All right, GeekOlogists, time to get serious for a sec. Let's talk LEGOs. I'll be the first to tell you that I generally consider LEGOs one of the last great universal toys. Older kids like LEGOs. Tiny kids like LEGOs! Boys, girls, children of all ages are into the colorful bricks. I'd recommend LEGOs to any Toys for Tots shopper, and by this point you should all be Toys for Tots shoppers, you brilliant geeks, you. That's why I'm surprised to see something like LEGO Friends, a newly-announced LEGO set with a rather, er, narrow marketing plan. The LEGO Friends are (you guessed it) five girls who are (yep!) friends, and they're designed to hook the ladies into the customizable building phenomenon.
Now, I'm not one to knock LEGO for trying to expand its audience, and certainly the minifigs that go with the set, despite their made-over appearances, indicate some degree of forward thinking. Their careers include designer, musician, veterinarian, and inventor--so, you know, LEGO hasn't chained the LEGO Friends to the oven or whatever. In addition, these ladies are compatible with existing LEGOs, so if you want, you can have 'em trot around your castle or your spaceship or whatever. But that's my point, really: I think the best way to make LEGOs awesome for girls is to make LEGOs awesome for everybody. I grew up with, and currently count as friends, dozens of women who, as children, were perfectly cool with using the same LEGOs as their male classmates; they even often built similar space fighters and race cars and whatever from those same bricks.
I mean, hey. I'm a dude. If little girls are gonna have fun playing with this stuff, I have no place to tell them they can't. But I think the best part about LEGOs is how much it allows you to shape your own play experience. I hope that suggesting sets like LEGO Friends won't make female LEGO fans feel like they're locked into one way of enjoying the toys.
But hey, this soapbox is for you, too, so comment it up.
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Follow Josh Harrison on Twitter: @geekologized.
[TDW Geek]
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