One has not felt true pain, anguish, or betrayal until he or she has stepped on a wayward LEGO® block in the middle of the night. The physical agony of those sharp, square edges embedding themselves in the soft flesh of your foot, and the shame of being hurt by something you thought you could trust — your trusty LEGOs — it’s enough to crush the strongest of men.
Despite the potential for agony, LEGOs are literally the coolest things. You can build literally ANYTHING with them. Seriously, stop by the SLC to see cool Pokémon built out of LEGOs. People have built functioning 3D printers, V8 engines, assembly lines, LEGO bots that build other LEGO structures, and a machine that can solve a Rubik’s cube in three seconds (For more info, check out this article). That’s right, someone has even engineered a LEGO block that’s probably smarter than you. There’s even a girl on YouTube that built herself a prosthetic leg out of LEGO blocks (try doing that with Lincoln Logs, am I right?).
But maybe you’re not as skilled a builder as these cool cats building engines and coasters and printers and bots; that’s cool, too, because LEGO has lots of kits and things for you to build. There are Millennium Falcons, Pirates, cities, cars, helicopters, DC and Marvel, and Minecraft kits (seriously, they have Minecraft).
The possibilities are endless with a LEGO kit, which is really what has made LEGO so successful and such a household name. It’s the innovation and creativity and vibrancy and skill of LEGO users that have launched these little blocks into being such beloved toys.
However, there’s one this about LEGO that really outright sucks, and that’s LEGO Friends.
LEGO Friends is a branch of LEGOs aimed specifically at young girls. So everything is pink, all the LEGO dolls are culturally appropriate, white-washed girls (even the darker dolls are pretty racially ambiguous), but most offensively is the content of these doll sets.
While regular “boy” LEGOs allow for building cars, trains, skyscrapers, and other cool machines, LEGO Friends sets have titles such as “Stephanie’s New Born Lamb,” “Mia’s Lemonade Stand,” and “Downtown Bakery.” This, accompanied by several “luxury” sets like beach houses, “puppy paradises,” cruise liners, several pet play houses, and whatever “Heartlake High” is supposed to be, sends a clear message to young girls everywhere.
Leave the cool stuff for the boys, Ladies. While they chill with Frodo and Legolas in the awesome “Tower of Orthanc,” you can, I guess, lay out in your swimsuit at the “Heartlake City Pool.” You’ll have a really good view of “The Bat vs Bane Tumbler Chase” from “Olivia’s Tree House.”
LEGO Friends, being mostly play-sets rather than customizable building tools, stifles young girls’ creativity, as well as confines them to a small sphere of thinking, whereas other sets that are characterized as more “manly” have way more depth to their premises, way more pieces to build, and generally way more fun to be had.
LEGO Friends is truly a pitiful attempt at assigning gender roles and trying to attract girls to a brand that was already beloved by all.