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Subject: 
Re: Horrible quote from the Scala web catalog
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.dear-lego, lugnet.scala, lugnet.general
Date: 
Mon, 13 Dec 1999 23:25:13 GMT
Viewed: 
732 times
  
In lugnet.dear-lego, Jeff Thompson writes:

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.


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 Barons and Lords, etc. (I'm making the Bat Lord pledging
allegiance to the Royal King... :-) Maybe that's because I'm a bit older than
the girls LEGO is aiming for, maybe not.
Also, in a recent (real) survey I did, almost all girls I asked either didn't
like pink, or simply hated pink. Also, even if they did like (or even LOVE)
pink, that wouldn't be a reason to buy the set.

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.

Seems reasonable - though it doesn't have to be two different themes, just
different sets that could, if people wanted, be put together.

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.

I'm not really sure what you mean - Belville and Knights, or Knights and Cow-
men?


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).

I agree...

-Shiri

(1) How 'bout a removable horn for the unicorn?



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Horrible quote from the Scala web catalog
 
(...) The knights vs the moo-men. The knights come with a king, a princess, and a warrior babe, steps to make the sets girl-friendly? The moo-men are much more boyish, testosterone-poisoned sets. (...) Right! A horse with a hole in his head for a (...) (25 years ago, 13-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego, lugnet.scala, lugnet.general)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Horrible quote from the Scala web catalog
 
(...) 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 (...) (25 years ago, 13-Dec-99, to lugnet.dear-lego, lugnet.scala, lugnet.general)

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