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Lego To Produce Three Box Sets Featuring Female Scientists
vossman77 writes: 'According to the Chicago Tribune, "Lego will produce a limited-edition box set called Research Institute, featuring three female scientists in the act of learning more about our world and beyond." The concept received 10,000 supporters on the LEGO ideas site. Creator Ellen Kooijman writes in a blog post, "As a female scientist I had noticed two things about the available Lego sets: a skewed male/female minifigure ratio and a rather stereotypical representation of the available female figures. It seemed logical that I would suggest a small set of female mini-figures in interesting professions to make our Lego city communities more diverse." LEGO says, "The final design, pricing and availability are still being worked out, but it's on track to be released August 2014."'
hee hee hee
There have been at least four different Princess Leia Lego minifigs.
Four!
Will the Madame Curie set glow in the dark?
As I read the announcement, it is one set with three figures, not three box sets.
I heard these sets would cost 30% of the sets with male scientists.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
reflects the real world
Does it come with a Lego Dean who can pay them less and deny them tenure when they have children?
Reducing great women to objects! Mere playthings!
Two curved lines on the chest? Eyelashes?
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Why is it a limited edition?
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Probably, but in the recent years Lego has produced boxes that appeal to boys more than girls, mainly by having 99% of the figs being male, and exploring violent themes (war, ninjas, guns, ...) in their "cool" sets.
Whenever Lego tried to attract girls, they managed to produce boxes full of pink, flowers, more pink, rainbows, even more pink, and explore themes such as vacuum cleaning, be beautiful and superficial, and let the boys lead.
It's far from the 90's box sets with houses, trains, space exploration, etc.
My daughter is smart, fun and has numerous talents. I want her to develop equally and compete fairly with other human beings.
Science Its a Girl Thing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
I eagerly await the future Lego bird-wildlife sets!
So my crocodiles can feed on something.
Just imagine that the Lego world is filled with many, many women with butch features (and sometimes stubble). While the obviously and stereotypically female figures are actually men in drag fondling their inner maiden.
Time for the militant misogynistic, homophobic white guy brigade to raise hell until they're the only ones represented again.
Personally, I find the world to be much more interesting when it is populated with different, interesting people who aren't exactly like me in every way. I'm also a Crazy Person, so that might just be me.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Even back in the late 1980s there were characters with long hair, who'd be female, and short hair or no hair, who'd be male. No pink colours though. That only started with Lego Paradiso, which were architecturally interesting but stereotypically pink. When I was a kid in the 1980s there were already houses and other less manly Lego stuff, but they had normal colours. Later I thought I had been dumb for not buying more of those sets; 1980s Lego buildings were really cool.
Based on my experience with Lego sets, the set will probably feature a lego shark in a cage with some kind of death ray looking thing pointed at it.
And with a more recent Lego shark, you can indeed put a frickin' laser on his head!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Eh, you have to pick your battles with stuff like this.
(Disclaimer: female engineer here in an office of mostly guys)
I'm tired of seeing toys marketed for girls that are pastel and sickeningly pink, as if there's a color assignment for creativity.
When I was a kid, some 25 years ago, boy toys were so much better. Sure, they were from the marketing campaigns known as afterschool/Saturday morning TV, but girl toys were marketed towards a mindset of "fashion! pretty! girly!" I was none of those things. I was too busy stealing my brother's Star Wars action figures because there was a lot more action and adventure associated with them. And find me anything Star Wars that was pink...at all.
Fast forward to today. Where I shop, there's martial arts gear that's pink. There are guns that are pink. Hardware sets? Yep, pink. As if you need the identifier to make sure that the guys know you're still a girl and not trying to be one of the guys. I'm all for choice, but having to make things pink so girls like them better is just patronizing, and the women that buy into that are irritatingly small-minded.
I'd rather girls be taught with an easily-identifiable female in it than toys that are pink, just so girls don't get the idea in their heads that they can fit into the environment created by men -and all the colors that entails- without having to splash their girliness all over it so people remember that they're female. So that they remember to create something of substance without overbearing focus on style.
I found it interesting that for the URL for the article someone found it necessary to use the word "girl"
/www.chicagotribune.com/features/la-sci-sn-lego-girl-scientist-set-20140605,0,873917.story
Girl scientist...
Social Justice Warriors want to parade about the most trivial crap I tell you.
We'll stop when it's possible to release a female scientist Lego set without a bunch of benighted troglodytes whinging about it on Slashdot.
Yeah, man. And why do all those scientists keep working on pointless things that aren't a cure for cancer?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
This is the one I really want them to make.
I thought it was funny too.
But 'murica!
In all fairness, these don't have many large deviations from existing Lego sets. Minifigs are mostly the same except for the designs on the clothes and accessories like hair (which seem to be in line with what's already been used), and most of the rest of the set is existing pieces or something very similar to existing pieces.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Given that we're talking about Legos, I assume you meant "misogynistic, homophobic yellow guy brigade"?
They already made a Lego of the GGP.
My wife is an engineer and I trained as a cognitive scientist. When my daughter was born we both fully expected her to have no interest in 'girly' things, especially as the house was already full of interesting 'boy' stuff from her brother. My wife has no make-up, a couple of dresses for formal occasions, no shoes with heels... hopefully you get the picture.
At every step she has chosen the stereotypical girl toys, the colours pink and purple, fairy stuff, pretty dresses and so on. She nagged us for make-up for dressing up, and when we said no she improvised with felt-tip pens. She dresses her dolls and puts them to bed each night, reads to her cuddly toys and hangs up her dancing dresses in order of size, colour or favoritesest.
I'm rather glad it turned out that way because she is popular at school and I know she won't suffer some of the cruelty my wife did as a child growing up slightly different to the other girls in her class.
But nevertheless it continues to amaze me that she fits with her peer group for toys, interests and preferences and it seems to have made no difference whatsoever that she is surrounded by science and 'boy stuff' at home.
And she did not play with lego at all, despite having access to large amounts of duplo, technical lego and a range of figures until I bought her the pink fairy castle set.
It bothers me too about branding things gender specific and all the pink and purple and stars and rainbows. It's a self-serving cycle and I don't see a way out short of legislation. It's harmless enough to begin with, but the danger is that no boy would be seen with a 'girls toy' or 'girls book' and that a lot of girls think 'boys stuff' is boring, or worse convince themselves they don't like it just because they think it's not for them...
No? I'd much rather give my young niece a lego set that has some female characters in it she can relate to. I can't in good conscience giver her one of those disgusting frilly pink princes lego sets, and that pretty much means all the figures are male. Same goes for most other toys.
Of course an even better solution would be just throwing in some extra female heads/hair into *all* the kits and let kids assign genders as they see fit. So it costs an extra $0.05 per kit, big deal.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I came from the days before they made female looking faces with lipstick and long eyelashes. The basic emoticon-like smiley face could be male or female. The major identifier of gender was the hair. If you wanted a female police officer, take a male one and swap out the hair.
Or maybe you don't. Leave the hat on, and just SAY that is a female officer. What? Can't women wear hats? Gender was left to the kids' imaginations. And isn't fostering imagination what Lego's about?
The way I see it, this move kills creativity and entrenches the preconceptions of how a woman "should" look like more than it would encourage girls to be interested in science.
Agreed. The latest trend for "feminizing" minifigs has been to draw curvy figures in paint on the female bodies. It gives the image of a woman with a skinny body drawn on her T-shirt.
I'm rather glad it turned out that way because she is popular at school and I know she won't suffer some of the cruelty my wife did as a child growing up slightly different to the other girls in her class.
I hope that's true, but popular kids can be just as cruel to each other.
Unfortunately, this is the only way to reconcile the existence of both sexes with political correctness. This is why it's so toxic to both.
I actually remember way back when, when Lego had their own ideas instead of licensing every bestselling movie franchise they can get their hands on.
Lego pirates that weren't Pirates of the Caribbean branded! Lego space stuff that wasn't Star Wars branded! What madness!
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I can look at that two ways... I can watch TV and it requires no thought. Or I can choose specific interesting things on politics, nature, or other sciences, and actually think about it.
So LEGO sets come with instructions, and require little thought to put the sets together the way they've laid it out in the book. That doesn't differ from how it used to be. Oh, you used to be able to just buy buckets of bricks, though! Which, of course, you can still do. The imagination happened when you took those bricks, and you took those sets apart, and made what you wanted instead of what you were told you could make.
That's the same as it is today. Why don't you visit the ideas site (link in TFS) and see where people's imaginations take them. They're not all works of art by any stretch, but some of the sets offered there are phenomenal. Also take a look at ReBrickable for other models people have created.
It's true they make some simpler sets aimed at younger kids, things with big molded pieces that "real" LEGO enthusiasts hate, but that's not representative of all that's available.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
And I remember when The LEGO Group was about to go bankrupt... you know, before they started licensing Star Wars?
For the record, they've released a number of space themes, city themes, castle themes while doing these licenses... and for the other whiners out there, you always still buy tubs of just bricks.
You people will complain about anything.... you sound like your parents and grandparents now, I hope you realize that! "When I was a kid...!!!!"
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I heard this story on NPR yesterday and they said the idea came from a 7 year old Dutch girl who wrote LEGO a letter complaining about the lack of girl figurines doing the cools things the boys figures where doing.
It's the same problem with almost every movie that gets made these days. They're all relicensings, reimaginings, or sequels.
I don't think I'm being curmudgeonly. Back a decade or two ago, they actually produced original ideas. This is verifiable fact.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
But I bet the "mostly guys" in your office don't steal your pink stuff.
As an adult LEGO enthusiast, I actually like a lot of the friends sets... except, as the poster you're responding to pointed out, it's all pink and purple and the minidolls (as opposed to the minifigs) are terrible, IMO. At the same time, that same post made some wildly inaccurate claims... it was never the case that, given the entire "library" of sets released in any year, that it was 99% male, even given that licensed sets reflect the movies (mostly males).
Still, for those of us that make town layouts, women ARE underrepresented, so I'm glad for these sets, personally. I build with my daughter all the time, we're making a carnival... it's hard to get as many little girls as boys into the scene because the variety of heads and hair just isn't as large for girls.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Serious question - have you _TRIED_.
Me and my son have. We made all sorts of things. We had 2 sets - one had a beach buggy style car (with kick ass big wheels) - the other was a motorbike (with even bigger kick-ass wheels). We made a kick-ass Trike.
Yeah - we kick ass.
The way I remember it from 30 years back is I had only a small selection of things. Blocks, roof tiles, window frames, doors and some sort of fence. Fine if you want to make a house.
Now we do have an entirely pre-fabricated chassis and several pieces that make a bonnet. However, that bonnet piece can make a car roof, a lid for something (just attach a hinge) or even a breast plate for a monster robot.
If anything the curse of choice is rearing its confusing head!!
Not to mention the number of little coloured pieces and what have you - we even made a nice blue pond surrounded by all sorts of plants (actually the plants we made were originally supposed to be flames for a monster truck but made damn fine red-hot-pokers like plants).
I think the point is to use your imagination.
'nuff said.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
This... The LEGO Group has been failing miserably at trying to attract girls (well, I guess those friends sets are selling, probably purchased by dads who wish their daughters were into LEGO). The fact is, they get berated for for selling "girl" sets with pink and purple bricks, but instead of adding a decent mix of female minifigures into ordinary sets, they come up with things like "Friends," where we're right back to the pink and purple and "girl" jobs, like Vet and fluff reporter for TV (yes, she's not reporting on politics in the set, she's reporting on a giant birthday cake!).
Of course whenever I've discussed it, the conclusion was not to force gender equality in a police force or fire department - that's simply a fake reality, but it's not to make bricks pink and purple either. Most women even agreed they just wanted more female figures in sets... I don't think that's too much to ask for, and putting in alternative heads/hair is probably the best idea I've heard on the subject.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Of all the days to not have mod points. Parent needs some +1s even if they are Anonymous Coward.
Time to offend someone
They still do! That's the problem... you probably just don't know they're out there because LEGO is largely off your radar these days.
Examples:
Forest Animals (new this year)
Bike Shop and Cafe (new this year)
Twin Rotor Helicopter
Palace Cinema
Horizon Express
The Emerald Night (the most beautiful train set LEGO has ever made)
Green Grocer
Haunted House
None of these are licensed, and they are all awesome LEGO sets. Yes, it'd different from when we were kids, but it's certainly not worse. On top of all that, look at the parts you wished you had as a kid... I've been able to make remote control cars and tanks, among other things:
Power Functions
Is that sparking any creative ideas?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I wonder if enough requests could influence Lego's decision?
I can (and do), but you're missing the point - there's a HUGE amount of variety for male minifigure parts compared to females, and because of that, often enough, the female faces and hair are often priced higher. You just don't have the variety. Now, maybe if they stuck with the basic smiley face LEGO it wouldn't be a problem... but they didn't.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Actually Lego had already licensed and sold SW products when they were going bankrupt. SW didn't save them from going under, reforming their business practices did. They cut costs by radically reducing their part pallet for example. But, you are completely right about the fact people will bitch about anything. Many people complain about the cost of Lego sets, but the price per brick has stayed at almost .10 since the 1970s.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
You are just....stupid. As an active member of the AFoL community, I suggest you go do a Google image search for 'Lego Convention' or something similar to see all the really amazing stuff you can build with all the 'useless' bricks they make these days before you say anything else on the topic that is just wrong. There is even a subset of the community that deliberately acquires highly specialized bricks to challenge themselves to find creative uses for said pieces.
If you cannot build new models out of modern Lego sets, it is because you have no imagination or creativity.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
When I was a kid, you simply replaced the hair to make a male figure female. It worked fine for figures with fairly generic clothes (as a scientist would have).
I don't recall sets being a big thing either. Then again, that may be because my family always treated LEGO as a creative building toy rather than models.
This just in: engineer and cognitive scientist express shock, outrage, that their little girl has more influences than "mommy" and "daddy!"
The pressure to fit in with a peer group and be popular with a bunch of little girls who grew up on a steady diet of "pink! frilly! girly! you're a princess!" will pretty quickly mean your little girl will ALSO be interested in those things.
Social Justice Warriors
I would watch that cartoon if it were done properly. Unfortunately, I bet the villains will be two dimensional with unrealistically evil intentions, like the polluters in Captain Planet.
"Social Justice Warriors, GO!"
Also, you can totally take LEGO figurine apart and reassemble them with a female head on a doctor body...
Oxford, a Korean Lego clone, actually had the foresight to make sure their girls sets used the same bodies. Even their hello kitty line uses large heads attached to regular bodies.
Despite Oxford bricks being lego compatible (and as good quality wise) sadly their minifigs aren't totally the same. The bodies are slightly different. You can swap hands and heads but that's it. They are the same size though, so outside of some slightly off looking legs they can mingle
They also didn't completely overdo it in the pink purple department:
http://oxfordtoy.co.kr/pro/up_...
A set like that goes for about $45 USD in Korea.
I really wish they'd get their act together though and focus on developing lines like Lego does. Their military line is incredible.
I used to carry a pink, flowery screw driver around for just that reason.
...I guess those friends sets are selling, probably purchased by dads who wish their daughters were into LEGO
Those Friends sets are currently the most popular LEGO line, outselling even Star Wars. I'm sure there are some dads trying to get their daughters into LEGO (and more power to them), but when I was last in Toys R Us in the LEGO aisle, I watched multiple little girls pick out a Friends set on their own initiative, and take it to their mother to ask for it, not their father. LEGO has tried and failed six times to make sets appealing to girls, and this time they've done it. If ponies and pink and purple bricks is what it takes, then so be it. I suspect the cartoon TV series has something to do with it as well.
Of course whenever I've discussed it, the conclusion was not to force gender equality in a police force or fire department - that's simply a fake reality, but it's not to make bricks pink and purple either. Most women even agreed they just wanted more female figures in sets.
LEGO is going with all of the above. Both a set including a female firefighter and a set including a female police officer are currently available. And this year, LEGO released their very first female criminal, available in a City set. Of the 12 minifigs in the Carnival Mixer set, precisely half of them are female. The LEGO Creator series in general has featured more female minifigures than most, especially the Modular Houses series. Cafe Corner, from 2007, was in fact majority female, with 2 out of 3 minifigs being female. Admittedly, there has only ever been one female astronaut, in a 1999 NASA licensed set. Still, the number and variety of female minifigs has been going steadily up for 15 years.
They're getting there.