Alyska

For those curious, I think the official term for the ladyfig is "minidoll".I'm not surprised that they are going with the conventional "girly" stuff like horse riding and salons. That's the sort of stuff that has been proven to work before, and if Lego is going to be putting so much money and effort into this sort of thing, they need to know that it's going to work. Once they've got an established brand with a legion of young fans, then they can start taking it in different directions. After all, they need to introduce new things to keep it fresh, and if they limit themselves only to traditionally feminine things, they will run out of ideas pretty quickly.This line is also a necessary predecessor for any other girl-oriented lines Lego releases in the near future, regardless of how stereotypical or not they are. They are playing it safe now, but I have no doubt that they will start branching out soon if Friends is successful, both in the Friends line itself, and in other lines.On a semi-related note, I had one of the Lego Cuusoo staff express some interest in my "Constraction for girls" project. So, Lego is interested in new ideas, and is probably willing to try out something completely different. The hard part is proving that there's a market for it by getting enough supporters.

I don't want to know what the birthday cake is made from...Happy birthday!

Hmm... I guess when it comes to appealing to parents, there are a number of possible directions I could take it:-Encourages creative play-High playability when compared to other girls' toys.-A LEGO line for girls which is on par (set and story-wise) with the stuff for boys.-A wide range of colours and styles to appeal to girls with different tastes and interests.-Provides alternative female role models to the traditional "let's go shopping" archetype.-The sets are feminine and aesthetically pleasing, without being overly sexualised or stereotypical.I've lightly touched on most of the above points in the existing description, except for the parts about role models and the anti-Barbie-ness. They are certainly valid points that would appeal to a lot of parents, but I don't want it to turn into some sort of feminist rant. When I start talking about those sorts of things, I tend to get a bit carried away and it puts people off talking to me..I'll try and fit it in without sounding like I'm forcing my opinion too much.

One of the official Lego staff commented on my project and said he liked the idea!He said I should get ahold of "mommybloggers" to gather support, since there isn't much of my target age group present on Cuusoo....Soooo... does anyone know anything about "mommybloggers" and how to catch them?

I liked the Narnia references. The line about logic not being taught in schools, a relative named Uncle Diggory, the time difference between the two dimensions... there were probably others that I missed.Is it just me, or is the Eleventh Doctor even more Doctory-woctery when he's around kids?

Well, the Lego Friends site is up. There's a lot of hugging involved.

Turns out my two year old niece is a fan (of the toys, not the show- her mum doesn't let her watch TV). She has a baby Pinkie Pie doll that she takes everywhere and calls "my baby". Man, that thing is ugly. Her dad didn't even realise it was meant to be a pony (he's a horse vet) and called it "My little mutant" when he found out.Why are girls toys so darn creepy-looking?

Thing is, to sustain the population with a 1:9 female-to-male ratio, the average female Glatorian needs to have at least ten kids in her lifetime.No excuses, Kiina. Now stop moping over Mata Nui, find yourself a real bloke, and get to it.

I haven't read the whole topic, but do we know if Lego's continuing to support Bioniclestory.com next year?

Hmm... I'm really not sure how much I'm going to do with the characters. I want to do enough that it gets people interested, but not so much that it takes away from the other projects I'm working on.My time on Cuusoo has got me thinking I want to do a storyline about trolls. In this universe, trolls start out as nasty, imp-like little critters that go out of their way to annoy people because they feed on anger. Naturally, they start hounding the most hotheaded heroine (haven't decided who she will be yet), who loses it at them and tries to fight, causing them to grow bigger and stronger. Eventually, her friends realise what's happening, and persuade her not to react any more. Cue a scene of the gang blissfully ignoring the damage that goes on around them, smiling and laughing, offering the monsters cookies, etc, until the trolls have shrunk back down and run away screaming. I think there's an important moral there.

I found out today that there's no word filter on the site either. People can swear as much as they like (Well, maybe it gets reported, but it must take a while before something gets done, if at all). On an official LEGO site, that's pretty disgraceful, beta or not.The moderation and reporting system in general is just shocking. I reported a guy this morning who was making overtly sexual remarks to a group of minors, and it was a good hour before the topic was deleted... and the guy was still allowed to keep his account!Cuusoo was originally a Japanese thing, right? I guess that explains a few things. For one, the Japanese language has no swear words...

You mean Clarke's Law for girls' toys?Hmm... according to my calculations... if boys' toys run on advanced technology and science, and girls' toys are apparently powered by magic, then my project can successfully appeal to a gender neutral audience, because it's powered by MAGIC SCIENCE. Logic!Actually, I do kind of prefer fantasy to sci-fi, but it's for the opposite reason to what you'd expect. It's because if something impossible happens, and they say "It's magic!", that's a suspension of disbelief I'm willing to make, but if you try to tell me it happened through sciencey-sounding jargon that is blatanty nonsensical, I will be Not Impressed.That was a minor problem I had with Bionicle in the later years... "There is no such thing as magic... only highly questionable SCIENCE!"

The main reason it's a sandwich is I thought it'd be amusing for Belle to start frantically calling for help over something as trivial as making a sandwich. And they have to make something in order for the spell to work. As a free woman, I defend my right to have my characters making a sandwich.If you get the sandwich comment on a regular basis, you could always carry around a small jar of Vegemite with the lid superglued on. Tell them "You're a man. Open this, and then I'll make you a sandwich."

Hmmm... I said I wouldn't do this, but I find myself trying to elaborate on the characters and story from my Cuusoo project.The green goth girl is called Ebony; she's a dryad (forest spirit) who was raised as a normal human. Powers include plant control, healing abilities, and enhanced speed. She can pass as human as long as she stays out of the sun- prolonged exposure to sunlight causes her body to start producing chloropyll, and she goes green like a potato. Occasionally gets mistaken for a vampire.The one with pink hair, I've tentatively named Belle. She's your generic anime-style magical girl, or possibly a parody of one. She doesn't really have elemental powers like the others, but gets miscellaneous, quirky spells that come in handy more often than you'd think. Has no indoor voice. She acts immature and ditzy, but may or may not be much cleverer than she acts. She enjoys performing experiments with her magic, usually at Ebony's expense.One such incident: Belle is testing out a "Meet your Maker" spell that causes objects to return to the person that created them. (Spoiler'd for longness, not spoilerness)

So, yeah, that's a sample of how I picture the characters and the overall tone. It would have villains and monsters and whatnot, but it would also include plenty of humour and lighthearted moments like the above....I'm scared of getting too attached to this project, since I technically don't own it.

I think one or two pink sets are probably logical, but if they're balanced out by other colours, I don't see that as stereotyping. Denying little girls pink stuff is not the way to go about it; you just need to give them plenty of other options along with the pink.Pink is not inherently evil on its own. It's just when we get inundated with it that it becomes problematic.

Yeah, they said in the "Lego is for Girls" article that girls like characters whose personalities they can relate to, and I'm not going to disagree with that. It will be interesting to see whether there is much in the way of story, though.Waffles, I agree that it's hard to make feminine-looking things out of existing constraction parts, but I think that if Lego developed some more steamlined custom parts that still used the ball joint system, they could create something that was fun and poseable that was still easy on the eyes for girls. You'd just have to start calling them "dolls" instead of "action figures". :PAfter all, "action figure" is just a term they use to get boys to buy dolls.

I don't see any guys running off of BZPower just because we are here.

Oh, I think I've scared off a few in my time. And soon I will scare them all off, and we shall rule together! MUAHAHAHA!...At least, that's what Lego thinks is going to happen.

I'm not unhappy that Friends exists, since it proves that Lego *is* trying to appeal to girls, but I think they need a more diverse range of options- not just playing "house".

Lego isn't trying to appeal to girls. They are trying to appeal to parents buying sets for girls.I think we can agree that from the reaction of the female populace here that Lego already pretty much has appeased to girls by not belittling them, even in times of compromise.

Well, I am torn on this one. The amount of research that went into this implies that many little girls will like these sets, whether their parents are the ones who get them or not. But, at the same time, girls need options. There's nothing wrong with wanting to play house, but when playing house is the only option you give girls, then there's a problem.I've said this before, but this line needs to do moderately well to show Lego that they have the potential for a female fanbase, or else they'll go back to not caring about girls for another five years. So, it needs to do well enough to make a profit, but not so well that they don't want to make any changes or try anything new. It's a means to an end, the end hopefully being girl-oriented sets that are on par with boys', and the breaking of the stereotype that anything for girls is automatically terrible.

That's right. So, in order to make that transition, we first need to get rid of the perception that the toys girls play with are automatically lame. So, a couple of lines for girls that are on par with the stuff for boys, and possibly even making the two compatible, will help bridge that gap in the meantime.Trust me, I've been that dreamer in the corner. Everyone thought I was nuts. So, now I'm toning down my ideas to the point where normal people can understand them, because that's more likely to make something happen.

Yeah, I've been having a lot of trouble with clothes lately too, especially in summer. And stuff isn't built to last these days either, so I might have a top that's perfectly decent one year, but has sagged into "Play now, my lord!" territory the next. I have a bone to pick with the entire fashion industry.And Alex, I agree that in an ideal world, Lego would still be making gender neutral products and marketing them as such, but the fact is, Lego just doesn't think that way any more. And because male is considered the "generic" form of humanity, any product that is not explicitly presented as being for girls will be seen as being for boys anyway, and therefore ignored by gift-shopping parents of girls. I think Greg said once that the lines that are big with both genders are the licensed ones like Harry Potter, to which kids already have an attachment through the story.Maybe a non-licensed line that was heavily story driven, and the story well marketed (through TV shows, movies, etc) could appeal to both genders if they developed a meaningful connection to the story first.Hmm... now we just need a good story...

While we are definitely a minority, I think a few tweaks to the marketing and a few other things would make Lego more accessible to both genders. But Lego seems to think that attracting more girls to the regular themes will deter their male fanbase, so they don't even try. Hence the "total segregation" line of thinking.I'm not unhappy that Friends exists, since it proves that Lego *is* trying to appeal to girls, but I think they need a more diverse range of options- not just playing "house".

Somehow constraction doesn´t seem like the way to go, I think scenarios and houses will be more interesting, along with better parts.

Well, I think it's important to have variety. Some girls may repond to fantasy-style buildable dolls, while other may prefer the more realistic scenarios and buildings. But I think some of the principles behind Friends could be applied to a constraction line, such as the more streamlined character designs and the emphasis on character and story, which, Lego has decided, appeals to girls.

^ Can I interest you in my Cuusoo project, then?I've mentioned in the description that I'd like it to be compatible with other "constraction" toys, as this would allow the Bionicle and Hero Factory fans more access to feminine parts.

Thing is, there's nothing inherently wrong with the colour pink, it's just that you can't expect every girl to like it. I have no problem with, say one pink set out of a line of six. When you make everything for girls pink, that's when you start getting problems...

@Space and Alyska: You aren't exactly a representative sample of girls. The fact that you are on a forum devoted to Bionicle means that you were probably fans of the "boy" lines of Lego.As for Lego's move, I'm not so sure if it's the girls that want the pink stuff so much as the parents that tell them to want it. I think at a point the girls themselves really want it, however, that's because they've been innundated in pink "girly" things. They come home from the hospital in a pink blanket. They go to sleep in a pink crib. Their room is painted pink. They're given pink toys to play with. Gee, I wonder what their favorite color is?

Yeah, yeah, I know... Space and I are freaks of nature.And, yes, I did like stuff like Bionicle, but I was always wishing that it was more... girl-friendly. I wished that more of my friends could like it instead of Bratz. And since I've been told so many times that it's too hard to make something appeal to both genders equally without jeopardising sales, I would like to see something on par with Bionicle, story and set-wise, that could reach a female audience. I think people like Space and I are proof that it could work, if it was done well.Sure, maybe one or two of the characters could have pink on them, but I'd actually like to see a range of colours and styles. After all, contrary to popular belief, girls can be just as diverse personality-wise as boys.

I actually would have thought they'd grow more slowly, given the long lifespans. It would also explain why many post-Shattering families decided not to have kids.Actually, I don't think there would be many families at all, given that not many female Glatorian live in the main Agori tribes.