Slashdot Mirror
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...
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!
Why is it a limited edition?
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
I was thinking something similar: why not get a Male Scientist package and just give it another head.
Because kids are no longer expected to be creative with Legos. You are supposed to follow the instructions and build the exact toy you were sold, and then buy a new set.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
why not get a Male Scientist package and just give it another head
Because giving head to a male scientist would spark an outrage in feminist circles?
Ezekiel 23:20
The Madame Curie Lego will have bald patches.
Serious answer: painted-on eyelashes and big lips on the minifig head piece, long hair piece on top. Male & female minifig leg & torso pieces are completely interchangeable.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
Not to mention, how would you advertise the box? Male Scientist Pack. Now Giving Head to get Female Scientists!
This is the one I really want them to make.
Supposed? You just plainly CANNOT build anything out of the pieces but exactly what you are sold. Back when I was a kid Lego was far, far superior to all the other plastic toys for one simple reason: You could build whatever you wanted with them. Yes, you bought a set that was supposed to be some kind of space ship or castle, but you could simply lump them together and instead build something completely different out of them. That's what made them really powerful.
Today's Lego is no longer superior to anything else out there. Just like any other toy, you can just do with it what the creator wants you to. It's actually amazing that there's still some assembly required. The whole "assembling" right now feels more like a gimmick rather than actually the appealing part of the toy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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...
You know, I read this sentiment in every discussion of LEGO that comes up... And it's never been true. Never. My son is now 16 and has loved LEGO his whole life. He still get gets it out to play with now and then. When he gets a new set the pattern has always been the same -- open the box, build the model as shown, tear it apart, add it to the pile of parts and build his own things. Current LEGO sets allow every bit as much creativity as the sets did when I was his age over 30 years ago. If anyone has problems building their own stuff it's entirely due to their own lack of creativity, not because the toys somehow discourage it.
You wanna piss and moan about the specialized LEGO pieces? How about the transition from full-sized, articulated figures to minifigs? The addition of specialized round and clear pieces in the first space sets? The Technics series, which were more single-build models than just about anything today? I heard the same damn argument when each of those was introduced.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
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 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.
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.