A lot of people donât realize, but the Friends and Elves themes are actually LEGO trying to fix the massive mistake they made with gendered marketing in the â90s.
LEGO panicked in the â90s. They were losing money hand over fist as video games and movies occupied more of kidsâ time. In response, like a lot of toy manufacturing at the time, they took a sharp right turn into highly gendered marketing. They made sure that all the new parents of the Reagan/Bush era knew that LEGO was safe and not challenging for their little boysâ masculinity. ALL of their advertising went to promoting LEGO as a âboys toyâ, and they invested in âactionâ themes and cartoons for boys, like Clutch Powers and Bionicle. Even plain, non-themed bricks were advertised exclusively by and for boys. They even reduced the number of different colors and the vibrancy of those colors to make sure the bricks seemed masculine enough.
This came back to bite them, as naturally it should. They, along with the other toy companies in the â90s, pressed so hard with the gendered marketing, that there was literally no crossover market in most areas anymore. They had alienated half of their customer base. Those Reagan/Bush parents they were so worried about bought into the gendered marketing hook, line, and sinker. Many of these parents (especially the conservative ones with more money to spend on toys) wouldnât even consider allowing their little girls to shop anywhere but the âpink aisleâ. I know many women who grew up in the â90s have stories about that, of parents and other adults telling them they couldnât shop anywhere else. There are parents all over, but especially in conservative markets like the Bible Belt, that will still not buy a toy for their girl unless the box is pink.
Because LEGO had remade itself as a âboyâs toy,â it had now been purged from the market of girlsâ toys entirely. They tried to get back into the âpink aisleâ with the Belville line, but Belville was shit, because they were made to appeal to the conservative parents rather than the kids. They were mostly about big, awkward dolls with almost DUPLO simplicity to the build aspect, most pieces were incompatible with regular LEGO system bricks, and they were just not fun.
Then, in the late â00s, someone at LEGO had the brilliant idea to actually ask little girls. They spent 5 years and millions of dollars doing hundreds of focus groups with girls with their parents not in the room to influence what they were saying. The resounding response? The girls wanted the exact same brick their male siblings had, but with more color variation, detail work, and also could we have people that look like people instead of blocks with arms?
LEGO Friends is the result of this feedback. Released in 2012, it has been the best way for LEGO to sneak past conservative parents and into little girlsâ hands again. Friends is all LEGO brick, but as the little girls requested, it comes in more, brighter colors, has more small, storytelling-themed details, and features characters that look more like people. The sets were a bit tentative that first year, not a particular challenge to build, but have since gained complexity rapidly as the line took off. If you look closely and actually build the sets, you will notice that while the boxes are pink, the builds are usually another color. Still generally âcuteâ, but rarely exclusively pink. The pink is mostly the box to get it past the parents who see nothing but the box.
LEGO Friends is the third most popular LEGO theme of all time, after Star Wars at #1 and LEGO City at #2 (mostly because City has been there forever). Think about that. Five years, and it has beaten the sales numbers of most other LEGO lines in the last 80 years since the company was founded. Additionally, the LEGO Friends theme has entirely shifted LEGOâs statistics. In 2010, surveys indicated that the gender breakdown of end-users of LEGO products across all themes was 90% boys, 10% girls. In 2013, one year after Friends was released, it had shifted to 60% boys, 40% girls. Thatâs across all themes. Some quick market research discovered that little girls would get a Friends set or two, and then expand into other themes. Because obviously my town with a juice bar and a cupcake shop has to have a police station or a pirate fortress too, mom.
And LEGO added the Elves theme last year, specifically because older girls wanted to tell more complex and fantasy-themed stories with their LEGO builds. Elves is targeted at a slightly higher age group than Friends, and the complexity of the Elves constructions rivals any Star Wars set of similar size. Every single development with âgirlâ LEGO in the last 5 years has been at the express feedback of actual girls.
LEGO still has a long way to go to fix the mistakes of the â90s. There are still marketing people in the company who donât fucking get it, and think that theyâre just shilling âgirl LEGO.â There are still a lot of old white men in very high positions in the company who donât understand whatâs going on, theyâre mostly just coasting on what market research and focus groups are telling them. And some themes, like Ninjago, are still very clearly marketed for boys while Friends and Elves are marketed for girls. They have a long way to go to fix what they broke.
At the same time, if youâre unwilling to allow a pink building toy to be a gateway to other building toys just because itâs pink, the problem is not the pink building toy.
