An Elementary Class Studied 600 LEGO Sets, What They Found Has Gotten

[Rarah]

I hope that LEGO will never folow such weak study .. I find that the yellow minifig is RACE FREE - I mean it is yellow it is unique it has it´s own race .. no black , no white, no asian .. it is simply neutral and it should stay so .. please just NO MULTI CULTI it does nto work in real life and it will not work in LEGO :D

the only thing I noticed on kids playing with LEGO is - too few minifigs in BIG sets .. and not as many minifig accessories in sets (except friends) ..

and offcourse what I perosnally find the only problem is the quality of lego minifigs went down a lot (legs from china ..) and the price went up .. and I don´t really think 1 USD is 1 EUR .. :/ so what costs 199 USD should not cost 199 EUR

[Borex]

please just NO MULTI CULTI it does nto work in real life and it will not work in LEGO :D

It does work in Lego (hence the licensed sets) and it does work in real life (if you're open to it).

[anton1678]

well, it's not like you can't get the girl faces, get the girl hair, and stick it on a boy minifigure.

there are already different races, indiana jones has them

'less blowing up stuff'?

what is that supposed to mean

you don't see one explosion in any lego

I hope that LEGO will never folow such weak study .. I find that the yellow minifig is RACE FREE - I mean it is yellow it is unique it has it´s own race .. no black , no white, no asian .. it is simply neutral and it should stay so .. please just NO MULTI CULTI it does nto work in real life and it will not work in LEGO :D

the only thing I noticed on kids playing with LEGO is - too few minifigs in BIG sets .. and not as many minifig accessories in sets (except friends) ..

and offcourse what I perosnally find the only problem is the quality of lego minifigs went down a lot (legs from china ..) and the price went up .. and I don´t really think 1 USD is 1 EUR .. :/ so what costs 199 USD should not cost 199 EUR

:thumbup: :thumbup:

[DuckBricks]

Also I noticed one of the items on the list read 'Stop blowing everything up'. Is this referring to some of the play features TLG always adds in?

*Cough flick-fire missiles Cough*

Anyway, I thought it was a pretty good article, but they were quite misinformed on LEGO... Wyldstyle is one example, but there is the new Research Labaratory (Female Minifigure set) coming out, two female Ultra Agents members, leading female Ninjago and Chima characters, and even female Hero Factory characters. This seems similar to the letter the little girl had sent to LEGO a while back, and they were proved wrong again.

[fred67]

The worst part about all this is that the teachers might be reading sites like this (doubtful, but possible), or other outlets that are pointing out how wrong they are and how unscientific their methodology was; people calling them out for indoctrinating their students with this political correctness propaganda... and they will never admit it, let alone even discuss it with the kids that are still under their control.

For the record, out of my two children, it's my daughter that is most interested in "playing" with LEGO (with me). She's quite busy doing things kids her age do... but on a lazy Sunday, when I say "let's build a modular," she's the one that gets excited about it. She's also the one that built me a "happy birthday dad" creation.

[TheLegoDr]

Which has been discussed before, but I think the primary concern for some people is that there aren't even more female minifigures involved. LEGO has created more lately, but there is still a discrepancy. I think that brings on the debate that LEGO isn't a unisex toy because not every child wants to play with only one gender figure. Obviously Friends has been successful and that was based on years of research, so that isn't to say it is wrong either.

[tedbeard]

... but they were quite misinformed on LEGO... Wyldstyle is one example, but there is the new Research Labaratory (Female Minifigure set) coming out, two female Ultra Agents members, leading female Ninjago and Chima characters, and even female Hero Factory characters...

So, they were "misinformed" because they surveyed existing sets without bothering to magically travel forward in a time machine to see what was being offered after their project was finished?

...teachers start off with an agenda, then lead the kids to follow.

Right, so they engaged in a thing called "teaching". ie. a physics teacher starts with an agenda supportive of the theory of gravity and leads the class in experiments in support of this agenda.

What I find appalling is the criticism of a project for kids in grade 4 or 5 and pretending that the methodology is flawed because it is not conducted according to standards more appropriate for graduate students at university. What is even worse is most of the criticism is coming from people with their own agenda even more entrenched than the teachers. So many examples of cherry-picking data and ignoring data that does not support a pre-ordained conclusion.

The fact is that for many years representations of females and non-white races has been problematical, and rather than refuting that conclusion the creation of FRIENDS and the new "Research Institute" demonstrates quite clearly that LEGO is trying to correct the historic imbalance.

[Peppermint_M]

The difference between a lesson plan and an agenda is if you start bleating about it on the internet afterwards. A lesson plan is say, What I like to do After School. It turns into an agenda when someone then posts on the internet or in the media about how - say ten year olds- only play video games and that this is a terrible thing.

It isn't pretending to say the methodology is flawed, it isn't difficult to ask kids to think about something and how to approach looking at something. I didn't do graduate level sociology research, yes I suppose it was high school level but it built from skills and methods taught when I was in "grade" school.

Most LEGO sets are marketed in a gender neutral manner honestly. The only human in the City TV ads is a pair of hands that could belong to anyone.

It is annoying that the theme created from researching how girls play and what girls want in their toys is now being waved around as a terrible stereotype toy trying to keep girls in their place.

It is more than a little problematic that they are calling racial exclusion (or what have you) because they have decided that yellow=European (Licensed themes are only let down by their source material) whenever certain, not racist at all, racial characteristics are introduced in the plain yellow figures people start to cry racism because the figures have any racial characteristics! (wonderful conundrum that).

I'm going to stand by my earlier comment that schools should focus on teaching children to think and to think well, it is just as much a life skill as reading ability, spelling and arithmatic. Though society runners still prefer people to swallow what they are told, so it is unlikely that many students will be given the gift of thought.

[EvilTwin]

I have always believed that non-licensed minigures=yellow (and not indicative of any particular ethnicity.. well, with the possible exception of the native Americans in the Western theme), licensed minifigures=fleshtones, ever since "the Lando question" was since raised back in the old days when licensed minifigures were also all yellow

But... in The Lego Movie, Emmet, Wyldstyle and most of their friends are yellow, Abraham Lincoln is yellow, while Vitruvius (played by Morgan Freeman) is clearly brown. So that kind of says that yellow minifigures=not brown (although Batman is fleshtoned as well)

Will people such as those who conducted the study be able to point to the movie as backing up their findings?

Should the film makers have made Vitruvius yellow?

Or should we consider the movie to be a licensed theme in the same way as Star Wars etc.. in which case why aren't Emmet and Wyldstyle also flesh tones?

Hmm. In the end I think I think the movie is such a mashup of different things that it doesn't mean anything one way or the other.

OK never mind. Sorry for interrupting. Everyone go back to being awesome

---

EvilTwin

[Faefrost]

I have always believed that non-licensed minigures=yellow (and not indicative of any particular ethnicity.. well, with the possible exception of the native Americans in the Western theme), licensed minifigures=fleshtones, ever since "the Lando question" was since raised back in the old days when licensed minifigures were also all yellow

But... in The Lego Movie, Emmet, Wyldstyle and most of their friends are yellow, Abraham Lincoln is yellow, while Vitruvius (played by Morgan Freeman) is clearly brown. So that kind of says that yellow minifigures=not brown (although Batman is fleshtoned as well)

Will people such as those who conducted the study be able to point to the movie as backing up their findings?

Should the film makers have made Vitruvius yellow?

Or should we consider the movie to be a licensed theme in the same way as Star Wars etc.. in which case why aren't Emmet and Wyldstyle also flesh tones?

Hmm. In the end I think I think the movie is such a mashup of different things that it doesn't mean anything one way or the other.

OK never mind. Sorry for interrupting. Everyone go back to being awesome

---

EvilTwin

The Lego movie is a bit of a special case. It is technically a licensed theme. Just one in which Lego themselves own most or part of the IP. The color choices of the minifigs are reflective of the choices made by the movies creators. and those could be for any number of reasons, not the least being simple character differentiation. And even if one assumes that, there really still is not much in the way of specific ethnicity that can be attributed to Vitruveous, beyond being "generically ethnic". Yes he uses a non yellow flesh tome. But what ethnicity is he actually supposed to be? He seems to be more of an amalgam of characteristics.

[DuckBricks]

So, they were "misinformed" because they surveyed existing sets without bothering to magically travel forward in a time machine to see what was being offered after their project was finished?

Ok, the female minifigure set was inaccurate, but Hero Factory has been out since 2010, Ninjago has been out since 2011 and Chima came out in 2013...

[fred67]

Right, so they engaged in a thing called "teaching". ie. a physics teacher starts with an agenda supportive of the theory of gravity and leads the class in experiments in support of this agenda.

I'm not eloquent enough to counter this in a one liner, but I find it hard to believe that you wouldn't already know, as you were writing this, the difference between a well defined science and a political agenda, and that parents don't send their kids to school in hopes of being indoctrinated into a predefined socio-political mindset.

Edited June 20, 2014 by fred67

[BirdOPrey5]

The fact is that for many years representations of females and non-white races has been problematical, and rather than refuting that conclusion the creation of FRIENDS and the new "Research Institute" demonstrates quite clearly that LEGO is trying to correct the historic imbalance.

Is that really a fact? Perhaps your Lego mini-figures have genetalia but mine do not.

Who is to say if a person in a space suit is a guy or girl?

Who is to say a person with a baseball cap is a guy or girl?

Who is to say even someone with a short haircut is a guy or girl?

DO all females need to have lipstick and long hair and a low cut blouse? Those are gender stereotypes which aren't healthy either.

If someone sees 4 space MEN below I submit they are the one being sexist, not Lego. Kids can imagine they are playing with anyone they want.

Edited June 21, 2014 by BirdOPrey5

[legoman19892]

If LEGO starts making more female characters we might a maternity ward set.

[RoboKnight]

The yellow face is supposed to be gender and race-neutral, but I think Lego has definetly failed in making it race-neutral. I've always thought of the yellow faces as white, and I'm sure that most dark-skin coloured people will say the same. I've even seen women who think of the standard smiley-face as a boy face! That people hold this conception is something Lego feels responsible for. We're mostly white males here so we rarely even have that problem! Most products, tv-shows + whatever have white males as the "standard" so it's easier for us to assume that yellow faces are white, than it is for dark-skinned people or even women to assume that yellow faces are dark-skinned or female it's not as easy to just "imagine he's black" or "imagine she's a woman".

Edited June 22, 2014 by RoboKnight

[BirdOPrey5]

The yellow face is supposed to be gender and race-neutral, but I think Lego has definetly failed in making it race-neutral. I've always thought of the yellow faces as white, and I'm sure that most dark-skin coloured people will say the same. I've even seen women who think of the standard smiley-face as a boy face! That people hold this conception is something Lego feels responsible for. We're mostly white males here so we rarely even have that problem! Most products, tv-shows + whatever have white males as the "standard" so it's easier for us to assume that yellow faces are white, than it is for dark-skinned people or even women to assume that yellow faces are dark-skinned or female it's not as easy to just "imagine he's black" or "imagine she's a woman".

I will admit yellow skin is closer to white people skin than black people skin but a face is a face is a face. I have two cousins, siblings, a boy and girl just a year apart. The girl is "pretty" and the boy is handsome by most standards. As a joke one year I was showing someone how to use photoshop at a family gathering so I decided to put the sister's face on the bother's head and vice-versa... The result was unbelievable. They both have virtually the exact same face! Merely copying just the face (and not the hair) and you could barely tell I moved anything at all. There is little to no difference in what makes a male face vs a female face until you start adding makeup or purposely add a beard or mustache. A face is a face and I think it is sexist to say girl's can't imagine a Lego mini-figure is a woman- it is in fact insulting to suggest that.

Edited June 22, 2014 by BirdOPrey5

[tedbeard]

Is that really a fact?

Yes, by any objective measure representations of females and non-white races has been problematical in LEGO sets.

You can cherry-pick the data all you like, ignore or falsify data in support of YOUR pre-conceived agenda, but that will not change the facts. You can pretend that when you look at a LEGO spaceman you see no gender, but just like the "colour-blindness" of Steven Colbert, it is all an act. The default smiley face spacemen were always depicted as and understood to be, well, spaceMEN by the vast majority of kids and parents in the western world.

[Sarah]

Yes, by any objective measure representations of females and non-white races has been problematical in LEGO sets.

You can cherry-pick the data all you like, ignore or falsify data in support of YOUR pre-conceived agenda, but that will not change the facts. You can pretend that when you look at a LEGO spaceman you see no gender, but just like the "colour-blindness" of Steven Colbert, it is all an act. The default smiley face spacemen were always depicted as and understood to be, well, spaceMEN by the vast majority of kids and parents in the western world.

AS a kid, I didn't know this. I've got little pieces of paper with the names and birthdate and personality, etc. names I gave my minifigs. and several of my space minifigs were definitely girls. "Barbara" and "Donna" do not sound like I had little boys in my head when I was working on them.

[AndyC]

You can cherry-pick the data all you like, ignore or falsify data in support of YOUR pre-conceived agenda, but that will not change the facts. You can pretend that when you look at a LEGO spaceman you see no gender, but just like the "colour-blindness" of Steven Colbert, it is all an act. The default smiley face spacemen were always depicted as and understood to be, well, spaceMEN by the vast majority of kids and parents in the western world.

But that was the same smiley face used by, for example, nurses with the pigtail hair that were equally assumed to be female. I don't therefore think you can say automatically say it's a "male" face, even if i'd agree that many (if not all) people would tend to assign a male gender to most of the smiley minifigs with hats, rightly or wrongly.

[RoboKnight]

...The result was unbelievable. They both have virtually the exact same face! Merely copying just the face (and not the hair) and you could barely tell I moved anything at all. There is little to no difference in what makes a male face vs a female face until you start adding makeup or purposely add a beard or mustache. A face is a face and I think it is sexist to say girl's can't imagine a Lego mini-figure is a woman- it is in fact insulting to suggest that.

I'm not suggesting women "can't" imagine that it's a girl's face,my point whas that despite of the standard Lego face being gender-neutral many women still instictevly assume that the standard Lego smiley face is a boy's face.

I (and I assume you too?) speak from the perspective of a white man, who are pretty much the standard in popular culture and media so I can imagine it's not as simple as "imagine it as a black person's or woman's face" because being underrepresented in media maybe makes it harder to not assume yellow standard lego faces are white men. Just my two cents.

[TheLegoDr]

To be honest, I never noticed color differences as a kid. Sure, some celebrities/athletes/strangers on the street were of a different color, but it didn't phase me. It wasn't until growing up hearing about it all of the time did I even start to notice.

So as a kid, my figures were race-less. They were yellow. That's all there is to it. I guess you can call that "racist" since all of my figures were of the same race, but I never once thought of them as white.

I can understand when it came time for the licensed theme and they wanted to portray the figures more accurately they had to switch something. And I personally love the Licensed themes/skin tones. Those are the only sets I actually buy, so without them I wouldn't be into LEGO right now. With that said, I wouldn't have been upset had they continued with all yellow for all races even with Lando. But had they done that, I don't picture them having some of the newer characters in LEGO form then.

And you can say any of this is from a white man's perspective since that is what I am, but even my daughter doesn't pay too much attention to skin color on the figures. She happily mixes Friends dolls with Licensed figures with yellow figures and doesn't bat an eye. I think ultimately it doesn't matter, but people like to make it out bigger than it is.

I know there are a lot of cultural/social issues not everyone can agree on, but this is just a toy. Should it really be this controversial?

[LordDan]

Less things blowing up?!?!?!!!!!!!!! Now what sort of person would think Legos would be more fun with LESS things blowing up?!?

Ok if you want multicultural Legos you have yellow, flesh tone, white, grey and black(as in black people) and black( as in lord garmadon). What more do you need?

They also include other races such as mermaids, minitaurs, dwarfs, aliens, hobbits, trolls, orcs, goblins, skeletons, zombies, bat people, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, chiman wolves, crocs, lions etc , among countless other races. They are all represented so I don't see the "not enough races" thingy

Also there are female torsos, heads, hair, and dresses as well as male torsos, heads, and hair. Well beyond that there are even special friends figurines that are mainly female. lego made friends because girls didn't generally like the standard minifigure, thinking it looked ugly.

( I hope this comes out the right way and doesn't look racist or sexist)

Edited June 24, 2014 by LordDan

[Dorayaki]

The fact is that for many years representations of females and non-white races has been problematical, and rather than refuting that conclusion the creation of FRIENDS demonstrates quite clearly that LEGO is trying to correct the historic imbalance.

This is undetermined. If the study seriously imply the lack of female "minifigures" in the general LEGO world, judging from the lack of advertising, Friends minidolls aren't generally considered to be new female figure supplement pack for traditional themes, otherwise earlier girls-oriented themes (Scala & Belville) would have "solved" that problem.

Anyway, I thought it was a pretty good article, but they were quite misinformed on LEGO... Wyldstyle is one example, two female Ultra Agents members, leading female Ninjago and Chima characters, and even female Hero Factory characters. This seems similar to the letter the little girl had sent to LEGO a while back, and they were proved wrong again.

As mentioned earlier, action heroines do exist, but they're still the minority in the LEGO action themes. While I support action themes to add more female power, I'm against this study because they neglect the fact that each LEGO theme has different targeting market and they're not all for unisex.

Most LEGO sets are marketed in a gender neutral manner honestly. The only human in the City TV ads is a pair of hands that could belong to anyone.

Well as far as I know it's been debated that LEGO TV ads featuring "neutral themes" seldom have girls join the play. Police, which consumers are mostly boys, wouldn't really introduce a girl fan.

I'm a "yellow" Asian, so I'm not really with the debate of black and white. But I do feel awkward to see Ninjago fanarts always feature white skin guys (not even Asian-like despite ninjas are from Japanese culture).

ego made friends because girls didn't generally like the standard minifigure, thinking it looked ugly.( I hope this comes out the right way and doesn't look racist or sexist)

I think you may just say that the research found the minifigures aren't "appealing enough" to girls, not because they're ugly . And recent traditional minifigures have caught more attentions from girls by having more varieties (CMF series, action themes etc). Edited June 25, 2014 by Dorayaki

[tedbeard]

AS a kid, I didn't know this. I've got little pieces of paper with the names and birthdate and personality, etc. names I gave my minifigs. and several of my space minifigs were definitely girls. "Barbara" and "Donna" do not sound like I had little boys in my head when I was working on them.

And good for you. You however do not represent the majority view over the last 40 years.

But that was the same smiley face used by, for example, nurses with the pigtail hair that were equally assumed to be female. I don't therefore think you can say automatically say it's a "male" face, even if i'd agree that many (if not all) people would tend to assign a male gender to most of the smiley minifigs with hats, rightly or wrongly.

And it was clear that in the era of standard smiley faces the "girls" were identified by the use of alternate hair styles and later by the introduction of "female" faces. The default in the 70's, 80's and 90's was that these figures were male.

That stereotype was still seen and going strong in the direct to video movie The Adventures of Clutch Powers released in 2010. The hero is surprised when a minifig removes a full-face motorcycle helmet (and thus unable to see the face) and it turns out to be a girl because he assumed it was a male character - a trope BTW that still appears in live-action movies.

I'm glad that so many here were progressive enough to see these figs as females but it was not that common.

[Sarah]

And good for you. You however do not represent the majority view over the last 40 years.

Please show me the research that is determining what this "majority view" you are referring to is?

In particular, I suspect that girls playing with minifigures tend to make more of the minifigures girls than boys who play with minifigures. So if your experience is mostly as a boy who played with their guy friends, then you are going to run into lots of people assuming most of the minifigures are boys.

But if you are a girl playing with their girl friends, experience will show more of these minifigures being treated as girls as well as boys.

In which case, the research would show its the user that sets the gender on the pieces. As more boys played with Lego after it specialized towards boys (end of the 1980s? early 1990s?) then yes there is going to be a greater perception of the minifigures being boys

But before minifigures there were Homemaker figures (all of my first Lego people were Homemaker figures), and those were definitely made as both male and female so I don't see any "of course" about all the indeterminate Lego figures being meant to be male.

Edited June 25, 2014 by Sarah