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In lugnet.dear-lego, Matthew Miller writes:
> It brings up a thorny question of cultural relativism. Do we just shrug and
> say hey, difference of culture, or is it okay to say, no, that's not right,
> no matter what culture you're in there are some basic principles of human
> equality which should be treated as universal standards?
>
> I understand the value of respecting other cultures. And I further
> understand the pragmatic need to at least understand and work within the
> existing cultural framework. But it seems like corporate attitudes like the
> one expressed here are bad no matter where you are.
>
> I'm not saying this to be part of some sort of PC thought police -- I
> certainly don't think it should be illegal for Lego to market things this
> way. But I think that a company which seems so concerned with the positive
> development of children should put more consideration into these issues.
>
>
> Maybe this is getting off topic...
LEGO has two obligations - one, to themselves, to make money,
and the second (I'd like to imagine) to make toys that help children
grow.
You can't make people buy toys that they don't want. LEGO may have
accurately defined the girl's toy market, even if that market may
not be what we would ideally want it to be.
But here's what I would suggest. (I argued for this a long time
ago on r.t.l, and when I saw the Belville castle sets, I felt such
a sense of deja vu that I wondered if perhaps my ideas had
been read by LEGO ..... I know, vanity.)
I personally would prefer for LEGO to extend what they've done for
Belville, to the Castle line -- just not so pink. Girls like
castles and fairy tale stuff. Make pegasii, unicorns, witches,
princesses, queens, princes, kings, etc. Just make the sets gender
neutral - you don't need transparent pink castles. Fairy tale
things are the sort of sets that would appeal to both
boys and girls.
You could split the line into two categories, one more dedicated
to the romance of castle (with unicorns, princesses,
queens, etc) and one more dedicated to war, if you had to.
Oddly enough, that's what LEGO has already done with the 2000
castle sets, dividing the line into the warlike faction and the
romantic knights faction. But they could do so further without
cheeseballing it up so much that a little boy wouldn't want to
play with it.
The castle line is the single line that is most likely to appeal
to both genders, since everyone grows up hearing fairy tales.
I don't care if LEGO wants to compete with Barbie directly, but
I think they're missing the boat by not doing more to make the castle
sets appeal to both sexes. Castles aren't just about hypermasculine
angry scowling robbers armed with rubber-tipped missiles (sheesh).
--
jthompson@esker.com "float on a river, forever and ever, Emily"
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: Horrible quote from the Scala web catalog
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| (...) I *so* agree. I, as a "girl", like the royal family, pegsasii (plural pegasus, right?), and unicorns (1), and would enjoy stuff like that in LEGO. I also like soldiers and guards, and would enjoy seeing a feudal system line of castles, with (...) (25 years ago, 13-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego, lugnet.scala, lugnet.general)
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