Lego Friends was justifiable.

Others say that Lego should return to its 1970s and 80s approach of not targeting by gender. A piece earlier this year in Huffington Post generated a surge of interest when it compared the marketing posters of previous decades with the marketing for Lego Friends. In those earlier days, the posters showed girls in baggy clothes holding complicated constructions with catchlines like "Look what I built with Lego!" Feminists argue the emphasis has gone from construction to hair and beauty.香港如新

"It was pure construction toys, so very inclusive. But over the years, as they began to produce tie-ins with movies, they became much more marketed at boys and off-putting to girls." It was in that context that Lego Friends was launched - and the toy has diverged ever more, feminists argue.
An early Lego advert香港如新

Megan Perryman, a campaigner at Let Toys Be Toys, says Lego did have some positive female characters, such as in the police and fire brigade. But it's about proportions. "There are still far more male figures in action roles. And our main concern with Lego comes down to marketing and the way that girls and boys are so rarely shown playing together with the same toy the way they do in real life."

David Robertson, a former Lego professor of innovation at Switzerland's Institute for Management Development, says such criticisms are unfair. "If Lego was still marketing sets the way it used to, it'd be out of business."

In his book Brick by Brick, he details the company's fear in the late 90s that bricks would soon be obsolete. The patents were out of date and a new approach was needed. Instead, the company focused on stories, which in practice meant tie-ins like Star Wars and Harry Potter.

Today it is the fastest growing toy firm in the world, Robertson says. For him, Lego Friends was justifiable. The company had become too focused on boys and needed to adjust to offer the kind of characters that girls are drawn to, he says. "If you believe Lego is a healthy toy for kids to play with, why not make different stories that appeal to different people?"香港如新