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For the girls!
bookmum
londonMember Posts: 1,392
Reading all the love/hate debate about the mini dolls has got me thinking about the other 'girls themes' over the years. Was the scala range from the 90s ever released in the UK? I have no memory of ever seeing it. And what about Belleville? I have one set that I got from a toy shop in Oxford so I assume Belleville was released in UK but again I don't really remember it being around. Are there any UK AFOLS out there that collected either of these RANGES?
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Comments
I remember quite enjoying playing with them at the time, it didn't really occur to me that they were 'girls' sets...
The dolls however I find a bit creepy (the baby on particular). Mini-dolls are wonderful by comparison to them! I used to resell them but now discovered a coworker and her daughter like them so I give them to her now.
Never had Scala either, but Yvonne Doyle from Brickish has done quite a few MOCs with Scala dolls. I seem to remember a hospital in particular. Her latest models feature Barbies and Monster High dolls but Scala scale builds, I think.
Paradisa, on the other hand, I had several sets of as a kid and still have now. Plus last year I acquired a lovely boxed set of Dolphin Point that eluded me as a child :-)
Gender politics and children shouldn't mix.
Like @LostInTranslation I have aquired a few bits of Belville stuff for parts, some of the colours are great and with a little imagination some parts have been quite useful (I once used Belville scale Ice Skates on a microscale spaceship test build) However the designs on most of the sets are quite lack lustre to say the least. I would like at some point to build a spaceship at a scale to fit a Belville Doll for no other reason than the thought made me laugh when I had it.
Another failed "for girls" theme to look up Clikits - which were jewelry building sets. Again as sets they hold no appeal to me, but the parts are connectable to standard system parts so after getting the limited edition Fairy Bricks LCP set and finding out the wand was done with Clikits parts I couldn't help but get a couple of Clikits sets to see what else the parts could be used for.
While I agree with the sentiment it was obvious that the OP was asking about themes that had been marketed in this way, which is still a very common practice - yes views are changing but to ignore that it has been done and will likely still be successfully done for some time is naive.
@bookmum - a while ago there was a thing running amongst a few members here part of which involved taking daft pictures with a belville baby, here are my two
However, I recall hearing that Belville actually didn't do too badly in Scandinavia, which is why it stuck around longer than Scala, Clikits, or Paradisa. They were definitely in retail stores there, although I don't know if it was typically the full lineup or not.
The Belville and Technic figures are nicely in a similar scale, and I've used them occasionally (as pictured above in the Mini Cooper) as figures for large scale vehicles like the VW Beetle, as well as the UCS X-Wing, and others, where the scale is close enough to be fudged.
Scala ... I have yet to find a good use for. Some of the parts were interesting in the girl-targeted lineups, but Scala and Clikits were probably the worst value-wise, considering I'd only want a small handful of the parts. The Scala "house-building" system is interesting, but it has a very non-LEGO feel to it, since it's so grossly made of pre-fab parts.
The new stuff's great, though. I'm not a huge fan of the mini-dolls, but they're not too bad. They have their uses. But the rest of the sets are actually chock full of very useful elements, and a nice, bright color palette. Unlike some Belville sets I own, I've never felt any buyer's remorse for Friends, Elves, or Disney Princess sets.
DaveE
They seemed so stereotypically girly. (Friends sometimes does this, but has toned down the pastels and many sets have nonstereotypical themes)
The figures do look weird. (I like the realistic look of minidolls; if only they could sit down)
The sets seem particularly expensive, 20c per piece and up versus the usual 10c or so. (Disney Princess does this somewhat, but around 15c; Friends and Elves are average)
Paradisa doesn't seem so bad.)
In general I haven't gone back to old sets unless I had them in my KFOL collection.
Yes, gender roles often get excessive.
Then a couple of years back I bought a bag of mixed bits and found some newer versions. Would these have been Belville?
(Apologies for including Galidor, I didn't mean to ruin your day, sorry)
That's (left-to-right):
* Galidor
* Scala
* Belville
* Belville (kid)
* Technic Figure
* DUPLO (older style)
* DUPLO (newer style)
* Jack Stone
* Minifig
* Game fig
* Statuette figure
DaveE
@davee123 I have no memory of ever seeing or hearing of this range. I'm guessing it was never released in the UK.
He looks quite dishy *in the picture, I'm guessing real life not so great.
*for an action figure obviously.
That was when LEGO was floundering around, trying to find the new "it" product. They had a TV show, and some of the toys had electronics in them that "interacted" with the TV while it was on.
Hobbyists of the time were already bemoaning Bionicle in 2001, and with Galidor in 2002, it was awful. I guess pretty similar to the backlash against mini-dolls, except NOBODY was defending Galidor!
DaveE
The first incarnation of Scala was introduced in 1979, as a line of buildable jewelry. But it only lasted until 1980 before being discontinued. According to Brickset there were only nine sets released.
Through the 1980's there were no Lego themes specifically marketed to girls, and it wasn't until 1992 that Paradisa, a sub-theme of Town, was introduced. It was kind of an early version of Friends but with minifigs, and was discontinued after 1997. Belville was introduced in 1994, and then Scala (Mk II) appeared in 1997. The second incarnation of Scala was a line of large-scale dolls (and is possibly the only time Lego has recycled a theme name?). It was discontinued after 2001, but Belville lasted until 2008.
Clikits, which like the original Scala was a line of buildable jewelry was introduced in 2003 and lasted until 2006.
As a kid who got into LEGO in the early 90s, the girl-oriented theme I was most exposed to was Paradisa. My brother and I would get Paradisa sets ostensibly as gifts for my mom, which is kind of silly in hindsight, because of course we were the ones who ultimately built and played with them, and of course it was our collection the parts inevitably wound up in. We also had a pink LEGO Basic bucket (#1688) and a pink Tyco "Dream Builders" playground bucket. I was aware of Belville from the LEGO catalogs, but didn't have any Belville sets in my collection.
Scala and Clikits ultimately passed me by. Not only was peer pressure even more intense by that time, but I was too heavily invested in other LEGO themes like Bionicle to pay them much mind.
However, I still do have a lot of nostalgia for the sets, particularly #6414 and #6416. They're awful by today's standards, but I have fond memories of playing with them.
I have #5585 in my KFOL collection. #4625 and #10694 were two of the few things I bought during my dark age.
@Aanchir Looking at http://brickset.com/sets/theme-Town/subtheme-Paradisa again - yeah, the prices were way high. By "doesn't seem so bad" I meant the design. It's simple compared to today, but a lot of older sets were, and I kinda like the clean look. #6350 and #6376 are two regular town sets form the same time with similar complexity.
If you look at popular girl-targeted toys of the time, pastel colourschemes seem as popular as bright ones, but if you were making, say, Polly Pocket in the mid-90s, it was a new thing and you weren't tied to decades' of people's perceptions of your toy as being mostly primary-coloured, like Lego.
Perhaps TLG themselves noted the pastel thing; when you look at the sets in release order, it becomes apparent that in the theme's last year, they added magenta elements that brighten things up a little...
In the end, though, it doesn't seem to have desperately hurt sales, given that the theme went on for five years: these days, we'd call that a success.
You should click on inbox then the message with my name on it to reply. In future if you want to start a conversation you can click on the person's profile then 'message'.
It contains the often posted back page text advocating gender neutrality in Lego play (which when posted has always been presented by itself). So that does confirm the page exists and wasn't a photoshop mockup, but looking at the overall context of the catalogue that contains it, it doesn't appear so progressive as it does when presented in isolation. It almost becomes like the "gamble responsibly" disclaimers that Australian betting websites are mandated to include at the end of their ads.
http://images.brickset.com/library/view/?f=catalogues/c74ukhom
Also an interesting article I found on Lego and gender https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/05/08/part-i-historical-perspective-on-the-lego-gender-gap/
I notice the catalogue is about stereotypical play with general models rather that stereotypically girly models in and of themselves. I guess that's better.