21110 Research Institute

Paperballpark

$19.99. Info from http://www.brickpicker.com/forum/index.php/topic/10156-new-exclusives-ucs-tumbler-ucs-slave-i-mini-cooper-exo-suit-and-more/page-3

I could be wrong, but I'll take a guess that this is the Female Minifigures 'Ideas' set. If so, it's good that they're going ahead with it.

TheLoneTensor

If it is, the gender-neutral name begs the question, will there be males in this research institute?

CapnRex101

^ I would not be in the least bit surprised if they did something like that.

One could criticise LEGO for not producing enough sets showing women in strong and independent roles, but producing a set purely based on that might incite just as much dislike, as it seems like an almost desperate attempt to calm complaints.

I hope the set is produced though as I do feel like we need a greater number of female Minifigures.

CCC

TBH I wouldn't buy it if it turns out to be just female scientists.

TheLoneTensor

What if they were Swedish bikini scientists?

GothamConstructionCo

^ Army building springs to mind ;-)

scrumper

^^ Perhaps you could suggest that to the original designer.

Bumblepants

I imagine someone will get mad no matter how Lego handles this set. "Not enough of this!" "Too much of that!" "How dare they do it this way!" "It looks like a TurkishAustrianSomethingOrOther!"

Huw

It's unfortunate that the next Ideas set was revealed to retailers thus undermining the usual fanfare, isn't it...

tamamahm

TheLoneTensor said:

What if they were Swedish bikini scientists?

What if they were Austrian male body-building scientists?


Lego has done an all female set of three minifigs before, they have done tons of all male minifig sets before. I am not sure I see where there would be folks upset if they changed it up and did am all female small build set.

paulmison

I assume they're meant in jest, but some of the comments here implying that the next Ideas set, assuming it's based on the Female Minifigures project, should include a male fig (or that the women should wear bikinis) seem to me to be in pretty poor taste.

As tamamahm says, there've been plenty of all male sets, especially at lower price points (I think you had to get to $70 to get the lone female Galaxy Squad astronaut), so could we perhaps just let this project and set reach the market and then see whether or not it does well, rather than snipe at it before it's even announced?

TheLoneTensor

Of course it was meant in jest. It's the internet sir, all good things, including bikinis.

Frankly, I find the concept of a female-only set, bikini-clad or otherwise, a bit pandering. I honestly don't think it's right to say "hey, there are not enough females represented in Lego, so let's have a whole set of just females to make up for it." I'd rather just have the set, and most sets, be comprised of humans, of which > 50% happen to be female.

dougts

^ I mostly agree. Like it or not, LEGO has put the bulk of their female-targeted efforts into Friends/Princess lines. And they are targeting boys with Ninjago, Agents, Superheros, Star Wars, which makes absolute sense as well. The more gender-neutral Creator Expert series generally has a pretty good minifigure mix, as we see with the modulars, the winter village, and now the mixer as well. CITY has gotten better in recent years, but I expect the bulk of City sets are still going to boys, so it is hard to fault LEGO for their minifigure breakdown in that line as well

Doing a playset designed for and targeted specifically to "check a demographic box" seems like a path you wouldn't want to start heading down. I for one hope the set contains two researchers - one man, and one woman, and the "goal" of the set is more about the research and less about the gender

Shib

just add a couple of these and it'll be fine :-P

CCC

dougts said:

Doing a playset designed for and targeted specifically to "check a demographic box" seems like a path you wouldn't want to start heading down. I for one hope the set contains two researchers - one man, and one woman, and the "goal" of the set is more about the research and less about the gender

Yes, that is exactly the reason I wouldn't buy it. City sets have females in, and go somewhat towards representing a true demographic. It's not perfect, but given that most buyers of these are biased towards buying lego for boys not girls, it still hits what they would see as a boys' toy.

I am a scientist (as is my wife) and I would definitely buy a science type set if it was well done. Yet if lego decide to make it all female, I won't bother. It would be less a science set and more a political correctness / we're releasing this to show how gender aware we are set. Their standpoint would then seem to be that male scientists are all crazy, female scientists are normal. I'll just download the instructions for the extras, and make my own minifigs to go with it.

More generally, having it balanced would make the target demographic wider too. How many boys would want an all female set?

Although maybe as it is a cuusoo / ideas set, they will just do a small run of 10,000 or 20,000 or whatever and not care about the more general sales, as they will be snapped up by collectors not so interested by what it represents but more because it is lego.

Huw said:

It's unfortunate that the next Ideas set was revealed to retailers thus undermining the usual fanfare, isn't it...

It's very poor on lego's part to do it this way. Also releasing it to retailers suggests it is a larger run than say the more exclusive Mars Rover. Which again in turn suggests it is going to be more mass produced and so not a small run, so will depend on more general sales.

dougts

^ i gotta think the Mars Rover somewhat got screwed over by the re-branding of Cuusoo to Ideas. But I could be wrong on that

dougts

paulmison said:

As tamamahm says, there've been plenty of all male sets, especially at lower price points (I think you had to get to $70 to get the lone female Galaxy Squad astronaut),

Well of course there are a lot more males in Galaxy Squad, and Ninjago, and now Agents. these sets are being sold overwhelmingly to boys. LEGO does extensive play-testing, they know the right mix of male/female minifigures to target in each theme to maximize sales and minimize poorly performing sets.

paulmison said:

so could we perhaps just let this project and set reach the market and then see whether or not it does well, rather than snipe at it before it's even announced?

Well, I won't snipe too much until I see it, but I will snipe loudly and often about the idea of politically correct pandering in a toy. I don't care how "well" it does, as that is beyond the point of my objections. Since we are speculating that this release is indeed the result of the "Female Minfigures" project, which was blatant and undisguised in it's objectives, I don't think it's too early to raise concerns.

Shib

I think there's a certain amount of issues with how this is being labelled and marketed more than anything else. What was good about the female minifigure project on cuusoo was that it was a little vignette for a few technical professions with one appropriate mini figure for each. If each one of those was a polybag it wouldn't seem as pandering as a set which is say a generic science lab with 3 or 4 all female staff. It becomes hard to see exactly who this is trying to appeal to.
If it was a Friends set with new characters who are focused on professional roles rather than shopping/saving animals then the demographic is clearly the girls market.
You could argue it would appeal to girls who are loosing interest in the Friends theme because they are 'outgrowing' it, but then are girls who have been playing with the sets based on shopping/saving animals going to look twice at a science based set just because it has female characters? Probably not.

As others have said, the feel from the rumour mill is that this could be a set that is just trying to tick a political correctness box. It could turn out completely differently and be very gender neutral if TLG have been clever which would work better, but if it is just a lab with female scientists it's hard to see who will buy it except collectors and massively feminist women who have a daughter who isn't allowed barbies. (Thats a bit of an exaggeration but the point stands)

dougts

I just went back and looked at the original project again and I guess maybe one of my issues with it is that the professions/roles being depicted are ones that LEGO just doesn't do at all. It's not like there has been a slew of male minifigure paleontologists, chemists, and astronomers, or falconers, engineers, and geologists with no female counterparts. There just hasn't been these types of figures of either sex.

These are all wonderful, fascinating, interesting minifigure ideas. making them all female seems like just reversing the perceived problem rather than actually trying to solve it. This is again why my hope is that the "research institute" contains both males and females, and that the focus is on the science and not the politics.

andhe

If they stick in a token man people will complain, and it seems if they do an all female set people will complain. Or we could wait and see what the set actually is... but where's the fun in that?

But for $20, colour me interested.

dougts

andhe said:

If they stick in a token man people will complain

Why would anyone complain about a male being included in a research institute?

at $20, it's 2-3 minifigures at most. 33% to 50% isn't "token" as much as it would be representative.

CCC

dougts said:

andhe said:

If they stick in a token man people will complain

Why would anyone complain about a male being included in a research institute?

at $20, it's 2-3 minifigures at most. 33% to 50% isn't "token" as much as it would be representative.

I guess some would complain that the original cuusoo idea was a female only minifigs set, and this would be a change to that idea. But then they have also changed the title from Female Minifig Set to Research Institute.

CCC

dougts said:

It's not like there has been a slew of male minifigure paleontologists, chemists, and astronomers, or falconers, engineers, and geologists with no female counterparts. There just hasn't been these types of figures of either sex.

In fact there have. There was the (female) scientist in the CMF range. The male scientists tend to be more fictionalized crazy type scientists.

I know there have been space engineer type minifigs that tend to be male in the past, but it would be great to have a male torso lab-coat minifig.

cheshirecat

dougts said:

^ I mostly agree. Like it or not, LEGO has put the bulk of their female-targeted efforts into Friends/Princess lines. And they are targeting boys with Ninjago, Agents, Superheros, Star Wars, which makes absolute sense as well.

...

Doing a playset designed for and targeted specifically to "check a demographic box" seems like a path you wouldn't want to start heading down.

I don't really understand this post. Isn't checking a demographic box exactly what you described in the first few sentences - Friends checks the female demographic, agents, ninjago etc tick the male demographic. Would people have an issue if the 'research institute' was in friends and all women? If ok in friends, why not in CITY? We've had plenty of sets with only male figs in CITY sets.

Personally if they add some male minifigs into the Lego ideas set I think it would be an utter joke and rightfully bring a whole load of bad publicity.

CCC

I've just been having a look at the new parts. Interestingly, this part



belongs to a female minifig in the Agents line



Note that she does not have either boobs or curves printed on the torso, so that it could be used for either female or male figures. If they do gender neutral torsos like this (and labcoats often do that anyway), then the heads can easily be swapped.

Xefan

CCC said:

I know there have been space engineer type minifigs that tend to be male in the past, but it would be great to have a male torso lab-coat minifig.

Aren't the lab-coat minifigs in existence already pretty generic? I found a couple of lab-like coats in the BAM bar at Sheffield and built Krieger from Archer and Walter from Breaking Bad with them.

May not be exactly what you're looking for, a quick Google digs it up on eBay as seen here:

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/OTQwWDEwNjI=/z/gGkAAMXQAI9SJ6U9/$(KGrHqV,!oMFILcTZUjKBSJ6U9dMzg~~60_35.JPG

Any idea where it's originally from anyone?

CCC

Xefan said:

CCC said:

I know there have been space engineer type minifigs that tend to be male in the past, but it would be great to have a male torso lab-coat minifig.

Aren't the lab-coat minifigs in existence already pretty generic? I found a couple of lab-like coats in the BAM bar at Sheffield and built Krieger from Archer and Walter from Breaking Bad with them.

May not be exactly what you're looking for, a quick Google digs it up on eBay as seen here:

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/OTQwWDEwNjI=/z/gGkAAMXQAI9SJ6U9/$(KGrHqV,!oMFILcTZUjKBSJ6U9dMzg~~60_35.JPG

Any idea where it's originally from anyone?

That torso



is from the crazy scientist in MF

That's the problem. They see (male) scientists as crazy, whereas female scientists get a slightly more realistic torso ...

Xefan

Mad scientist torso probably explains why it just seemed to come together when I created WW and Kreiger then :)

dougts

cheshirecat said:

dougts said:

^ I mostly agree. Like it or not, LEGO has put the bulk of their female-targeted efforts into Friends/Princess lines. And they are targeting boys with Ninjago, Agents, Superheros, Star Wars, which makes absolute sense as well.

...

Doing a playset designed for and targeted specifically to "check a demographic box" seems like a path you wouldn't want to start heading down.

I don't really understand this post. Isn't checking a demographic box exactly what you described in the first few sentences - Friends checks the female demographic, agents, ninjago etc tick the male demographic. Would people have an issue if the 'research institute' was in friends and all women? If ok in friends, why not in CITY? We've had plenty of sets with only male figs in CITY sets.

Of course (hardly) no one would object to an all female research lab in Friends. if an all-male research set was put in CITY, I suspect there would be plenty of objection.

I think the difference is all about the presentation. If they release this science set and the description, design, instructions, etc. are all about "here's a little science lab with working instruments, blah blah" and it happens to come with only females - well, I can live with that, but would still feel it was subtle pandering. If their efforts are all about highlighting and 'selling" the female aspect of the set, then I think that is an entirely different thing.

cheshirecat said:

Personally if they add some male minifigs into the Lego ideas set I think it would be an utter joke and rightfully bring a whole load of bad publicity.

an utter joke? can you explain how/why that would be the case? seems like pretty strong language to use

tamamahm

Again, Lego has already had a package of 3 female mini figs all in one set. I have no idea why this becomes a big deal. They have been there and done this.

dougts said:

andhe said:

If they stick in a token man people will complain

Why would anyone complain about a male being included in a research institute?

at $20, it's 2-3 minifigures at most. 33% to 50% isn't "token" as much as it would be representative.

Yet, people complain if we dare to consider 33-50% of females in sets, compared to the token 1 female often seen.


The only way I have an issue with this set is if they use it to say, well look, we are a good corporate company and we have made a $20 dollar set with female minifigs, so ignore that many of our themes have little female representation. Honestly, though, Lego would be stupid to do that.

maniac

Video of results is up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrWK3UIvXYs

TheLoneTensor

tamamahm said:

Again, Lego has already had a package of 3 female mini figs all in one set. I have no idea why this becomes a big deal. They have been there and done this.

dougts said:

andhe said:

If they stick in a token man people will complain

Why would anyone complain about a male being included in a research institute?

at $20, it's 2-3 minifigures at most. 33% to 50% isn't "token" as much as it would be representative.

Yet, people complain if we dare to consider 33-50% of females in sets, compared to the token 1 female often seen.


The only way I have an issue with this set is if they use it to say, well look, we are a good corporate company and we have made a $20 dollar set with female minifigs, so ignore that many of our themes have little female representation. Honestly, though, Lego would be stupid to do that.

I think you may be overstating the "big deal" and level of "complaints." People are just discussing it really. I used the word pandering, but it's not like I'm going to picket TLG if this set goes through in an all female form. Of course, if it's Swedish bikini scientists, I'm all in.

Gooker1

Wow...hitting in August is super quick

Shib

disappointed by how they run these videos now, I remember there used to be a little more about the projects that didn't make it though and I think that knowing why a project didn't get through would help people understand the process better. I also can't help but notice still only 1 set per review, I hope that this isn't an unwritten rule somewhere (that only 1 project can be passed at a time - which might explain the run over of the female mini figure project and land rover project.

I think they've played this one poorly, I think they should have put these out as a series of polys and done more from the project. The original project did not focus on science specifically, so that choice has limited what the female mini figures will be like.

I'm reserving judgement until the final product is shown, but TLG really need to start playing the Ideas theme smarter.

CCC

tamamahm said:

Again, Lego has already had a package of 3 female mini figs all in one set. I have no idea why this becomes a big deal. They have been there and done this.

I think it is about the focus of the set. If it is three minifigs in a predominantly female setting, then I see no problem with having three females. If it is three minifigs in a predominantly male setting, then there is no problem with three males.

Listen to what she says in the video. It is about exploring the world and beyond, a paleontologist, an astronomer and a chemist. She doesn't say it is about women in the work place, women in science, etc.

If the focus of the set is the science, then it is sad if Lego choose to depict science research as a female only occupation. Lego doesn't do science very well - it is either space or crazy monsters. I hope they follow it up with some normal male scientists.

cheshirecat

dougts said:

cheshirecat said:

Personally if they add some male minifigs into the Lego ideas set I think it would be an utter joke and rightfully bring a whole load of bad publicity.

an utter joke? can you explain how/why that would be the case? seems like pretty strong language to use

Because the project was called 'Female Minifigure Set'. It would be like the BTTF set winning and LEGO saying yep, you loved the BTTF car but we're giving you Herbie from The Love Bug instead. It might be cool in of itself but its not what was voted for.

sonsofsceva

This discussion is interesting considering that there is a whole other section of LEGO product in the stores right now, Friends and Disney Princesses. I recall there was a reason that LEGO went with the mini-dolls rather than the minifigures for those sets.
I have no problem with the science sets with female lab techs and scientists. But it seems like the above conversation is forgetting all of the stuff for girls that LEGO is already making (which, btw, are extremely girl heavy - we could talk just as easily about the boy population not being properly represented in those sets, but the whole thing is a bit silly, really, imo).

Shib

^^I get what your saying, but they've chosen to focus this set on the science side, rather than just female mini figures in general, and as @CCC has pointed out there aren't a good deal of male equivalents, so it's not so much balancing the male to female ratio as it is creating a different unbalanced ratio.

cheshirecat

I think though, the issue is neither friends nor disney princess provides a good impression of what girls should be aiming to become when they grow up. The female minifigure set provides images of female figures doing actual proper, inspirational (?) jobs. Im not saying i agree with that, but I suspect that was the thinking.

CCC

Exactly. It wouldn't be so bad if this was a "female minfigure set" in which there was a baker, a scientist and a construction worker, or pick any three jobs.

But this one focuses on (proper) science and females at the same time, at the expense of male scientists. We have no proper male scientists yet, so this set creates the imbalance.

cheshirecat

^ and ^^^ I'm fairly sure that they've not called it 'female minifigure set' because a) its a crap name and b) could result in even more bad publicity.

But are we really complaining that we can't have a set with a couple of female scientists because there aren't any male scientists? The project reached 10,000 votes called 'female minifigure set', a key element being the female minifigures. The argument is beginning to make the whole jabba's palace thing seem positively rational.

Shib

I personally think the sensible choices from the original project would have been one of the science based ones, the firefighter and the bike courier/mail delivery person (however you want to word it) because they could then be easily integrated as part of the city theme and have a wider audience while providing a balance of different possible "role model" careers.

Shib

^^Again, I think the issue is not having a set with all female mini figures in professional/inspirational roles, it's the fact they've picked one individual element of the original project, which has little male counterbalance. I'm not saying that the project shouldn't have made it through or that TLG shouldn't have renamed it, but just the choice of such a focused single set does little to help promote it as part of a set which was to help balance the scales.

CCC

cheshirecat said:

^ and ^^^ I'm fairly sure that they've not called it 'female minifigure set' because a) its a crap name and b) could result in even more bad publicity.

But are we really complaining that we can't have a set with a couple of female scientists because there aren't any male scientists? The project reached 10,000 votes called 'female minifigure set', a key element being the female minifigures. The argument is beginning to make the whole jabba's palace thing seem positively rational.

There were other jobs they could have picked in the submission, so why not a selection?

The point of the original submission seemed to be less the science, and more the female aspect.

cheshirecat

I guess they wanted to meet a particular price point so had to pick one. Yep, a selection would have been better, but to me, just because they picked one doesn't mean they need to, or should, include a male figure too.

Gooker1

cheshirecat said:

^ and ^^^ I'm fairly sure that they've not called it 'female minifigure set' because a) its a crap name and b) could result in even more bad publicity.

But are we really complaining that we can't have a set with a couple of female scientists because there aren't any male scientists? The project reached 10,000 votes called 'female minifigure set', a key element being the female minifigures. The argument is beginning to make the whole jabba's palace thing seem positively rational.

Totally agree that this conversation is a puzzling to me. Obviously for Lego fans, there's no such thing as pleasing everyone. There's always something to complain about.

I for one am excited with this set and I don't give two hoots about it's naming convention, original intention, lack of male scientists or whatever. I'm just hoping it looks cool and it will be a fun addition.

It's funny that there are always people complaining about the lack of female minifigures in the CMF line, but when there's a set that's only three female, people want a male in it.

For Lego fans, you definitely cannot have your cake and eat it too.

tamamahm

TheLoneTensor, my comment on "complaints" stem from many, many discussions on the board over the past year or two, not on this particular thread. In regards to "Big deal", I guess I find it pretty funny to see a huge thread about a 19.99 set that probably is all female, and yet if this set would have all male, it would not be a 'big deal'. In fact, if I made a thread about it, and stated, why do we have a scientist set featuring all makes, It would be stated, that Lego bottom line is related to boys, that it is perfectly acceptable to show a set with all male scientists because they make up so much more of the demographic, and hey look they put a female in set X, so I should be happy.

Do they only pick one set per period? Personally, I do like this set, but I also really enjoyed the Japanese architecture set as well, and was hoping to see that one. August, I do not find surprising, because it is a small set.


@CCC, I do understand your point about the representation of scientists, and it is not something just related to Lego, but across all media. In general scientists are represented as crazy, or dogmatic, or causing the destruction of life as we know it. When their is a female scientist, she is often represented in media as geek/nerd, and do not forget the glasses. Personally I have a large problem with either representation in anything, because I think it impacts at large how the general population sees scientific theory.

At the same time, while I do "get" the issue of the mad scientist, and let us now represent female scientists in a great light, but not male, at least in this case they are hopefully showing good representations of scientists, which I think is positive no matter the gender.

I think I have slightly more issue with the stereotype that Lego has shown in the past of the "helpless" female that has to be saved by the male. I have not looked lately to see if they still have sets out that represent this, but it is a stereotype that puts an entire gender down as opposed to just an entire job description. Both I find stereotypical, and frustrating, though.

Shib

^^^completely agree (and I think CCC is taking it a bit personally because he is a scientist) and this debate is another one of those times that Lego Idea/Cuusoo seems to be much better in theory than in practice. I've had debates with people a couple of times about vignette sized projects, because they would need to be done as poly bag sized sets, I don't think they'd be worth the time investment for TLG to produce from Ideas projects. These would have been great as a series of polys, people could choose the ones that most appeal to themselves/what images they want to project to their kids. But the need to hit a price point means that rather than get a series of nice vignettes, we are likely to get a mixed research lab...which I worry could look messy or else loose the charm of each individual researchers role.

Like I said, I'm reserving judgement on the set itself until I see it, but until then I feel TLG has not made the strongest choice.

CCC

Gooker1 said:

For Lego fans, you definitely cannot have your cake and eat it too.

You can. The CMF series have got better (for me) partly because of tending towards a better gender split, which naturally reveals more subjects. Similarly police and fire sets have started to get female minifigs in them. They are probably more realistic now - 50:50 especially for fire brigade would go too far. City sets are also getting more female minifigs in, not at 50:50 yet but getting there, and are better for it.

Shib

tamamahm said:

Do they only pick one set per period?

I'd like an answer to this too, and although I have only the anecdotal evidence of past reviews to go on, I suspect it is the case. I think the Land Rover and this project both got held back for other sets to pass with the intention of seeing if they could do them in another review, which with the land rover wasn't possible and this was.

I also think it's weird that they've kept two Doctor Who projects listed for the next review after the decision from Ghost Busters that they would generally accept the first to meet the amount of votes to go to review.

I love the idea of Lego Ideas/Cuusoo, and the fact it's given me a Back to the Future set will always make me glad they've been doing it, but I feel like the reality of the process isn't as good as the theory.

CCC

Shib said:

I also think it's weird that they've kept two Doctor Who projects listed for the next review after the decision from Ghost Busters that they would generally accept the first to meet the amount of votes to go to review.

I think it was as they were quite close in time. Also the first changed quite significantly during the process from being a "give us a Dr Who set" with no much substance but no doubt publicised on many DW fan sites to something more realistic later on, whereas the other seemed to have a more genuine build to it from the start.