Lego - with or without creativity

Lego has as always not a clue when it comes to girls. First of all it always sounds as they expect no girls at all to love Lego as it is today, that only 50% of our kids like Lego at all. I'd say most parents to girls know the opposite. But it is hard to find 'not so male gendered sets' in the stores - wich is kind of good because then we see that the girls actually accept spiders, dragons, pirates, planes and cars if we try to give it to them. But we would of course also like the City to contain a school, a hospital and a trendy café too to reflect a more diverse world.

When I was a kid in the 70's I had these Lego Animaland figures to inspire me creating buildings and stories for, and I think the animal head trick is quite allright if that's what it takes to make a few more girls to enter the magic world of Lego.

Instead Lego pisses me off - again!!! by presenting Lego for Girls. They change the lable but not the idea of that girls will appreciate modified bodys and already completed modules - nothing to build??? It's the building that is fun, if I want to play with doll I will not go for stiff lego dolls with lots of things that Polly Pocket does much better.

It's very trendy right now to say that the Lego commersially labled products as Harry Potter and Creator are objectionable, favouring the 70s free creative style. I don't support those arguments as there are different ways of playing with your Lego - to read instructions and construct according to a model or build something out of pure creativity. When finishing your pre set model you can start play creatively with your finished plane and have both games in one. I have seen many models made a few times to finally get mixed with hundred of other blocks to again raise to a piece of own creative composition. Many people on the other hand like to sort the blocks and keep them in order. If that makes them satisfied I believe that's good. There are many ways of playing with Lego which is probably why it's so long lasting successfull.

But to assume that girls don't want to build, but only use the from start complete hairdryer looks degrading to me. Jezebel summarizes it well.

James Keeling presents one of 1239327 images of Lego on flickr.

I guess everyone is dreaming of having the time to make a project as the spooky houses of Mike Doyle's

But smaller projects can be just as creative, eye catching and impressive. (From UpperGround)

Update: I got a tweet from Sr. Digital Strategy Manager for LEGO that it's not true that there is nothing to build, but I persist - this offers very little to build. . Find the entire range here.