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I've found it rather curious which sets my daughters have been most interested in. While they have never shown more than a passing interest into the City sets, they implore me to buy the Ninjago and Hero Factory sets. My oldest is constantly building "Stormer" or "Furno" out of DUPLO or LEGO bricks. They have demonstrated only mild interest in the Friends line, mostly because I am excited about the Friends line.
What excites me most about the Friends sets, apart from all the new colors, accessories, and truly creative builds, is the fact that I can finally get the adult women who buy presents for my daughters (i.e. grandmothers, aunts, etc.) to buy LEGO. For years I have been trying to convince these buyers of toys for my girls that LEGO bricks are things my daughters want. I always get the incredulous responses.
Many adult women who are not fans of LEGO themselves believe that LEGO is for boys. And I don't think it has anything to do with the fact that LEGO has few sets with female minifigs. There are women who, when shown a LEGO brick, a Lincoln Log, an Erector set, or any similar toy, would always say that those toys are for boys. It seems the only way to change these minds is to paint the toy pink and add sparkles.
When faced with consumers like this, is it any wonder that LEGO has chosen the "market to boys" or "market to girls" duality over greater gender neutrality?
As a curious aside, while my daughters ask for the "boy sets" like Ninjago and Hero Factory, they all fought over who got to play with the princess figure from the Kingdoms set. The contention was relived only slightly when I picked up the Medieval Market Village set and the Mill Raid set, which had other female minifigs. So while they want to be ninja and superheros, they want to be princess ninja and princess superheros. :P
I'd like to see more of the female minifigs from the minifigure series incorporated into actual LEGO sets. There have been so many great female minifigs that would be so easy to include in a City theme set. Give us a zoo with the female zookeeper, a sports field with cheerleaders, or a hospital with a female nurse or doctor. (I'd also like to see more balance between vehicles and buildings in sets. Campers and fire engines and mining equipment are nice, but I'd like to build the City where all of these vehicles reside.)
I'd love to see this trend change, since it is one that has bugged me a lot since childhood. But unlike adult perceptions of building toys, this is probably one trend that would take some major cultural changes to break, and unfortunately those changes might be beyond TLG's reach as a toy company. But there are some hints that the prevailing culture might be shifting towards a greater appreciation for female characters in media, what with shows like The Legend of Korra. Hopefully I will get to see some of these kind of changes within my lifetime.
The whole cultural gender divide is both a cause and a symptom of this. Since parents and gift-givers often won't buy toys for a girl if they don't consider them "girly", and they often have very peculiar stereotypes for what is "girly" and what is not, it's hard for certain toy genres to build a female consumer base. And as a consequence, the only surefire way to ensure success is to create very "gendered" toys, so boy-oriented toys reduce the number of female characters and girl-oriented toys become color-coded with pastels. The genders of toys become segregated on toy store shelves and are marketed with buzzwords known to appeal to either gender's cultural biases.
Both of these lines have been successful. Both of these lines have had more than the the token female minifig.
While one could argue the winter theme can get away with female minifigs due to it targeting adults, that is not the case with the above themes. One is licensed and one is not and both are targeted at kids.
I do understand what you are saying, and I do agree with that for specific Lego lines, but it is obviously not the case for all. I also do not think Ninjago would have been harmed by having Nya be a Ninja instead of a Samurai, or by having her be a Samurai, and there being a female Ninja.
It really comes down to finding the right line that will appeal to both genders. We that may be hard, it is not impossible.
Back on topic... back in the 80s I remember not getting too worried about whether the characters were male or female, but certainly I viewed the 'generic' lego figure as a 'lego man' - I think that the posts here that have said that a Lego figure is a man until it's specifically a woman are right on the money, simply because it's a more manly shape - the female figures often have to provide visual cues in some form to indicate it's a female, though pleasingly there's now a really good range of female hair available to convert any of the minifigs using the basic minifig face to female, this can only be a positive thing.
One other real positive that has already been mentioned is the fact that unlike the Belville and some of the other girl-centric lines, the Friends sets are still Lego sets - ok, they're not the same colours (though actually the new palette is lovely to use) but it means they interact so much better with the rest of the Lego range and parts, and the general scale, are pretty interchangable - Olivia's House can with a few little adjustments look rather nice as part of a modular line up :)
Harry Potter is an interesting case, because as far as I know the theme has always had somewhat stronger appeal with girls than the typical LEGO licensed theme. Back in its debut year, girls were specifically targeted with "dollhouse"-style vignettes (I won't lie, I had a couple of these myself), and even in the 2010 revival of the theme, the furnishings of the sets echoed the kind of play patterns TLG has been trying to encourage with LEGO Friends. I believe the source material's strong appeal with girls is probably a big part of why the theme has been consciously targeted at boys and girls alike. With licensed themes, you have more of that kind of liberty, since the toys aren't the deciding factor in whether kids perceive the franchise as "girly" or "boyish"-- in most cases, the source material is. And I've never known anyone to say Harry Potter is "for girls".
Another reason, of course, is the fact that girls were having trouble identifying with the blocky minifigure they way they would with a more human-like doll. And since the female play patterns TLG observed prior to the development of LEGO Friends emphasized the importance to girls of identifying with the toy on a personal level, that would have been a major roadblock.
With that said, even though LEGO Friends parts are (mostly) not intercompatible with regular minifigures, there was a strong effort to maintain the LEGO brand identity with them. This is why although LEGO Friends figures have a lot of differences from classic figs, they maintain the standard U-shaped hands of the LEGO minifigure. Earlier concepts had more detailed hands like on the Hagrid minifigure, but again TLG wanted Friends to be a mainstay and so didn't want something that could be confused with a generic doll.
Some concepts of the Friends figs also had rotating hands, like the classic minifigure. This was rejected in the final version because it lacked the rest of the fig's smoothness and made their arms invariably resemble thick sleeves.
Overall the Friends fig is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it's quite different from the classic minifigure, and falls just short of having the same level of movement and versatility. But on the other, it fits the LEGO brand identity far better than the Belville or Scala dolls ever did. What I really am curious to see is whether more diverse lines emerge that support the mini-doll, such as a castle/fantasy line of some sort. But really LEGO Friends is still in its infancy and I imagine TLG has a lot of thinking to do about where they want to go with their sudden success with the female demographic.
All I'm saying is that for every extra minifigure, I'm losing 50-100 pieces that could have been included instead for the same price point. Or in the case of vehicles like the X-wing, Y-wing, and TIE, I'm paying an extra $5 or $10 per set to get figures that don't have anything to do with the set or even fit into it. I'd rather have the lower price tag in that case. In a set that is more of a structure than a vehicle, the structure itself is pretty much always given short shrift and feels half-complete. I'd rather have 2 or 3 less figures and a more complete structure.
It should also be noted that TLG's policy of putting unrelated figs in Star Wars sets probably has to do with their understanding that it might be a while before they get a better opportunity to release those figs, as well as a desire to broaden the sets' appeal beyond people who didn't buy an earlier version of the vehicle/setting. Certainly in sets like this year's X-Wing, Y-Wing, and TIE Fighter they aren't cutting any corners in the design for the figs, even if they are bumping up the price point slightly. Even Jabba's Palace, which has a huge number of figs, is IMO one of the best setting-based Star Wars sets of all time. Then again, I was fond of last year's Echo Base, which allowed buyers to recreate a decent number of memorable scenes, so my opinions don't really line up with the typical LEGO Star Wars fan.
I'm not saying that this applies to all sets from the 80s and now. There are sets with larger ratios, like the spaceship #6929 from 1981 that had a solitary fig with 242 pieces. But I think your perspective is biased by nostalgia for the sets of the 80s. I think set design has improved and set design is a very strong selling point these days. And of course when it comes to Star Wars and other licensed themes, figures play a very dominant role. However, it is to be expected since characters are such an important part of the source material.
@murphquake Oh cool. It was interesting seeing your collection so soon after I stumbled onto that picture. I certainly didn't realize how you get them like that until you explained the process with brasso.
@Sherlockbones Although I like the simplicity of the classic smile face, the hair has gotten so much better. Men figs all had the same bland haircut and the women figs just had terrible hair.