest one really is as simple as putting a higher percentage of female minifigs in the “boy” themes and giving them equally important and proactive roles like Dr. Kooijman’s scientists. The Minifigures theme has already made strides in this direction, but they need to go further and spread into the actual sets that children play with. Paradoxically, Friends and similar “girl” themes should incorporate more male characters to downplay the message that minidolls and pastel colors and certain settings are only suitable for girls – as long as the male characters don’t come to eclipse the female ones, of course. I don’t believe for a moment that these changes would discourage boys from playing with City or girls from playing with Friends, but they may encourage more crossover.
Friends should drop its focus on makeup entirely. There’s nothing inherently wrong with baking and nurturing and whatever other “feminine” pursuits it encourages, but this particular message is downright harmful. Girls will be bombarded with the so-called importance of physical beauty throughout their lives, much to the detriment of their self-image, and they hardly need to have that message reinforced even further by toys that are supposed to be about imagination. While continuing to bake and nurture and whatever, the protagonists could be differentiated more from each other and shown to each have other unique interests. They do have unique interests and personalities according to their online bios, but there is little evidence of this in the sets themselves, or as much as there should be in the marketing materials. One of them even loves science – so why didn’t she speak up when her friends dissed it in the comic? Why don’t more sets show her doing “everything that has to do with coding, gadgets, inventions, engineering and mechanics”?67 Friends should teach children in no uncertain terms that there’s more than one way to be a girl.
And finally, the plastic elephant in the room – marketing. The Lego Group says its strategy of marketing to boys and girls equally didn’t work, and I think some factors at play in that are out of its control. Stores themselves should follow Target’s lead68 and stop dividing toys into “boy toys” and “girl toys” sections. It comes as no surprise which section most Lego sets can be found in. While this situation is not the Lego Group’s doing, surely its success gives it some leverage to push for change. This would not go against the company’s strategy, it would merely place trust in children to pick out what they want instead of telling them what they should want. I believe increasing gender parity in the sets themselves as mentioned above will also increase mixed-gender marketing success by default. There should be no harm in ads and commercials that show boys and girls playing with Legos together, as older ones did and as “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part” did just a couple years ago – both in the movie itself, and in the end credits that show MOCs built by sibling pairs of which a majority are sister and brother. This may not drive girls in large numbers to play with sets that aren’t Friends, but it will give them “permission” to do so without feeling like they’ve broken a taboo. And all the Lego Club mascots have been male. Why not give the current mascot, Max, a sister, and let them share the responsibility?
The Lego Group is hardly alone in following certain cultural trends, and hardly the worst offender. It has done much good. But as one of the most powerful forces in the world today, it should stand up and shape cultural trends. While making allowances for different play preferences between boys and girls, it should portray minifigs and minidolls in an egalitarian manner, and it should return to its original marketing vision and proclaim through word and deed that it doesn’t matter whether a child wants to play with a dollhouse or a spaceship.
As long as the Lego Group remains the most profitable toy company in the world, it won’t likely make drastic changes to its philosophy. Spokesman Michael McNally said, “I think there’s been a lot of momentum around this idea that everything should be gender neutral. That’s not what we’re striving for. We don’t see anything wrong with the natural ways that children are choosing to play. We try being gender inclusive.”66 However, there are adjustments that the company could make within the current framework to reduce harmful gender stereotyping on impressionable children while still allowing for the possibility that boys and girls prefer different kinds of play.
The biggest one really is as simple as putting a higher percentage of female minifigs in the “boy” themes and giving them equally important and proactive roles like Dr. Kooijman’s scientists. The Minifigures theme has already made strides in this direction, but they need to go further and spread into the actual sets that children play with. Paradoxically, Friends and similar “girl” themes should incorporate more male characters to downplay the message that minidolls and pastel colors and certain settings are only suitable for girls – as long as the male characters don’t come to eclipse the female ones, of course. I don’t believe for a moment that these changes would discourage boys from playing with City or girls from playing with Friends, but they may encourage more crossover.
Friends should drop its focus on makeup entirely. There’s nothing inherently wrong with baking and nurturing and whatever other “feminine” pursuits it encourages, but this particular message is downright harmful. Girls will be bombarded with the so-called importance of physical beauty throughout their lives, much to the detriment of their self-image, and they hardly need to have that message reinforced even further by toys that are supposed to be about imagination. While continuing to bake and nurture and whatever, the protagonists could be differentiated more from each other and shown to each have other unique interests. They do have unique interests and personalities according to their online bios, but there is little evidence of this in the sets themselves, or as much as there should be in the marketing materials. One of them even loves science – so why didn’t she speak up when her friends dissed it in the comic? Why don’t more sets show her doing “everything that has to do with coding, gadgets, inventions, engineering and mechanics”?67 Friends should teach children in no uncertain terms that there’s more than one way to be a girl.
And finally, the plastic elephant in the room – marketing. The Lego Group says its strategy of marketing to boys and girls equally didn’t work, and I think some factors at play in that are out of its control. Stores themselves should follow Target’s lead68 and stop dividing toys into “boy toys” and “girl toys” sections. It comes as no surprise which section most Lego sets can be found in. While this situation is not the Lego Group’s doing, surely its success gives it some leverage to push for change. This would not go against the company’s strategy, it would merely place trust in children to pick out what they want instead of telling them what they should want. I believe increasing gender parity in the sets themselves as mentioned above will also increase mixed-gender marketing success by default. There should be no harm in ads and commercials that show boys and girls playing with Legos together, as older ones did and as “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part” did just a couple years ago – both in the movie itself, and in the end credits that show MOCs built by sibling pairs of which a majority are sister and brother. This may not drive girls in large numbers to play with sets that aren’t Friends, but it will give them “permission” to do so without feeling like they’ve broken a taboo. And all the Lego Club mascots have been male. Why not give the current mascot, Max, a sister, and let them share the responsibility?
The Lego Group is hardly alone in following certain cultural trends, and hardly the worst offender. It has done much good. But as one of the most powerful forces in the world today, it should stand up and shape cultural trends. While making allowances for different play preferences between boys and girls, it should portray minifigs and minidolls in an egalitarian manner, and it should return to its original marketing vision and proclaim through word and deed that it doesn’t matter whether a child wants to play with a dollhouse or a spaceship.
Appendix A: Female Minifigs and Bionicle Sets
(All pictures taken from https://brickipedia.fandom.com/)
Pippin Reed / Gail Storm / Linda Lovely
Alexis (or Alexia) Sinister (or Sanister)
Jing Lee
Queen Leonora
Princess Storm
Lego Studios Woman (with face identical to Mary Jane Watson)
Cam Attaway
Radia
Cassiopeia
Gali
Macku
Footnotes
1. Some sources write “Lego” in all caps; I do not.
2. Kell, John. “Here's Why Mattel Ousted Its CEO Bryan Stockton.” Fortune, Fortune, 26 Jan. 2015, https://fortune.com/2015/01/26/heres-why-mattel-ousted-its-ceo-bryan-stockton/.
3. Popular MOC hosting sites include https://www.mochub.com/ and https://rebrickable.com/mocs/. The Lego Group has even referenced this with the character MOC, an assassin droid built by Emperor Palpatine in Season Two of “Lego Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures”.
4. Dusan Jeftinija’s Legostar Galactica, still going strong after nearly two decades, is made with Legos as the name would imply (and turned out to be much better than the first comic would imply). http://www.legostargalactica.net/ Almost as old, David Morgan-Mar’s Irregular Webcomic! is made primarily with Legos, though it also sometimes uses roleplaying miniatures. https://irregularwebcomic.net/
5. https://brickfilms.com/ predates YouTube by nearly four years. https://blog.bricksinmotion.com/ is another brickfilming community.
6. The Lego Group. “Fair Play.” https://www.lego.com/en-us/legal/notices-and-policies/fair-play.
7. Rickman, Dina. “That Powerful Lego Letter to Parents from the 1970s? It's Real.” indy100, indy100, 24 Nov. 2014, www.indy100.com/offbeat/that-powerful-lego-letter-to-parents-from-the-1970s-it-s-real-7252496.
8. Wade, Lisa. “Two More Inspiring Gender-Neutral LEGO Ads.” Sociological Images, 27 Jan. 2012, https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/01/27/two-more-inspiring-gender-neutral-lego-ads-from-1981/.
9. Wade, Lisa. “Vintage Lego Ad.” Sociological Images, 17 July 2009, https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/07/17/vintage-lego-ad/.
10. Wieners, Brad. “Lego Is for Girls.” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 15 Dec. 2011, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-12-14/lego-is-for-girls. Unfortunately, this article is only available to Bloomberg News subscribers, so I only read a little bit. It looks like it would have been very useful for my paper.
11. LaFrance, Adrienne. “How to Play Like a Girl.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 1 June 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/05/legos/484115/?utm_source=atltw.
12. The Lego Group. “Progress Report 2010”, 2010, p. 26.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160413081826/http://cache.lego.com/upload/contentTemplating/AboutUsAboutUsContent/otherfiles/download6777A03AA55057F7EE86D771CA3A1D79.pdf
13. Archived at http://www.miniland.nl/LEGOclub/lego%20magazine%20lezen.htm. January-February 2000, May-June 2000, and September-October 2001 are not available. I once owned every issue from this period and many more, but I took poor care of them and all that remains in many cases is a few scraps of paper.
14. Some photographs included the children with their MOCs and others did not. My count may be a little off due to some of the children not being cisgender (though in such cases, their parents would almost certainly have still raised them according to their biological sex), or having names usually associated with the opposite gender. Four children not pictured had names that could be male or female, and I resisted the temptation to assume they were male because I’m being scientific, dang it. One child not pictured had a name of unknown origin that I couldn’t identify at all.
15. Tincher, Corey. “Everything You Wanted to Know About the History of the Lego Minifigure.” The Spruce Crafts, 24 Nov. 2019, www.thesprucecrafts.com/history-of-the-lego-minifigure-17906.
16. Agence France-Presse. “Creator of Iconic Lego Figure Dead at 78.” South China Morning Post, 23 Feb. 2020, www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3051940/creator-iconic-lego-figure-jens-nygaard-knudsen-dead-78.
17. Tincher, Corey. “Everything You Wanted to Know About the History of the Lego Minifigure.” The Spruce Crafts, 24 Nov. 2019, www.thesprucecrafts.com/history-of-the-lego-minifigure-17906.
18. There was some early confusion and inconsistency over names. During the Egypt subtheme, Johnny Thunder was known as Sam Grant in the UK and Joe Freeman in Germany. Dr. Kilroy and Pippin Reed were first introduced to me in the US as Johnny’s uncle, Dr. Charles Lightning, and Gail Storm, while in Germany they were known as Professor Articus and Linda Lovely. The main villain’s name was even more confusing as the subthemes went on. In Egypt he was Baron von Barron (or Evil Eye in the UK, or Mr. Hates in Germany and in some English-language media) with a sidekick named Sam Sinister. He was absent from the Amazon theme. In Dino Island he returned, now named Sam Sinister (or Sam Sanister), and the original Sam Sinister (not present in this theme) was renamed Slyboots. In Orient Expedition the main villain was called Lord Sam Sinister, retaining his monocle and hook hand but now dressed in a suit and top hat similar to the original Sam Sinister/Slyboots. Just before that subtheme came out, he appeared in the flash animation game “The Lost Treasure of Ancient Greece” with the top hat and his original uniform that didn’t match it at all. For the Haunted House set released in 2020, his former mansion with a portrait of him and several Adventurers Easter eggs, his name was consolidated into Samuel von Barron.
19. Archived at http://biomediaproject.com/bmp/files/LEGO/gms/download/Adventurers/MinifigureHandbooks.zip
20. LEGO - Die Jagd nach dem Pharaonenschatz [Hörspiel]. [The Hunt for the Treasure of the Pharaohs [Radio Play]]. YouTube, uploaded by Schneemehrmann, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipqazeTJoto
21. For example, Johnny Thunder Dino Island. YouTube, uploaded by highwaywon, 9 Sep. 2007, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLfZOIEAZ6E. The Stolen Treasure of Tutankhamun Part 1, no longer on YouTube, copy in my possession. In two long multi-part brickfilms by brothers Andrew and Daniel Bermudez, Johnny and Pippin are married with a college-aged daughter, Sarah Thunder. Mustache Maniacs Film Co., https://www.youtube.com/user/historylegoman
22. Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20210119023642/http://adventurers.dk/. This site appears to have just gone offline sometime between January and April 2021.
23. Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20130622212210/http://www.freewebs.com/mylego/johnnythunder.htm
24. https://www.youtube.com/user/TLFScarheart/featured
25. Lego Studios Jewel Quest. YouTube, uploaded by JamMasterRaspberry, 27 Oct. 2006, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLdL7C49qQI
26. Both put their frightened faces to use and showed equal propensities toward panic in a promo brickfilm included with the Lego Studios SoundFX CD-ROM, and an alternate darker version posted on the Studios website. LEGO Studios SoundFX Monsters Video. YouTube, uploaded by Triangle717, 3 Sep. 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0suQH_ZoVA. LOST AND FOUND!!! Lego Scary Thriller (Alt. Version of a Lego Studios promo from 2002). YouTube, uploaded by aBoxfulOfVisd, 15 Mar. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeYu-WhMuVU
27. Jamesster, et al. “Very Surreal Alpha Team Prototype.” Eurobricks Forums, 1 Feb. 2016, www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?%2Fforums%2Ftopic%2F85196-very-surreal-alpha-team-prototype%2F
28. Both archived at http://biomediaproject.com/bmp/files/LEGO/gms/download/AlphaTeam/ComicAdventures.zip
29. Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20080321131955/http://www.freewebs.com/mylego/alphateam.htm
30. Geekerhertz (Ghz). How Bionicle Saved Lego from Shutting Its Doors. 7 Sept. 2020, geekerhertz.com/article/how-bionicle-saved-lego-from-shutting-its-doors.
31. Out of print; scans available for download at https://cross-wired-freak.tumblr.com/post/68472919868
32. “Toa” means “warrior” in Maori. Bionicle was heavily inspired by Polynesian cultures and at first lifted many words and character names straight from the Maori language until Maori groups protested. “Lego Agrees to Stop Using Maori Names.” BBC News, BBC, 30 Oct. 2001, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1627209.stm.
33. Their original names were Maku and Huki, but they were changed as part of the Lego Group’s agreement with Maori groups. In-universe this was explained by a Naming Ceremony for some of the villagers in recognition of their heroism.
34. I saved a few hundred of these in a Word document that I still have in my possession, and I can attest that most of them are garbage written under the misconception that weird = funny. Their disappearance from the internet is no great loss. However, I posted a couple that I thought were pretty good on my blog a few years ago. They were about dating – a literally non-existent topic in the Bionicle canon, Macku’s and Hewkii’s little crushes notwithstanding. https://www.christopherrandallnicholson.com/blog/star-wars-bionicle-dating
35. Holtzman, Dory. “Karzahni.” https://www.christopherrandallnicholson.com/karzahni.html. Because it was gone from the internet, I uploaded her original comic to my site, and she hasn’t complained yet. Her current and much longer comic can be found at https://poharex.webs.com/.
36. Smith, Stacy L., et al. “Inequality in 1,200 Popular Films: Examining Portrayals of Gender, Race/Ethnicity, LGBT & Disability from 2007 to 2018.” July 2018, http://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/inequality-in-1100-popular-films.pdf. Though I didn’t address it here because, as I said, the blame lies elsewhere, of course this also has a trickle-down effect on gender in licensed Lego themes. Magowan, Margot. “When Hollywood Excludes Girls, How Can Lego Market to Them?” Reel Girl, 30 Dec. 2011, https://margotmagowan.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/when-hollywood-excludes-girls-how-will-lego-market-to-them/. The Lego Group itself even poked fun at this in an episode of Lego Star Wars: Droid Tales.
Yoda: You have a sister.
Luke: A sister? (gasp) It’s Leia!
Yoda: Yes. Wise in the Force, are you.
Luke: No… she’s the only girl I’ve ever met!
Yoda: Not many women in our adventures, are there? Fix that next time, we must.
37. Bawden, Tom. “Lego Bids to Build a Greater Appeal for Girls.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 6 Mar. 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/mar/06/lego-appeal-to-girls.
38. John. “LEGO Homemaker & A History of Girl Centred Sets.” BricktasticBlog, 29 Aug. 2018, https://bricktasticblog.com/blog/vintage-lego-homemaker-review/.
39. Pickett, Dave. The LEGO Gender Gap: A Historical Perspective, 2 Jan. 2012, thinkingbrickly.blogspot.com/2012/01/lego-gender-gap.html.
40. NNN – Robots! Robots! Robots!. YouTube, uploaded by BRICK 101, 23 Sep. 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFJ_znaJmjQ.
41. Wade, Lisa. “Beauty and the New Lego Line For Girls.” Sociological Images, 1 Jan. 2012, https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/01/01/beauty-and-the-new-lego-line-for-girls/.
42. Murray, Stephanie. “If Girls Like Legos, Who Are We to Call It Sexist?” Verily, Verily, 22 Oct. 2015, https://verilymag.com/2015/10/lego-sexism-feminism-gender-toys. Murray, in turn, is quoting from an Adweek article that’s only available to Adweek+ subscribers, but I’ll take her word for it. Klara, Robert. Lego's Consistency Has Been the Key to Its Success, Adweek, 16 Apr. 2013, https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/legos-consistency-has-been-key-its-success-148553/
43. LaFrance, Adrienne. “How to Play Like a Girl.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 1 June 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/05/legos/484115/?utm_source=atltw.
44. Ulaby, Neda. “Girls' Legos Are A Hit, But Why Do Girls Need Special Legos?” NPR, NPR, 29 June 2013, https://www.npr.org/2013/06/29/196605763/girls-legos-are-a-hit-but-why-do-girls-need-special-legos.
45. Much confusion and controversy rages over such questions. In a recent study, researchers who found substantial evidence for intrinsic (not merely cultural) gender differences took care to be very nuanced in their conclusion: “It is undeniably true that men and women are more similar than different genetically, physically and psychologically. Even so, important gender differences in personality exist that likely stem, at least in part, from evolved psychological adaptations. Some of these adaptations generate culturally-universal gender differences, and many are further designed to be sensitive to local socioecological contexts in ways that facultatively generate varying sizes of gender differences across cultures.” Schmitt, David P., et al. “Personality and Gender Differences in Global Perspective.” International Journal of Psychology, vol. 52, 2016, p. 52., https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ijop.12265.
46. Richards, Bailey Shoemaker, and Stephanie Cole. “Sign the Petition: Tell LEGO to Stop Selling out Girls!” Change.org, Jan. 2012, https://www.change.org/p/tell-lego-to-stop-selling-out-girls-liberatelego.
47. Morran, Chris. “LEGO Set For Girls, Slurpee-Maker For Kids, Top Nominees For Worst Toy Of The Year.” Consumerist, 29 Nov. 2012, https://consumerist.com/2012/11/29/lego-set-for-girls-slurpee-maker-for-kids-top-nominees-for-worst-toy-of-the-year/index.html.
48. https://brickomotion.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMigF3GAmMWPvD9mjWP2Sqw.
49. Stephanie & Emma’s Day at the Mall – A Lego Friends Stop Motion Movie. YouTube, uploaded by valveater, 5 Feb. 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUODDmcFdgA&t=1s.
50. Stephanie & Emma’s Day at School – A Lego Friends Stop-Motion Movie. YouTube, uploaded by valveater, 24 Nov. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxTMomHL7c0&t=565s.
51. MomsLA. “LEGO Friends: Why My Daughters Won't Be Playing with Them.” MomsLA, 22 Nov. 2020, https://momsla.com/why-my-daughters-wont-be-playing-with-lego-friends/. Issues are archived here: http://www.miniland.nl/LEGOclub/lego%20magazine%20lezen.htm
52. Rickman, Dina. “That Powerful Lego Letter to Parents from the 1970s? It's Real.” indy100, indy100, 24 Nov. 2014, www.indy100.com/offbeat/that-powerful-lego-letter-to-parents-from-the-1970s-it-s-real-7252496
53. de Castella, Tom. “How Did Lego Become a Gender Battleground?” BBC News, BBC, 6 Aug. 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28660069.
54. Tincher, Corey. “Everything You Wanted to Know About the History of the Lego Minifigure.” The Spruce Crafts, http://www.thesprucecrafts.com/history-of-the-lego-minifigure-17906.
55. All of them can be viewed here: https://brickipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Minifigures_(theme).
56. Reich, Stephanie M., et al. “Constructing Difference: Lego® Set Narratives Promote Stereotypic Gender Roles and Play.” Sex Roles, vol. 79, no. 5-6, 2017, p. 12., https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stephanie-Reich-2/publication/321294731_Constructing_Difference_LegoR_Set_Narratives_Promote_Stereotypic_Gender_Roles_and_Play/links/5a83f367aca272d6501f46ea/Constructing-Difference-LegoR-Set-Narratives-Promote-Stereotypic-Gender-Roles-and-Play.pdf. Page number is from the online version, not the original publication. Text that I omitted for space considerations includes two exceptions to these trends and one example (though many more examples are discussed throughout the paper).
57. Molloy, Mark. “Girl, 7, Praised for Letter to Lego about Gender Stereotyping in Toys.” Metro, Metro.co.uk, 1 Feb. 2014, https://metro.co.uk/2014/02/01/charlotte-benjamin-girl-sends-letter-to-lego-about-gender-stereotypes-in-toys-4286634/
58. Young, Sarah. “Young Girl Writes Letter to Lego Asking for More Female Characters in Its Magazine.” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 18 Apr. 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/lego-magazine-female-characters-letter-girl-twitter-sexism-samuel-west-a8875786.html
59. Day, Lori. “The Little Girl from the 1981 LEGO Ad Is All Grown Up, and She's Got Something to Say.” Women You Should Know®, 11 Feb. 2014, https://womenyoushouldknow.net/little-girl-1981-lego-ad-grown-shes-got-something-say/.
60. Holbrook, Sharon. “Beauty Tips for Girls, From Lego.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Mar. 2015, https://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/16/beauty-tips-for-girls-from-lego/.
61. Young, Sarah. “Lego Magazine Branded Sexist for Saying Girls Would 'Stick out' among Scientists.” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 19 Dec. 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/lego-friends-magazine-sexist-stem-reaction-twitter-apology-a9253111.html. This source and others show the offending panels in reverse of the order they appeared in the comic, probably because one person tweeted them that way and then everyone else retweeted them.
62. Cuusoo is a Japanese "web platform pursuing to create a safe society by collecting and commercializing 'users' wants'." https://cuusoo.com/
63. Elensar, Alatariel. “Female Minifigure Set.” Alatariel's Altar, no date, https://alatarielatelier.blogspot.com/p/female-minifigure-set.html?zx=7fc735e0789785ac. Though she operated this blog under a pseudonym, media coverage identified her as Ellen Kooijman.
64. de Castella, Tom. “How Did Lego Become a Gender Battleground?” BBC News, BBC, 6 Aug. 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28660069.
65. Stevens, Heidi. Female-Scientist Legos Gone for Good, and That's Bad. Chicago Tribune, 27 Aug. 2014, https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-lego-girls-stem-petition-balancing-20140827-column.html.
66. LaFrance, Adrienne. “How to Play Like a Girl.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 1 June 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/05/legos/484115/?utm_source=atltw.
67. The Lego Group. “Olivia.” Olivia - LEGO® Friends Characters - LEGO.com for Kids, https://www.lego.com/en-us/kids/characters/friends/olivia-b974c5beb4d04a869d9ecb8ec215a650.
68. Northrup, Laura. “Toy Companies Slowly Letting Go Of Strict Gender Categories.” Consumerist, 27 Sept. 2015, https://consumerist.com/2015/10/27/toy-companies-slowly-letting-go-of-strict-gender-categories/index.html.
2. Kell, John. “Here's Why Mattel Ousted Its CEO Bryan Stockton.” Fortune, Fortune, 26 Jan. 2015, https://fortune.com/2015/01/26/heres-why-mattel-ousted-its-ceo-bryan-stockton/.
3. Popular MOC hosting sites include https://www.mochub.com/ and https://rebrickable.com/mocs/. The Lego Group has even referenced this with the character MOC, an assassin droid built by Emperor Palpatine in Season Two of “Lego Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures”.
4. Dusan Jeftinija’s Legostar Galactica, still going strong after nearly two decades, is made with Legos as the name would imply (and turned out to be much better than the first comic would imply). http://www.legostargalactica.net/ Almost as old, David Morgan-Mar’s Irregular Webcomic! is made primarily with Legos, though it also sometimes uses roleplaying miniatures. https://irregularwebcomic.net/
5. https://brickfilms.com/ predates YouTube by nearly four years. https://blog.bricksinmotion.com/ is another brickfilming community.
6. The Lego Group. “Fair Play.” https://www.lego.com/en-us/legal/notices-and-policies/fair-play.
7. Rickman, Dina. “That Powerful Lego Letter to Parents from the 1970s? It's Real.” indy100, indy100, 24 Nov. 2014, www.indy100.com/offbeat/that-powerful-lego-letter-to-parents-from-the-1970s-it-s-real-7252496.
8. Wade, Lisa. “Two More Inspiring Gender-Neutral LEGO Ads.” Sociological Images, 27 Jan. 2012, https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/01/27/two-more-inspiring-gender-neutral-lego-ads-from-1981/.
9. Wade, Lisa. “Vintage Lego Ad.” Sociological Images, 17 July 2009, https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/07/17/vintage-lego-ad/.
10. Wieners, Brad. “Lego Is for Girls.” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 15 Dec. 2011, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-12-14/lego-is-for-girls. Unfortunately, this article is only available to Bloomberg News subscribers, so I only read a little bit. It looks like it would have been very useful for my paper.
11. LaFrance, Adrienne. “How to Play Like a Girl.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 1 June 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/05/legos/484115/?utm_source=atltw.
12. The Lego Group. “Progress Report 2010”, 2010, p. 26.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160413081826/http://cache.lego.com/upload/contentTemplating/AboutUsAboutUsContent/otherfiles/download6777A03AA55057F7EE86D771CA3A1D79.pdf
13. Archived at http://www.miniland.nl/LEGOclub/lego%20magazine%20lezen.htm. January-February 2000, May-June 2000, and September-October 2001 are not available. I once owned every issue from this period and many more, but I took poor care of them and all that remains in many cases is a few scraps of paper.
14. Some photographs included the children with their MOCs and others did not. My count may be a little off due to some of the children not being cisgender (though in such cases, their parents would almost certainly have still raised them according to their biological sex), or having names usually associated with the opposite gender. Four children not pictured had names that could be male or female, and I resisted the temptation to assume they were male because I’m being scientific, dang it. One child not pictured had a name of unknown origin that I couldn’t identify at all.
15. Tincher, Corey. “Everything You Wanted to Know About the History of the Lego Minifigure.” The Spruce Crafts, 24 Nov. 2019, www.thesprucecrafts.com/history-of-the-lego-minifigure-17906.
16. Agence France-Presse. “Creator of Iconic Lego Figure Dead at 78.” South China Morning Post, 23 Feb. 2020, www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3051940/creator-iconic-lego-figure-jens-nygaard-knudsen-dead-78.
17. Tincher, Corey. “Everything You Wanted to Know About the History of the Lego Minifigure.” The Spruce Crafts, 24 Nov. 2019, www.thesprucecrafts.com/history-of-the-lego-minifigure-17906.
18. There was some early confusion and inconsistency over names. During the Egypt subtheme, Johnny Thunder was known as Sam Grant in the UK and Joe Freeman in Germany. Dr. Kilroy and Pippin Reed were first introduced to me in the US as Johnny’s uncle, Dr. Charles Lightning, and Gail Storm, while in Germany they were known as Professor Articus and Linda Lovely. The main villain’s name was even more confusing as the subthemes went on. In Egypt he was Baron von Barron (or Evil Eye in the UK, or Mr. Hates in Germany and in some English-language media) with a sidekick named Sam Sinister. He was absent from the Amazon theme. In Dino Island he returned, now named Sam Sinister (or Sam Sanister), and the original Sam Sinister (not present in this theme) was renamed Slyboots. In Orient Expedition the main villain was called Lord Sam Sinister, retaining his monocle and hook hand but now dressed in a suit and top hat similar to the original Sam Sinister/Slyboots. Just before that subtheme came out, he appeared in the flash animation game “The Lost Treasure of Ancient Greece” with the top hat and his original uniform that didn’t match it at all. For the Haunted House set released in 2020, his former mansion with a portrait of him and several Adventurers Easter eggs, his name was consolidated into Samuel von Barron.
19. Archived at http://biomediaproject.com/bmp/files/LEGO/gms/download/Adventurers/MinifigureHandbooks.zip
20. LEGO - Die Jagd nach dem Pharaonenschatz [Hörspiel]. [The Hunt for the Treasure of the Pharaohs [Radio Play]]. YouTube, uploaded by Schneemehrmann, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipqazeTJoto
21. For example, Johnny Thunder Dino Island. YouTube, uploaded by highwaywon, 9 Sep. 2007, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLfZOIEAZ6E. The Stolen Treasure of Tutankhamun Part 1, no longer on YouTube, copy in my possession. In two long multi-part brickfilms by brothers Andrew and Daniel Bermudez, Johnny and Pippin are married with a college-aged daughter, Sarah Thunder. Mustache Maniacs Film Co., https://www.youtube.com/user/historylegoman
22. Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20210119023642/http://adventurers.dk/. This site appears to have just gone offline sometime between January and April 2021.
23. Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20130622212210/http://www.freewebs.com/mylego/johnnythunder.htm
24. https://www.youtube.com/user/TLFScarheart/featured
25. Lego Studios Jewel Quest. YouTube, uploaded by JamMasterRaspberry, 27 Oct. 2006, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLdL7C49qQI
26. Both put their frightened faces to use and showed equal propensities toward panic in a promo brickfilm included with the Lego Studios SoundFX CD-ROM, and an alternate darker version posted on the Studios website. LEGO Studios SoundFX Monsters Video. YouTube, uploaded by Triangle717, 3 Sep. 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0suQH_ZoVA. LOST AND FOUND!!! Lego Scary Thriller (Alt. Version of a Lego Studios promo from 2002). YouTube, uploaded by aBoxfulOfVisd, 15 Mar. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeYu-WhMuVU
27. Jamesster, et al. “Very Surreal Alpha Team Prototype.” Eurobricks Forums, 1 Feb. 2016, www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?%2Fforums%2Ftopic%2F85196-very-surreal-alpha-team-prototype%2F
28. Both archived at http://biomediaproject.com/bmp/files/LEGO/gms/download/AlphaTeam/ComicAdventures.zip
29. Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20080321131955/http://www.freewebs.com/mylego/alphateam.htm
30. Geekerhertz (Ghz). How Bionicle Saved Lego from Shutting Its Doors. 7 Sept. 2020, geekerhertz.com/article/how-bionicle-saved-lego-from-shutting-its-doors.
31. Out of print; scans available for download at https://cross-wired-freak.tumblr.com/post/68472919868
32. “Toa” means “warrior” in Maori. Bionicle was heavily inspired by Polynesian cultures and at first lifted many words and character names straight from the Maori language until Maori groups protested. “Lego Agrees to Stop Using Maori Names.” BBC News, BBC, 30 Oct. 2001, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1627209.stm.
33. Their original names were Maku and Huki, but they were changed as part of the Lego Group’s agreement with Maori groups. In-universe this was explained by a Naming Ceremony for some of the villagers in recognition of their heroism.
34. I saved a few hundred of these in a Word document that I still have in my possession, and I can attest that most of them are garbage written under the misconception that weird = funny. Their disappearance from the internet is no great loss. However, I posted a couple that I thought were pretty good on my blog a few years ago. They were about dating – a literally non-existent topic in the Bionicle canon, Macku’s and Hewkii’s little crushes notwithstanding. https://www.christopherrandallnicholson.com/blog/star-wars-bionicle-dating
35. Holtzman, Dory. “Karzahni.” https://www.christopherrandallnicholson.com/karzahni.html. Because it was gone from the internet, I uploaded her original comic to my site, and she hasn’t complained yet. Her current and much longer comic can be found at https://poharex.webs.com/.
36. Smith, Stacy L., et al. “Inequality in 1,200 Popular Films: Examining Portrayals of Gender, Race/Ethnicity, LGBT & Disability from 2007 to 2018.” July 2018, http://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/inequality-in-1100-popular-films.pdf. Though I didn’t address it here because, as I said, the blame lies elsewhere, of course this also has a trickle-down effect on gender in licensed Lego themes. Magowan, Margot. “When Hollywood Excludes Girls, How Can Lego Market to Them?” Reel Girl, 30 Dec. 2011, https://margotmagowan.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/when-hollywood-excludes-girls-how-will-lego-market-to-them/. The Lego Group itself even poked fun at this in an episode of Lego Star Wars: Droid Tales.
Yoda: You have a sister.
Luke: A sister? (gasp) It’s Leia!
Yoda: Yes. Wise in the Force, are you.
Luke: No… she’s the only girl I’ve ever met!
Yoda: Not many women in our adventures, are there? Fix that next time, we must.
37. Bawden, Tom. “Lego Bids to Build a Greater Appeal for Girls.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 6 Mar. 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/mar/06/lego-appeal-to-girls.
38. John. “LEGO Homemaker & A History of Girl Centred Sets.” BricktasticBlog, 29 Aug. 2018, https://bricktasticblog.com/blog/vintage-lego-homemaker-review/.
39. Pickett, Dave. The LEGO Gender Gap: A Historical Perspective, 2 Jan. 2012, thinkingbrickly.blogspot.com/2012/01/lego-gender-gap.html.
40. NNN – Robots! Robots! Robots!. YouTube, uploaded by BRICK 101, 23 Sep. 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFJ_znaJmjQ.
41. Wade, Lisa. “Beauty and the New Lego Line For Girls.” Sociological Images, 1 Jan. 2012, https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/01/01/beauty-and-the-new-lego-line-for-girls/.
42. Murray, Stephanie. “If Girls Like Legos, Who Are We to Call It Sexist?” Verily, Verily, 22 Oct. 2015, https://verilymag.com/2015/10/lego-sexism-feminism-gender-toys. Murray, in turn, is quoting from an Adweek article that’s only available to Adweek+ subscribers, but I’ll take her word for it. Klara, Robert. Lego's Consistency Has Been the Key to Its Success, Adweek, 16 Apr. 2013, https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/legos-consistency-has-been-key-its-success-148553/
43. LaFrance, Adrienne. “How to Play Like a Girl.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 1 June 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/05/legos/484115/?utm_source=atltw.
44. Ulaby, Neda. “Girls' Legos Are A Hit, But Why Do Girls Need Special Legos?” NPR, NPR, 29 June 2013, https://www.npr.org/2013/06/29/196605763/girls-legos-are-a-hit-but-why-do-girls-need-special-legos.
45. Much confusion and controversy rages over such questions. In a recent study, researchers who found substantial evidence for intrinsic (not merely cultural) gender differences took care to be very nuanced in their conclusion: “It is undeniably true that men and women are more similar than different genetically, physically and psychologically. Even so, important gender differences in personality exist that likely stem, at least in part, from evolved psychological adaptations. Some of these adaptations generate culturally-universal gender differences, and many are further designed to be sensitive to local socioecological contexts in ways that facultatively generate varying sizes of gender differences across cultures.” Schmitt, David P., et al. “Personality and Gender Differences in Global Perspective.” International Journal of Psychology, vol. 52, 2016, p. 52., https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ijop.12265.
46. Richards, Bailey Shoemaker, and Stephanie Cole. “Sign the Petition: Tell LEGO to Stop Selling out Girls!” Change.org, Jan. 2012, https://www.change.org/p/tell-lego-to-stop-selling-out-girls-liberatelego.
47. Morran, Chris. “LEGO Set For Girls, Slurpee-Maker For Kids, Top Nominees For Worst Toy Of The Year.” Consumerist, 29 Nov. 2012, https://consumerist.com/2012/11/29/lego-set-for-girls-slurpee-maker-for-kids-top-nominees-for-worst-toy-of-the-year/index.html.
48. https://brickomotion.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMigF3GAmMWPvD9mjWP2Sqw.
49. Stephanie & Emma’s Day at the Mall – A Lego Friends Stop Motion Movie. YouTube, uploaded by valveater, 5 Feb. 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUODDmcFdgA&t=1s.
50. Stephanie & Emma’s Day at School – A Lego Friends Stop-Motion Movie. YouTube, uploaded by valveater, 24 Nov. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxTMomHL7c0&t=565s.
51. MomsLA. “LEGO Friends: Why My Daughters Won't Be Playing with Them.” MomsLA, 22 Nov. 2020, https://momsla.com/why-my-daughters-wont-be-playing-with-lego-friends/. Issues are archived here: http://www.miniland.nl/LEGOclub/lego%20magazine%20lezen.htm
52. Rickman, Dina. “That Powerful Lego Letter to Parents from the 1970s? It's Real.” indy100, indy100, 24 Nov. 2014, www.indy100.com/offbeat/that-powerful-lego-letter-to-parents-from-the-1970s-it-s-real-7252496
53. de Castella, Tom. “How Did Lego Become a Gender Battleground?” BBC News, BBC, 6 Aug. 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28660069.
54. Tincher, Corey. “Everything You Wanted to Know About the History of the Lego Minifigure.” The Spruce Crafts, http://www.thesprucecrafts.com/history-of-the-lego-minifigure-17906.
55. All of them can be viewed here: https://brickipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Minifigures_(theme).
56. Reich, Stephanie M., et al. “Constructing Difference: Lego® Set Narratives Promote Stereotypic Gender Roles and Play.” Sex Roles, vol. 79, no. 5-6, 2017, p. 12., https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stephanie-Reich-2/publication/321294731_Constructing_Difference_LegoR_Set_Narratives_Promote_Stereotypic_Gender_Roles_and_Play/links/5a83f367aca272d6501f46ea/Constructing-Difference-LegoR-Set-Narratives-Promote-Stereotypic-Gender-Roles-and-Play.pdf. Page number is from the online version, not the original publication. Text that I omitted for space considerations includes two exceptions to these trends and one example (though many more examples are discussed throughout the paper).
57. Molloy, Mark. “Girl, 7, Praised for Letter to Lego about Gender Stereotyping in Toys.” Metro, Metro.co.uk, 1 Feb. 2014, https://metro.co.uk/2014/02/01/charlotte-benjamin-girl-sends-letter-to-lego-about-gender-stereotypes-in-toys-4286634/
58. Young, Sarah. “Young Girl Writes Letter to Lego Asking for More Female Characters in Its Magazine.” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 18 Apr. 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/lego-magazine-female-characters-letter-girl-twitter-sexism-samuel-west-a8875786.html
59. Day, Lori. “The Little Girl from the 1981 LEGO Ad Is All Grown Up, and She's Got Something to Say.” Women You Should Know®, 11 Feb. 2014, https://womenyoushouldknow.net/little-girl-1981-lego-ad-grown-shes-got-something-say/.
60. Holbrook, Sharon. “Beauty Tips for Girls, From Lego.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Mar. 2015, https://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/16/beauty-tips-for-girls-from-lego/.
61. Young, Sarah. “Lego Magazine Branded Sexist for Saying Girls Would 'Stick out' among Scientists.” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 19 Dec. 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/lego-friends-magazine-sexist-stem-reaction-twitter-apology-a9253111.html. This source and others show the offending panels in reverse of the order they appeared in the comic, probably because one person tweeted them that way and then everyone else retweeted them.
62. Cuusoo is a Japanese "web platform pursuing to create a safe society by collecting and commercializing 'users' wants'." https://cuusoo.com/
63. Elensar, Alatariel. “Female Minifigure Set.” Alatariel's Altar, no date, https://alatarielatelier.blogspot.com/p/female-minifigure-set.html?zx=7fc735e0789785ac. Though she operated this blog under a pseudonym, media coverage identified her as Ellen Kooijman.
64. de Castella, Tom. “How Did Lego Become a Gender Battleground?” BBC News, BBC, 6 Aug. 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28660069.
65. Stevens, Heidi. Female-Scientist Legos Gone for Good, and That's Bad. Chicago Tribune, 27 Aug. 2014, https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-lego-girls-stem-petition-balancing-20140827-column.html.
66. LaFrance, Adrienne. “How to Play Like a Girl.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 1 June 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/05/legos/484115/?utm_source=atltw.
67. The Lego Group. “Olivia.” Olivia - LEGO® Friends Characters - LEGO.com for Kids, https://www.lego.com/en-us/kids/characters/friends/olivia-b974c5beb4d04a869d9ecb8ec215a650.
68. Northrup, Laura. “Toy Companies Slowly Letting Go Of Strict Gender Categories.” Consumerist, 27 Sept. 2015, https://consumerist.com/2015/10/27/toy-companies-slowly-letting-go-of-strict-gender-categories/index.html.
