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13 hours ago, Terrasher said:

I'm usually indifferent to minidolls, but I guess it would be nice for TLG to phase them out and just put minifigures in Friends sets, just to make the sets more universally cohesive with the rest of the LEGO City and City-like themes. I do love the brighter colours of the Friends sets, though, since they bring some variety to what one can include in a town.

Why would they phase out the minidoll,  when their own research indicated that they were filling a missing area in their product portfolio? Why does Friends need to be cohesive with City? They are different themes aimed at different groups. All the bricks already are cohesive, just that the figures have a different style.

10 hours ago, Robert8 said:

Wait are they actually getting rid of minidolls?

No.

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3 hours ago, Peppermint_M said:

There is no need to get rid of Minidolls :facepalm:

I cannot figure out what everyone's problem is?

I can't figure it out either, at least at this point lol

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4 hours ago, Peppermint_M said:

There is no need to get rid of Minidolls :facepalm:

I cannot figure out what everyone's problem is?

Everyone has a problem ? seems like a bad wording here, people discuss minidoll balance here, but I don't think every minidoll post was about removing them entirely.

 

As for Friends, I think it's hard to make drastic changes with an already, soon to be 10 years established theme, with 5 girl main characters.

If LEGO did want drastic changes , It's probably more likely for Friends to get canceled and replaced by some girl focused minifig theme, instead of simply rebranding existing Friends styling to minifigs. (this is a WHAT IF scenario, I'm not saying I want to remove/replace minidolls)

 

As for Disney Princesses etc, LEGO did have minifig variants in the CMF line but ultimately I don't see Disney sets change at all unless LEGO does decide to get rid of minidolls entirely (again this is a WHAT IF scenario, I'm not saying I want to remove/replace minidolls)

 

LEGO Movie 2 also had minifig / minidoll together so that representation makes the above scenario even more unlikely imo.

 

Edited by TeriXeri

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5 hours ago, Peppermint_M said:

There is no need to get rid of Minidolls :facepalm:

I cannot figure out what everyone's problem is?

With this weird study of theirs, it would make sense from a casual consumer perspective. If LEGO’s intent is to get parents more comfortable with buying Friends for their son, it would make sense to get rid of miniDOLLS- boys don’t play with dolls. Granted, a theme with 5 female leads with the color scheme of Friends, I imagine minidolls is the least of why they aren’t being bought for sons. 

As a 40 year old man who is definitely not the target audience...I never did pay much attention, or care one way or another, to Friends or minidolls. Once I got a few in the LEGO Movie 2 sets, they’re kinda neat. 

 

I still haven’t fully read that article, but did it mention how Elves affected the parents polled? I could see an action theme like that being better received by parents looking to buy something for a boy. But they have minidolls, so was that a factor that turned them away...

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3 hours ago, Vindicare said:

With this weird study of theirs, it would make sense from a casual consumer perspective. If LEGO’s intent is to get parents more comfortable with buying Friends for their son, it would make sense to get rid of miniDOLLS- boys don’t play with dolls. Granted, a theme with 5 female leads with the color scheme of Friends, I imagine minidolls is the least of why they aren’t being bought for sons. 

As a 40 year old man who is definitely not the target audience...I never did pay much attention, or care one way or another, to Friends or minidolls. Once I got a few in the LEGO Movie 2 sets, they’re kinda neat. 

 

I still haven’t fully read that article, but did it mention how Elves affected the parents polled? I could see an action theme like that being better received by parents looking to buy something for a boy. But they have minidolls, so was that a factor that turned them away...

Getting rid of mini-dolls because they don't appeal to boys would be as illogical as getting rid of minifigures because they don't appeal to girls. The reality is that there are boys and girls alike who prefer minifigures, and likewise for mini-dolls, and it's not wise or necessary to take either of those options away to make sets with them more gender-neutral.

The point of gender-neutral marketing and representation in toys is not to just eliminate anything even superficially "feminine". In fact, that would be the opposite of gender neutrality—doing so would implicitly deem anything that boys have historically liked good and anything that has been made with girls' preferences or interests in mind bad. The point of gender-neutral marketing and representation is to acknowledge the reality that boys and girls alike are diverse and complex, that pink should neither be the de facto option for girls any more than it should be anathema for boys, and that if a girl wants to build a fire engine or a boy wants to build a dollhouse, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that and there's no need to stigmatize that or exclude them from either the toys themselves (in the form of represented characters) or the marketing (in the form of "lifestyle" models and actors).

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4 hours ago, Vindicare said:

With this weird study of theirs, it would make sense from a casual consumer perspective. If LEGO’s intent is to get parents more comfortable with buying Friends for their son, it would make sense to get rid of miniDOLLS- boys don’t play with dolls. Granted, a theme with 5 female leads with the color scheme of Friends, I imagine minidolls is the least of why they aren’t being bought for sons. 

That doesn't make sense. To get people to buy Friends for boys they should cancel Friends? Friends are minidolls. Get rid of them and you get rid of Friends and you end up with just a pinkish City line.

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4 hours ago, MAB said:

That doesn't make sense. To get people to buy Friends for boys they should cancel Friends? Friends are minidolls. Get rid of them and you get rid of Friends and you end up with just a pinkish City line.

Didn’t say that. I don’t think they should change a thing, just spitballing. I’m sure the average parent wouldn’t buy a doll for their son or a car for their daughter. The stigma that boys don’t play with dolls would turn those parents off from buying. I’m just assuming all of this, I’m not a parent. If I were I’d buy them whatever it is they wanted(as long as it was LEGO of course:grin:).

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4 hours ago, Vindicare said:

Didn’t say that. I don’t think they should change a thing, just spitballing. I’m sure the average parent wouldn’t buy a doll for their son or a car for their daughter. The stigma that boys don’t play with dolls would turn those parents off from buying. I’m just assuming all of this, I’m not a parent. If I were I’d buy them whatever it is they wanted(as long as it was LEGO of course:grin:).

So what do you mean by get rid of minidolls? Do you mean actually get rid of them, or just rename them.

Plenty of dolls are bought for boys. They just have the name action figure.

 

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16 hours ago, TeriXeri said:

Everyone has a problem ?

No, just everyone who has a problem with Minidolls. I don't understand why they can have such an issue with them.

 

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14 hours ago, MAB said:

Get rid of them and you get rid of Friends and you end up with just a pinkish City line.

Which, let's face it, would just be Paradisa for the modern day.

3 hours ago, Peppermint_M said:

I don't understand why they can have such an issue with them.

I can see why individual consumers might not want them, but not to the extent of advocating for their removal from the line. Not when there are still plenty of minifigures being made - the solution for anyone who doesn't want minidolls is simply just to not buy the sets.

What I would argue for is more sets using the Friends colour scheme with minifigures, and vice versa. At the moment there's a binary division of Friends colours/minidolls or City colours/minifigures, but whether someone prefers figures or dolls is separate of their preferred colours - I'd love to see more pink and lavender bricks in City sets too, and that might draw a market from kids who like pink but don't like the minidolls.

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First off, I have to admit I'm jumping into this mid-stream. Sorry if I'm not fully up to speed with the entire conversation.

My daughter has several Friends sets and she loves them. This caused my son to insist he has some too.  I had to go out of my way to find the sets that he wanted (not that I minded lol I love searching for specific sets). For both of them, they are into the cute animals that are featured in the sets and they are the focus of the sets they choose.

For myself, I would like to see more mixing of minidolls and minifigs in sets, like in The Lego Movie 2.  I have a couple planned MOCs that will use both types of figures together

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8 minutes ago, DelQuinn said:

For myself, I would like to see more mixing of minidolls and minifigs in sets, like in The Lego Movie 2.  I have a couple planned MOCs that will use both types of figures together

A mixed type of Theme could be pretty cool, maybe not with a main-cast of characters, but more like some time/dimension/planet traveling theme mixing a lot of different things, including minifigs/minidolls. (just regular sets, not LEGO Dimensions 2.0)

Edited by TeriXeri

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7 minutes ago, TeriXeri said:

A mixed type of Theme could be pretty cool, maybe not with a main-cast of characters, but more like some time/dimension/planet traveling theme mixing a lot of different things, including minifigs/minidolls. (just regular sets, not LEGO Dimensions 2.0)

that would be cool and sounds like a lot of fun. It might also be an option to revisit retired characters/themes if only in passing

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9 hours ago, MAB said:

So what do you mean by get rid of minidolls? Do you mean actually get rid of them, or just rename them.

Plenty of dolls are bought for boys. They just have the name action figure.

 

I went back & read my comment...yeah, I could’ve made it more clear. I did say from a casual consumer POV it might be smart to do. We both know what I mean by dolls...come on. 

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46 minutes ago, Vindicare said:

I went back & read my comment...yeah, I could’ve made it more clear. I did say from a casual consumer POV it might be smart to do. We both know what I mean by dolls...come on. 

I'm not sure I do know what you mean by dolls in this context. To me dolls are humanoid characters in toy form. Minidolls are humans with somewhat realistic body shapes. Minifigures are humans with a more blocky shape. They are all forms of doll.

Which of these are dolls ...

9359604_R_Z001A?w=750&h=440&qlt=70GHW43_01?$oslarge$s-l300.jpg

All have somewhat realistic body shapes  and depict human(oid)s. To me they are all dolls. Of course boys would call the last one an action figure as they don't want to play with dolls, as they are for girls. But it is still a doll. How many boys would play with Ken in the middle? Is he an action figure or a doll? Call Ken a doll and he is for girls. Call him an action figure and a boy would probably play with him. And that is partly what the article was about. It is OK if a boy wants to play with a minidoll. They might not be primarily aimed at boys, but it is still OK if a boy wants to play with it. And their is no need to call the inhabitants of Heartlake min action figures or similar to try to change the appeal.

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This problem is a lot more complicated than a lot of posters are making it out to be and I do think anyone suggesting they know better than the market research is far too overconfident in themselves. To simplify the problem to the existence of minidolls is also just flat out ignoring the actual issue.

This is a parent issue. Girls straight up can't get into Lego a lot of the time not because they're not interested- it's that parents reinforce these gender stereotypes themselves. You see it happen on this forum right now; people advocating for a less firm line between boys and girls toys are kind of missing the point. They've integrated more female minifigures in general across pretty much all their lines and while I can't say that flatout the Friends focus on brighter, poppier colors like purple, pink, and other CYMK values has integrated into other lines, it's also kind of the whole point of Friends to use those colors specifically. That being said, when they try to move out of the strictly stereotypical girl-centric themed bubble with other lines like Elves, Unikitty, LEGO Movie 2... they don't seem to preform that well. We don't really have sales data to really suggest anything but all of these lines did a variation of what some posters suggest and it doesn't seem to have done particularly well, unfortunately. Part of this may just come down to other factors like prices and whether Unikitty or LEGO Movie 2 did well on tv or in movie theaters but the point still stands. When LEGO tries to do more gender neutral sets, at least starting with Friends and moving towards more of the "blue boy" spectrum, it doesn't seem to do really that well and I think a lot of blame can be placed on parents.

In general the gender binary is whack and moving away from that as a whole is a much more difficult task, especially for a corporate entity, but I think LEGO has correctly identified that marketing also has to reach out to parents. Kids are ready for it, ironically adults do not seem to be. 

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I had Barbie dolls as a kid. I needed to if I wanted to be able to play with my sister. I grew up with the minifigure, but I actually quite like the minidoll. I don't think I'd rebuy everything figure in minidoll form or anything, but I could see the appeal. It is different enough. Mixing them doesn't work for me, but I know TLM2 did and seemed to be successful enough.

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I have a son and daughter. My son loves playing with the Friends houses... For detail and the tens of tiny accessories they come with, they blow away CITY sets in playability. I've got a whole Friends neighborhood in one corner now and both of them can play there for hours. My daughter, on the other hand, wants to know why there aren't minidoll firetrucks (I'm working on it). She likes the ambulance and the last hospital, but really wants more action/service related sets.

Issues we are finding in our "Integrated" Lego town are that things like restaurants, or trains, need to have minidoll seating available, so they get converted as long as there are parts to do so. Just listening to my kids shows that there are huge areas of overlap that Lego really doesn't seem to cover.

In City, you can *zoom* any number of vehicles, but you can rarely cook breakfast, in Friends, you can cook breakfast, but the vehicle to *zoom* might be 12 studs wide and not really fit in anywhere else... I feel play wise that's a little bit of a problem.

I would say the reason things like CITY are popular for boys is that it is things they see every day, but the same applies to a lot of the Friends concepts, and the fact is all genders of children see the same things every day, and in splitting THAT up into gendered subjects is where Lego is missing out.

SD

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57 minutes ago, SD100 said:

In City, you can *zoom* any number of vehicles, but you can rarely cook breakfast,

And if you do cook breakfast in City, it will almost certainly lead to a fire!

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On 10/20/2021 at 1:55 PM, Vindicare said:

With this weird study of theirs, it would make sense from a casual consumer perspective. If LEGO’s intent is to get parents more comfortable with buying Friends for their son, it would make sense to get rid of miniDOLLS- boys don’t play with dolls. Granted, a theme with 5 female leads with the color scheme of Friends, I imagine minidolls is the least of why they aren’t being bought for sons. 

As a 40 year old man who is definitely not the target audience...I never did pay much attention, or care one way or another, to Friends or minidolls. Once I got a few in the LEGO Movie 2 sets, they’re kinda neat. 

 

I still haven’t fully read that article, but did it mention how Elves affected the parents polled? I could see an action theme like that being better received by parents looking to buy something for a boy. But they have minidolls, so was that a factor that turned them away...

Lego actually has a much bigger and better study. One they spent millions on and that involved thousands of kids over several years. Studying how kids actually play. On the basis of that study's findings the minidolls were created and Lego leapfrogged from #3 toymaker to #1 in under a year. That study will always be the authoritative one. Because it drives actual sales. 

This other study? This whole "removing gender bias" concept? This is someone at Lego, someone almost certainly not involved in actual peoduction decisions, giving lip service to a darling idea of the media. Lego's not going to serriously do it because everytime they try  it they lose lots of money. Minidolls aren't going anywhere. Because actual girls like them and ask their parents to buy them. At the end of the day Lego either provides the product the customers actually want to buy, or they fail as a company and brand. 

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5 hours ago, Faefrost said:

Lego actually has a much bigger and better study. One they spent millions on and that involved thousands of kids over several years. Studying how kids actually play. On the basis of that study's findings the minidolls were created and Lego leapfrogged from #3 toymaker to #1 in under a year. That study will always be the authoritative one. Because it drives actual sales. 

This other study? This whole "removing gender bias" concept? This is someone at Lego, someone almost certainly not involved in actual peoduction decisions, giving lip service to a darling idea of the media. Lego's not going to serriously do it because everytime they try  it they lose lots of money. Minidolls aren't going anywhere. Because actual girls like them and ask their parents to buy them. At the end of the day Lego either provides the product the customers actually want to buy, or they fail as a company and brand. 

For sure. There’s a reason Friends is always among the top selling themes...because it’s  doing something right. It clearly filled a gap that “made it okay” for girls to play with LEGO. This gender study is absolutely trash & only a thing because it’s trendy & will get you play. I can’t even tell you the number of non LEGO accounts on Instagram were talking about it.

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