A Theory of Play

I saw this post on "X" and wondered if it was being tremendously unfair, so I went to see what else I could find about it. It sounds like it might be pretty fair in spite of the tone; the commentator on the other side seems to agree about the basic facts.

I looked into it and was surprised to learn that Lego launched the Friends line after years of market research. In 2008, they found that 90% of Lego sets were being sold for boys, despite the fact that they’ve had pretty gender neutral advertising over the decades. That means if they could find a way to reach out specifically to girls, they could practically double their sales. They studied how girls and boys built and played with castle Legos, and they found that boys built the castle and then enacted battles in front of it — the castle was just the backdrop. The girls built the castle and then were disappointed that there wasn’t anything going on inside of it where they wanted to enact their stories. They also learned that the girls were more interested in smaller projects, and that they were more likely to want to see themselves in the minifigs. And thus “Friends” was born, with hearts and butterflies and pink and purple colors and listed on the Lego website under the category of “girls.”

The second set of comments, which is the one I quoted, is from a site dedicated to science and skepticism from a feminist perspective. She still has some objections to the idea of gendered sales of "girls" toys and "boys" toys, and wants boys to be more comfortable trying out pink and purple and flowers. I kind of think we have probably chased that particular rabbit as far as it'll run, and the question now is what we do instead. 

But I'm no longer in the toy-buying market, and won't be again until and unless I get some grandchildren.