We had strong opinions about the Lego Friends line of toys targeted to girls, and we weren’t the only ones. The folks over at Feminist Frequency created a two-part series explaining the history of the Lego brand, their marketing strategies, and the implications and complications that come along with Lego Friends. It’s totally something we would have made if we made that sort of thing. Lucky for us, that’s what Feminist Frequency is all about. Watch Part 1 and hit the jump for the second half!
From the YouTube description from Anita Sarkeesian:
In part 1 of my two part LEGO and Gender series, I’ll explore how LEGO went terribly wrong with LEGO Friends and provide a brief history of LEGO’s ridiculous and slightly hilarious attempts to market to girls since the late 70’s. In part 2 I’ll delve into LEGO’s intentional strategy to market almost exclusively to boys since the mid 80’s by developing and marketing sets that are male identified and male centered. In conclusion, I’ll offer LEGO a couple of suggestions that they can consider when creating and marketing new products.
The FF website was giving us some trouble earlier, but now it’s back, so you can check out all their videos!
(via Jezebel)
Published: Feb 7, 2012 05:45 pm