Please use our links: LEGO.com • Amazon
Recent discussions • Categories • Privacy Policy • Brickset.com
Brickset.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, the Amazon.com.ca, Inc. Associates Program and the Amazon EU Associates Programme, which are affiliate advertising programs designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Comments
Those two sets marked to 7.50 are actually the two sets that retail for 5.99 at the Lego store.
They are actually marked up at Amazon.
Tammy
JAmie
But seriously; these guys did an excellent job! They should be hider by LEGO!...(c:
LEGO Friends undergo plastic surgery: http://thebrickblogger.com/2012/01/lego-friends-undergo-plastic-surgery/
We have a three-year-old friend whose mother took him to Target to look at big boy LEGO, he's moving up from Duplo, she couldn't get him past the Friends sets.
We've also just bought our first Friends sets to give as a birthday present to a school friend. I am really appreciating LEGO including Andrea so that we have someone the little girl may visually identify with. I don't know if she'll care but I'm glad the options there if she likes dolls that look a little bit like her.
It's all sterotypical girl likes which may be a hit with SOME kids, it's not for a lot of others and especially not for the ones trying to break down sterotype walls. If they'd subtract the girl colors, put in REAL minifigures, and have stuff like a doctors office, mechanic, and other "boy" type careeres; that would be the potential for a perfect girl line.
It reallys like that should of learned their lesson after 5 previous girl lines not working out.
^^ "Doctors office" -> there's a vets office.
"Mechanic" -> there's an inventors workshop complete with tools.
I'm fed up of people saying the line is a fail and what Lego should have (not "should of", for the record) done. They did their research and followed up on what the results told them.
TLG are a business. If their research tells them girls want minidolls, they will use minidolls. If their research tells them pastel colours will sell, that's what they're going to sell. It's not TLG's job to "break down stereotype walls".
I personally can see your point, I would prefer minifigs in the sets. But I'm not the target market....
She likes pink and purple, that is what she wants. We have all the sets stacked up in a row, she walks right over to the Friends sets and points to them. She'll sit on the couch with a sealed box set and hug it saying that she likes it and that it is "hers".
If it is selling well, then it is a success for TLG. It more or less stops there, from a business point of view.
Now, it might be a fail for you personally, and you're of course welcome to that opinion. If you think the sets suck, that is fine, by all means say so. But it sounds like you think the rest of us should agree with you, and I think by and large, we don't.
I don't think the sets are selling well just because they are pink and purple, the prior line, Belvelle, was pink and purple as well, and by all accounts it didn't do well at all. This line is well thought out, they gave the girls names, they have a good theme, and the sets are just well designed.
So they are minidolls instead of minifigs? Oh well, that seems to be working for them. Yes, I too would prefer minifigs, but life moves on.
The research was rigged? Who knows, who cares. There's enough research on either side of any issue that it all turns into noise. If kids don't want it, parents won't buy it. And it'll go away.
We can't wait to start getting the new sets!
Erm, I'm missing your logic here. Your problem is that the sets are designed in colours girls actually seem to like??
In fact, your entire argument seems to make no logical sense.
If it was found that girls identify with a vet more than a doctor, why run counter to that finding? (and I don't agree with you that "doctor" is a male profession).
Why would the research be rigged? Lego will have looked at the results and made the decisions that will ensure the sets sell. Why would they decide to make minidolls, creating new moulds at great cost, if their research showed that their target market preferred minifigs?
"Lego is not in the business of changing stereotypes, they are in the business of selling boxes of plastic bricks"
In that regard, I think they are doing pretty well.
I am actually not surprised by this. It is pretty much the same thing that AG does in most of it's other lines. All of Ninjago has one female character, and that is Nya. Lord of the Rings doesn't have any female.
I do wish that Lego would add more males to Friends, or females to other lines.
My girls liked the first wave of Friends. They have absolutely no interest in the second wave. They aren't interested in horses, and there seems to be a bit too much emphasis there. I am curious to see how Friends does with the second wave.
If they'd subtract the girl colors, put in REAL minifigures, and have stuff like a doctors office, mechanic, and other "boy" type careeres; that would be the potential for a perfect girl line.
I have to disagree with this.
The new minifigs is actually one of the big reasons that my girls are drawn to the sets. The girls actually do look 'realistic' in that they have clothes that are similar to many 10 year old girls, and they look like 10 year old girls developmentally, unlike Barbie who is a full grown woman with an unrealistic figure.
I don't understand why 'boy' careers would make this a perfect line for girls, and why is a doctor's office considered a boy career? My girls generally have no interest in City-type stuff, which looking at it globally is really is what Friends is. They don't want a mechanic or a police set, they don't want more city, but focused on girls.
The 'perfect' girl line for my girls was Harry Potter. It had a good number of females. It had an amazing story line. It was adventurous. The females were great role models. Hermione is a strong female character.
That is really what my girls want more of.
They want a line that has a large number of female and male minifigs.
They want a line that is fun or adventurous, but not simply focused on fighting and on vehicles.
They just really struggle finding any line like that, especially now that HP is phasing out.
My girls, though, are not who Lego is targeting with Friends.
Friends, is really targeting the girl that historically have had no interest in Lego. They are trying to find a way to pull those girls in. If they do, they increase their market, and create a new group to sell to. They did a ton of market research on what sells to that group.
For me, the big mistake that Lego has made, is that for the girls they do pull in, they haven't bothered to make any other 'gender-neutral' lines, like HP. When girls are done with Friends, and still want Lego, we are still back to the same issue of most lego lines focusing on
vehicles
fighting
highly male minfig heavy
Tammy
One of my male friends is a vet i'll let him know he is a girl :-D. And actually the medical profession is very female dominated. Most nurses are female and most of the doctors in the hospital where I work are women, as are the majority of the psyotheropists.
I wont buy the friends line its not aimed at me. But I do think Lego have done very well. My local toy shop always has a small gaggle of girls by the friends section and its often sold very quickly when it comes in. I would say it has been a massive success.
It must be doing very well... Not Ninjago well, but really well...
Perhaps this could become an ongoing series, just like City is for boys... (yes, yes, girls can play with City too, you know what I mean!)
The title of this threshed is will friends Lego be a hit or a miss... It is a hit, end of story.
I suspect it is very specific as to where the sets are selling, since several people have reported stores are not moving stock.
The fact that they are almost never on sale is a really good sign however... I've got them all on my watchlist on Amazon and have yet to see a nice sale on them. Grr... :)
I dunno, maybe it's just me. People don't see me as a very stereotypical girl, but I don't see why there isn't room for dolls and pink and purple next to my greasy tool kit. In fact, I prefer if my tool box is pink!
Regardless, I think the sets are nice and I know at least one of my nieces loves them at the age of five. Like it or not, little girls like pink and purple. If it gets them interested in LEGO it's doing its job.
I see both sides.
The color argument is basically, it is yet another item focused at girls that they have made pink/purple. It's for girls, so slap on the pink. Barbie RV, never mind that bother genders might like it, let's make it pink, since it is for girls. Oh, let's add variety and we will go for.... Purple. ;-)
I understand both sides here. Companies do it because it sells. (What I have seen, though, is that by 8 and 9 many are beginning to outgrow everything being pink/purple.)
There is also a point at which is pink out there because it is popular or is pink popular because it is out there. It really is both and marketing/advertisement does impact the pinkarama fest that is out there. :-)
I don't fault Lego going with the pastel colors they chose. I do enjoy having some cool new colors. They did the research and probably found it sells. That is business and that is fine. They made the right dd idiom for their company.
As a parent of girls, though, I am personally tired of pink and purple and that so much is made in those colors. I have a kid that adores yellow and orange, and it is hard to find things in those colors.
Tammy