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front wing flexing posted:Everyone knows the friends sets are going to disappear anyway. Not likely. All indications are that it's a big success. I like the line. Overall I think the sets are a lot better than most of the City stuff* and it's a big shame it wasn't more inclusive of both genders as if it wasn't so blatantly targeted at girls my son would have loved things like the bakery and cafe. But because of the marketing he won't go near it. Boys can be freinds too  * Most sets targeted at young boys are more vehicle based and I really like the stuctures and little situations which are a lot rarer outside of Friends. They seem a lot more suitable to building and rebuilding than just playing than most of the vehicle based city stuff aimed at 5+
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Apr 17, 2012 01:32
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The tree house, the lab, the bakery and even the large house as a set as a whole are excellent examples of good lego. They are just in 'girl' colours, and have minifigures that have noses and chests. Yes parts of the line directly target the young female audiance. It isn't any worse than the indian jones line. When I was little, I wasn't allowed lego because it was a boys toy. I had to play with my brothers but never got my own. If the friends line means girls who have parents that believe in gender specific roles and won't buy them anything but girl toys means they can have lego at least and as pointed out it is actually excellent lego.
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Apr 17, 2012 01:40
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Friends is still my favorite thing in Lego right now. For me, and a lot of people who build with Lego, new sets mean new possibilities. I'm bound to like whatever sets have the most new parts and colors. This year that's Friends and Ninjago. I don't much care about the licensed themes because they don't provide that much new material these days, besides all the special figures and accessories. Also, if Friends is getting more children into Lego, I think that's great. Hopefully they're all being encouraged to remake the salons and cafes into rockets and submarines and heck even just other slightly different salons and cafes, because that's really the whole point as far as I'm concerned.
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Apr 17, 2012 02:18
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front wing flexing posted:I'm essentially promoting the patriarchy and perpetuating her bondage in gender by buying her those sets. It's a toy.
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Apr 17, 2012 02:22
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Big Mean Jerk posted:It's a toy. Exactly. that's what I'm saying. That's why those videos are kind of dumb.
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Apr 17, 2012 02:29
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Got lucky today and found a store with series 3-7 so I managed to scoop the dwarves and a few others as well. If anyone lives in or near Calgary or in Victoria/Vancouver area and wants me to grab them something from those series let me know as I'm going back there again tomorrow to pick through them again.
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Apr 17, 2012 02:38
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Yo patriarchy is made up of all kinds of things big and small including toys. Dismissing critical analysis of stuff because its "just a toy" or "just for kids" is pretty ignorant. Play is a huge part of how children are socialized into certain practices being presented as "normal" or "right" and sexist attitudes pervade toy lines due in large part to people like you saying "Who cares, it's a toy" and just giving their kids whatever. That said I think Friends has surprised a lot of people, myself included, with its popularity and apparent quality. I'd still prefer traditional minifigures to the dolls but other than that, the line seems to be avoiding all the traps that plagued the old lego for girls lines whose rotted husks now clutter up the BrickLink listings. Personally I can't fault Lego for gender segregation too much as they didn't create the market that demands it. As much as we'd like to believe otherwise we've seen Lego almost go belly-up before so anything that makes them money is good for me. I fault the consumers who have made it such a boys vs. girls market.
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Apr 17, 2012 02:55
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Travis343 posted:Personally I can't fault Lego for gender segregation too much as they didn't create the market that demands it. As much as we'd like to believe otherwise we've seen Lego almost go belly-up before so anything that makes them money is good for me. I fault the consumers who have made it such a boys vs. girls market. Would still be nice if they smudged the lines a little bit more. I miss the days when Castle and Space were mostly lots and lots of cool forts and bases instead of all shooty things all the time.
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Apr 17, 2012 03:02
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Gabriel Pope posted:Would still be nice if they smudged the lines a little bit more. I miss the days when Castle and Space were mostly lots and lots of cool forts and bases instead of all shooty things all the time. Aren't there still some castles going around? Or did that end with the Kingdoms set? e: I know LOTR is coming out but I've only glanced at them so I don't really know what to expect from them.
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Apr 17, 2012 03:13
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Travis343 posted:Personally I can't fault Lego for gender segregation too much as they didn't create the market that demands it. As much as we'd like to believe otherwise we've seen Lego almost go belly-up before so anything that makes them money is good for me. I fault the consumers who have made it such a boys vs. girls market. She makes the case in the video that they did foster gender segregation. You see that in modern ads -- "build it! blow it up! you and dad together!" I agree that it's part of the "80s-ization," shall we say, of toys, especially those aimed at boys... but it shows a conscious decision on their part to start tailoring an otherwise gender-neutral product directly to boys. I really don't see why they don't include more female firefighters, police officers, etc. And that's not just with a potential girl audience in mind. You get the token space girl, or princess or damsel in distress, but it would benefit boys to see women in otherwise male-dominated fields as a normal thing.
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Apr 17, 2012 03:21
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Saint Sputnik posted:She makes the case in the video that they did foster gender segregation. You see that in modern ads -- "build it! blow it up! you and dad together!" I agree that it's part of the "80s-ization," shall we say, of toys, especially those aimed at boys... but it shows a conscious decision on their part to start tailoring an otherwise gender-neutral product directly to boys. I still think this is a response to an increasingly gender-segregated market, rather than Lego being the ones creating the market. Like you said yeah it's been a trend since the 80s but look at what Lego was like in the 80s. For the most part conflict wasn't a huge part of their business model. In the 90s Lego nearly went out of business and what saved it was cleaving to the "boy's toys" paradigm. They created Bionicle, a more action-figure style building toy, all about fighting the bad guys. They get the Star Wars license and are forced to make guns, even if they're laser guns, for the first time. Now every set has a good guy and a bad guy, a conflict built right into every box. They are consciously marketing them this way of course, but they're doing it because this is what they've learned they need to do to succeed. As far as your second point I couldnt agree more! This is where the parent really comes into play though, as whenever you put a female character in any kind of prominent role, it becomes a product "for girls" and they will refuse to buy it for young boys. City sets are ahead of the curve for this, they'll have women mixed in with the men in nearly every profession. The new sets that are sort of a forest ranger setting even has a woman firefighter.
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Apr 17, 2012 04:03
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I think I'm finally done. Alright guys, this is my first real MOC in the last 6 years. I'd appreciate any and all feedback please.   
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Apr 17, 2012 05:42
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front wing flexing posted:No, she is. I'm essentially promoting the patriarchy and perpetuating her bondage in gender by buying her those sets. Perhaps that time would be better spent in the kitchen or making a baby? (this is a joke, i repeat, i am kidding)
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Apr 17, 2012 05:46
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So, I just saw this today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwZsnmpKXGQ
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Apr 17, 2012 05:50
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Sean OFarrell posted:I think I'm finally done. Your wife is gonna be PISSED when she tries to go to bed. (no but seriously this took a lot of effort and looks magnificent. Are you planning to move it to somewhere less stairs?)
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Apr 17, 2012 05:57
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Sean OFarrell posted:I'd appreciate any and all feedback please. I think the concept of building on steps is both creative and dangerous. Pretty rad, really.
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Apr 17, 2012 05:58
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The Muffinlord posted:Your wife is gonna be PISSED when she tries to go to bed. I'm not married yet so that solves that problem. Plus it only takes up half the step which leaves the other half for walking up and down. And I don't think I'll be moving it. The whole idea behind it was to make something...well what I had in mind when I started was Gondor, and how it's build kinda on the side of a mountain. So I tried to do something similar which is why I built it along the stairs. Light Gun Man posted:I think the concept of building on steps is both creative and dangerous. Pretty rad, really. I've managed to memorize where all my Lego is and I've set it up to have little pathways between all the sets. So far I managed not to trip over any of them, although I do have to sneak around the living room if I go downstairs at night...ninja style!
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Apr 17, 2012 06:05
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Man, you are going to walk down the stairs one day, feeling groggy, and step on it, injuring your foot, and then falling and twisting your spine out of place. Your foot will hurt worse.
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Apr 17, 2012 07:04
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Sean OFarrell posted:I think I'm finally done. It's the ultimate brick to step on in the dark. It also looks pretty rad.
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Apr 17, 2012 07:23
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Sean OFarrell posted:Alright guys, this is my first real MOC in the last 6 years. I'd appreciate any and all feedback please. For structural accuracy, you might want to put some amount of yard between the otter wall and he keep, on the sides. That way when the tolls break through the wall, gods of stone and beer forbid, there will be room to fight them before they are able to assault the main keep itself.
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Apr 17, 2012 13:10
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Saint Sputnik posted:She makes the case in the video that they did foster gender segregation. You see that in modern ads -- "build it! blow it up! you and dad together!" I agree that it's part of the "80s-ization," shall we say, of toys, especially those aimed at boys... but it shows a conscious decision on their part to start tailoring an otherwise gender-neutral product directly to boys. Yeah, I pretty much agree with this. Not only would it be nice to see more female minifigs, but I'd also see way less emphasis on violence. I don't have kids yet, but it kind of disturbs me that pretty much every theme now has some sort of gun or weapon. Some parts of the video were a bit too "FIGHT THE MALE MALEOCRACY" for my tastes but the clips of advertisements they showed were pretty telling. I think the larger problem is that they've taken a product that caters to a particular personality trait (creative building) and decided that this trait only occurs in males; the male-centric theming is a natural consequence of this.
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Apr 17, 2012 14:16
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Saint Sputnik posted:I really don't see why they don't include more female firefighters, police officers, etc. And that's not just with a potential girl audience in mind. You get the token space girl, or princess or damsel in distress, but it would benefit boys to see women in otherwise male-dominated fields as a normal thing. Forest Police Station has a female ranger. Garbage Truck has a female worker. Recycling Truck has a female boss (or maybe a customer) Police Station has a female police officer. Fire Station I think has a female fire fighter? Given that, a small typical set from police or fire is going to have a male character. smackfu fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Apr 17, 2012 |
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Apr 17, 2012 15:42
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smackfu posted:A few off the top of my head: until we saw the female minifigs my sister and I just assumed they could be either gender when we played.  the first two could be male or female - the third is still pretty androgynous - the rest have more specific traits that sort of pidgeonhole them into one sex or another
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Apr 17, 2012 16:06
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Arnold of Soissons posted:For structural accuracy, you might want to put some amount of yard between the otter wall and he keep, on the sides. That way when the tolls break through the wall, gods of stone and beer forbid, there will be room to fight them before they are able to assault the main keep itself. I'll see what I can do to modify it, maybe make the front wall a bit wider. The problem is that the keep is integrated into the outer wall for extra sturdiness. That might have to wait till September though cuz I'm out of town for the next four months.
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Apr 17, 2012 16:26
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Mr. Glass posted:
I have to agree with Travis343. Having grown up in the heyday of "gender neutral" LEGO, I think it's less LEGO's conscious decision to market only to boys and more the market itself. I'm old enough that Zack came out just after I was a little "too old" for LEGO. Despite the gender neutral attitude of LEGO before then, I can tell you without a doubt, it was almost always considered a boy's toy by the market. It wasn't always placed out in the boy's section -- I remember Toys R Us having it in the far side of the store, past all the girl's stuff and the baby stuff. Kay Bee however, placed it right in the middle of the boy's stuff. I cannot, for the life of me, remember any girls at school buying or playing with LEGO. I cannot remember any of my female cousins having LEGO. Remember, this was a time when gender roles were very defined. All toys, regardless of marketing, were slotted into "girl's toys" and "boy's toys". GI Joe was originally a 12 inch "action figure" designed and marketed because boys not only wouldn't play with dolls, but parents wouldn't buy them for boys either. I cannot stress to you how segmented the market was when I was born in 1973. Even if your parents didn't enforce gender roles (there were some very liberal parents who didn't), they were quickly and ruthlessly enforced on the playground (if you were a boy playing with Barbie, that was like begging for an rear end-kicking). If the core of your market is boys -- because in the late 70s and early 80s that's all that was playing with LEGO -- why wouldn't you target your marketing toward them? That's just a smart use of money. And it's not like LEGO doesn't want to sell to girls, they very obviously do. It's just that the marketing attempts to girls tends to fail and people still (wrongly) see LEGO as a boy's toy, just as people still see Barbie as a girl's toy. Should Mattel have kept pushing Barbie on boys and spending millions trying to market a toy to a demographic that's never going to buy into it? Or was creating GI Joe the better choice? The market is defined by a lot more than just simple advertisement. Perhaps gender roles are going away, but blaming LEGO for creating an environment that's existed since the first toys were ever sold is disingenuous. You're basically ignoring the way things were at the time and judging the marketing not only by contemporary standards but your own bias as well. einTier fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Apr 17, 2012 |
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Apr 17, 2012 17:35
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smackfu posted:A few off the top of my head: I think the ratio might be slightly better among collectible figs (I counted 25 girls out of about 107, not counting nonhumanoids), but then you have to look at the roles they're given: bride, cheerleader, geisha, some dancers and musicians. The athletes are fine, but the surgeon is really the only one that you could say doesn't play directly to a stereotype. And yeah given that they're meant to be immediately recognizable characters, you'd probably want to lean on stereotypes. But I would question why, say, the graduate couldn't have been a woman. It's like male is the "default." einTier posted:I'm old enough that Zack came out just after I was a little "too old" for LEGO. Despite the gender neutral attitude of LEGO before then, I can tell you without a doubt, it was almost always considered a boy's toy by the market. It wasn't always placed out in the boy's section -- I remember Toy's R Us having it in the far side of the store, past all the girl's stuff and the baby stuff. Kay Bee however, placed it right in the middle of the boy's stuff. I cannot, for the life of me, remember any girls at school buying or playing with LEGO. I cannot remember any of my female cousins having LEGO. Reminds me, I haven't seen a store yet that put Friends among the rest of the Lego sets. They're always in the pink aisles. e: \/\/\/ No boobs/eyelashes. They've gotten terrific with detail in the past few years actually and I'd love to learn more about who designs them Saint Sputnik fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Apr 17, 2012 |
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Apr 17, 2012 18:45
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Is the graduate necessarily a male? It uses a generic Lego face IIRC. Same with like, Mime. Not necessarily one or the other.
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Apr 17, 2012 18:49
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Taking a class called children and culture, last lecture today, we discussed the bifurcation of genders in toys an for children in general. Prof brought up friends and I defended it as 'a good thing.' You can't just cherry pick the beauty salon and ignore the vet and the musician and the loving engineer. So over the next few days I'm going to work on a write up of Lego and Gender from the 70s to today to send to my prof/also for fun. E: and thanks to the awful iPhone app I have apparently double posted.
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Apr 17, 2012 19:10
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Sockser posted:Taking a class called children and culture, last lecture today, we discussed the bifurcation of genders in toys an for children in general. Prof brought up friends and I defended it as 'a good thing.' I'd be interested in seeing it. And yeah it's cool they made the engineer (albeit with purple tools). I wonder if they have sales figures broken down by individual sets, though that might reflect parent choice more than child demand.
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Apr 17, 2012 20:32
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Look at the microscope and vise in the workshop in the friends set, they are so nicely built and very simple yet you can tell exactly what it is looking at it. You even have a robot in the set. It just has so much more going on than most sets and I really hope that the teams creative efforts on the friends sets continue.
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Apr 17, 2012 21:18
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Saint Sputnik posted:(albeit with purple tools) Pretend they're anodized aluminium for extra badass points.
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Apr 17, 2012 23:11
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Saint Sputnik posted:I think the ratio might be slightly better among collectible figs (I counted 25 girls out of about 107, not counting nonhumanoids), but then you have to look at the roles they're given: bride, cheerleader, geisha, some dancers and musicians. The athletes are fine, but the surgeon is really the only one that you could say doesn't play directly to a stereotype. You also have a Valkyrie, Space Girl, Cleopatra, Cave Girl, Nurse, Punk Rocker Girl and Zookeeper. Don't cherrypick the "worst" examples and ignore the ones that don't fit into your argument. edit: purple is an awesome color. What's wrong with the color purple?
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Apr 17, 2012 23:12
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Also the skateboarder (or is that the punk girl?)
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Apr 17, 2012 23:13
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Slung Blade posted:Also the skateboarder (or is that the punk girl?) Yeah, the Collectable Minifigs have been pretty drat nice to gender roles, with a fair amount of the figures either being gender ambiguous or having no gender at all(robots, monsters, clowns, people in costumes).
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Apr 17, 2012 23:17
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The recent action themes: Atlantis, Pharaoh's Quest, Dino and Alien Conquest have a really bad female to male minifig ratio and the women are mostly in support roles. It's understandable in the licensed sets (The first wave of Lord of the Rings has none) as they're dictated by the source material. But Dino has 14 figures if you buy all the sets. 1 is female. Pharaoh's Quest has 11 (human) if you buy all the sets. 1 is female. Atlantis 2 out of 16. Some of this is skewed by the fact that they are character based and in PQ for example the main character is male and appears in most of the sets. But even so there is one female character in one set and that's it. I don't expect parity but it feels like a missed opportunity to me with the nonlicensed themes.
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Apr 17, 2012 23:27
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I picked up a TIE Interceptor & Death Star (9676) and man, these are some terrible LEGOs. They have no clutch whatsoever and fall apart with barely a touch, it's like they're subcontracting MEGA BLOKS. The pilot will hardly even stay on the base. Hopefully this isn't a trend 
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Apr 17, 2012 23:40
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Don't forget about Ann Lee
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Apr 18, 2012 00:32
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Gravy Jones posted:The recent action themes: Atlantis, Pharaoh's Quest, Dino and Alien Conquest have a really bad female to male minifig ratio and the women are mostly in support roles. And almost always they are only in the biggest set, this even dates back to the first female minifigure in the black seas barracuda. They have done the exact same thing with the friends line, the only male is in the largest set. I love the garlic bulb printing on her pants!
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Apr 18, 2012 00:34
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emoltra posted:I picked up a TIE Interceptor & Death Star (9676) and man, these are some terrible LEGOs. They have no clutch whatsoever and fall apart with barely a touch, it's like they're subcontracting MEGA BLOKS. The pilot will hardly even stay on the base. Hopefully this isn't a trend  My little red-striped interceptor is just fine, so I'm not sure what your problem is?
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Apr 18, 2012 00:58
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So I picked up the ADU HQ set in the end and it's amazing. I've only just completed the 2nd bag, with the human fighter jet in it (the cockpit doesn't close properly, I'm pretty sad about that) and today I'm going to do another couple of bags. To tie this in to the recent discussion there is one human female in the set.
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Apr 18, 2012 14:14
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