Lego: More Than a Toy

By: Meghan Boudreau, I Have The Right To Intern.

Like many of my peers in my younger years, I loved playing with LEGOs. My little brother and I would spend much of our time in the LEGO store, looking at sets that were way too advanced for our age. One of my favorite models was a toy space destroyer with aliens as part of LEGO’s “Alien Conquest” kit. The design was a cool tripod build that included a face hugger and ugly alien trooper. My brother also participated in what is called the First Robotics LEGO League competition for three years.

In it, younger students were expected to follow a prompt and create a robotic LEGO that could fulfill the required task. He and his closest friends worked hard to be one of the top contenders in the League and created a name to emphasize the key term Team Kraggle. 

However unbeknownst to the boys, there was a different team made up of seemingly unlikely contenders that would claim first place every year. They were known as none other than… the Hippie Pandas: an all girl’s LEGO engineering power house.

These young women were more than a worthy contender for the boys, and made all tremble when they appeared in slow motion wearing bright colored wigs and tutus. They knew they defied all stereotypes.

So the question becomes, why was it so shocking to see a squad of all girls absolutely dominating a LEGO engineering competition? After all, isn’t LEGO meant to be enjoyed by everyone?
The short answer: yes. That was the original intention for LEGOs. Upon its first creation as a company, LEGO strived to make toys that had unlimited play potential for both boys and girls (Mortensen, 2017). You would think with this as the goal, no one would be surprised when a group of girls showed up ready to flex their engineering skills.

However, around 1992, LEGO’s gears started to shift. The company began to notice demographic biases in which boys tended to play with LEGOs more than girls. As a result, they began making and marketing toys to grab the attention of young boys using traditional gender roles such as being firefighters, medieval knights etc.

This series resembled Mattel’s Barbie doll which was booming in popularity around this time. While it was normal for boys to play with brick firefighters and gun-wielding aliens, girls were given life-like playhouse toys and family models. This particular line of LEGO proved not to be as successful as its building-block style of play. Following an on-and-off six year period, Scala was cut primarily due to its inability to interconnect pieces with other LEGO sets (TobyMac, 2022). Essentially, Scala was a failure to comply with LEGO’s mission to make play time an equal ground for all members of its audiences.

The question then becomes, what is the significance of the marketing of toys based on traditional gender roles in young children? 

In a 2019 study, researchers Hains and Shewmaker interviewed a group of girls to explore whether they could make distinctions between toys marketed to girls, boys, and gender-neutral audiences. Their findings indicated that the girls interviewed – all from White, middle class families – were able to distinguish key details between the brick building blocks and its characters to decipher who they were meant for. For example, sets by LEGO geared towards girls typically consist of pastel color schemes whereas boys and gender neutral emphasize primary colors (Hains & Shewmaker, 2019).

There were additional kits such as the Research Institutes and Olivia’s Inventor’s workshop that attempted to defy gender norms by having emphasis on women STEM. This was done by having kits with primarily female LEGOs working in lab coats, implementing gender neutral colors and minimizing the push for young girls to play exclusively with traditionally feminine figurines.

The young girls who participated in the study identified these attributes within the sets but explained the main reason they enjoyed playing with the kits was due to the ability to explore a play style that is typically reserved for their male counterparts. 

In a 2019 study, researchers Hains and Shewmaker interviewed a group of girls to explore whether they could make distinctions between toys marketed to girls, boys, and gender-neutral audiences. Their findings indicated that the girls interviewed – all from White, middle class families – were able to distinguish key details between the brick building blocks and its characters to decipher who they were meant for. For example, sets by LEGO geared towards girls typically consist of pastel color schemes whereas boys and gender neutral emphasize primary colors (Hains & Shewmaker, 2019).

There were additional kits such as the Research Institutes and Olivia’s Inventor’s workshop that attempted to defy gender norms by having emphasis on women STEM. This was done by having kits with primarily female LEGOs working in lab coats, implementing gender neutral colors and minimizing the push for young girls to play exclusively with traditionally feminine figurines.

The young girls who participated in the study identified these attributes within the sets but explained the main reason they enjoyed playing with the kits was due to the ability to explore a play style that is typically reserved for their male counterparts. 

The minifigure designs also add to the emphasis on gender norms and responsibilities. While the build for male LEGOs have stayed close to the model we know today, the representation of women’s bodies in LEGOs has evolved over time. With more details in their creation such as curves and makeup, the girls in Hains and Shewmaker’s (2019) study were able to identify the differences within the minifigure builds.

One girl noted that she did not like playing with a certain model of the doll because she perceived it as too skinny and that her body would never look like the toy she was playing with. These designs set unrealistic expectations of gender appearances among young girls and can lead to struggles to connect with the toys (Hains & Shewmaker, 2019).

Studies like the one by Hains & Shewmaker sparked important conversations about how LEGO toys may contribute to reinforcing gender roles in harmful ways. These conversations helped shift LEGO’s focus toward addressing gender gaps in children’s toys and move towards equal play.  In 2021, during “Internationational Day of the Girl”, LEGO admitted their role in perpetuating stereotypical gender models. They paired with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media to develop a better understanding of statistics behind the gendered stereotypes of their toys.

What they found were 72% of boys and 62% of girls believe that certain activities are strictly made for specific genders. While this statistic is less than previous years, the creators at LEGO felt work still needed to be done. As a result, LEGO shifted gears to defy gender stereotypes and build up women empowerment in various ways such as gender neutral LEGO Instatute kits.

While the history and movements towards equal play is interesting to some, others may question why this is important. After all, LEGOs are simply childrens toys, are they not? If we start boxing into expectations of gender roles, we risk limiting young children’s abilities to explore the world outside the scope of what stereotypes say they should be. By creating these equal environments and elements of play, children will grow understanding that their gender should not limit their dreams and goals as adults.

Bibliography

• Evans, C. (2024, January 2nd). Women in Engineering Statistics: 32 Notable Facts – Fictiv
• Hains R., Shewmaker, J. (2019). “I Just Don’t Really, Like, Connect to It”: How girls negotiate LEGO’S gender marketed toys. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Jay’s Brick Blog (2008, March 8). Revisiting LEGO’s progress on female minifigure representation in sets for International Women’s Day, 2023.
• LEGO (n.d.). How eliminating gender bias can build confidence and creativity.