Now you’re probably expecting me to rant about why these toys are a bad idea. But I’ll be honest. I like pink. I like purple. I look at the new Lego Friends line and I am drawn in. The packaging is attractive, I like the colors, and I like the idea of a toy built around a story (I am, after all, a story-teller). I am completely on board with the concept of the new Lego Friends line. As a marketer, I think it’s a brilliant idea. What I don’t like is that they are only for girls. It’s the gender marketing that has me seeing pink. I reject the notion that girls can’t follow directions. I reject the notion that boys can’t be creative. Must we have toys that are for boys and toys that are for girls?
The Lego controversy, from Colette Martin in Forbes.
blue milk 
Pink Lego _per se_? No problem. Pink spanners and tools exclusively for the friends line for girls? Mmmm … it feed into an insidious notion that pink is a an exclusive girls choice … one that is _for_ girls … why can’t the friends mechanic have a normal spanner … or better still a green one? Would it be so hard to change the base colour to something other than pink? I like pink but I dislike the Disney faux-princess pink … Lego missed an opportunity here and instead went for the now ‘safe’ option of ‘if it’s for girls then we’ll make it pink so that there’s no mistaking it’s for girls’
-1 Lego on the Friends line.
I hate that toys are so gendered now. It’s like Squinkies. All kids would like Squinkies, but they’re too “girly” so they had to create “Squinkies Boys” with skull and trash can designs. It’s kind of funny, but still annoying.
One of my six year old daughter’s school friends is a boy who loves pink. She prefers blue so they often swap things they’re handed.
What I don’t like a lot about Lego Friends is the scenes – outdoor bakeries, beauty shops, etc. Every girls’ playset is themed around baking, sleepovers, makeovers, or walking little white dogs. I hate that my little girls love this stuff! On the one hand I indulge it because it makes them so happy, and on the other I feel guilty at short changing them.
I blogged about Lego Friends too:
http://www.keepworkingthroughit.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/gendered-toys-lego-and-pink.html
So much this. I played with Legos all the time and and I have one of the Friends sets bc OMG girl scientist! pink and purple and aqua lab!!!!!!! MUST HAVE.
But yeah. Part of why I love that lab so is because of all my experiences as an older girl, teen, and young woman who studied science. I really don’t want other kids to have to go through that. So a part of me is glad it’s there, but I am mostly sad that it is so starkly different from everything else that is out there – that we create such binary choices rather than a true spectrum.