lego | Veronica Scott

Veronica sez: Decided to pull this post from the archives and run it again today because GoldieBlox is in the top four companies competing to win a Super Bowl advertising spot from the Intuit company! They need votes, go here to VOTE!

“Toys to inspire the next generation of female engineers…”

Last year I decided to take part in a Kickstarter project as a Backer, to see how the process worked – I thought it would be fun to have a project to root for. I kept my eye open for a suitable effort and very shortly was charmed by GoldieBlox in October. Their motto (as stated in a Kickstarter post) was “Gold is the new pink” and their goal was to tell the world “…our daughters are more than just princesses! GoldieBlox deserves to sit on the shelves next to Bob the Builder and Thomas the Train! To tell our girls: you can be ANYTHING you want to be when you grow up!”

Debbie Sterling, a Stanford graduate and engineer-turned-entrepreneur created GoldieBlox out of frustration with how few girls pursue math, science and engineering, and how few toys are offered to support those interests. Even LEGOs expects girls to do the pink LEGO thing. (See the post I wrote on this topic last year, re LEGOs.) Sterling’s imaginative concept for GoldieBlox was to have a construction toy set and storybook starring the tool-wielding character. Research has shown that toys can play a critical role in early development of interest in the scientific and technical aspects and Ms. Sterling was frustrated that girls toys pretty much focused on fashion and beauty.

Sterling wrote and illustrated the GoldieBlox book, in which Goldie invents machines and problem solves. She does have animal sidekicks (and there is some pink involved). The pegboard and tool kit allow kids to build whatever Goldie is building in the book, and learn engineering concepts as they go, like how a wheel and axle work.

The kit I received contains Benjamin the cat, Nacho the dog, Katinka the dolphin in a pink tutu, Favio the white bear in a suit, and Phil the sloth in yellow. I would just say mildly, why is the male bear figure in a suit and the dolphin in a stereotypical pink tutu? However, the book gets good marks from me with templates for drawing your own designs and the use of technical terms from the get-go (bill of materials, axle). All the materials needed to duplicate Goldie’s engineering feat are included – a crank, washers, wheels, axles etc.

Nacho is a rescue dog who speaks Spanish. Katinka is a Russian ballerina (ok, so the pink makes sense). Phil the sloth breaks stereotypes by being the one who energetically encourages our Goldie to keep trying when she at first can’t figure out a more advanced problem. I don’t have any little girls handy to try the kit out on, unfortunately. The target group is age 6-9. Remembering my daughters at that age, I think they might have played with the kit, although they loved LEGOs (and not the pink ones either).

GoldieBlox had over 50 five star reviews on at least one distributor site I looked at (they’re still on pre-order status at Amazon.)

Now that the first kits have shipped, Ms. Sterling plans to create more kits, with increasing complexity, I assume, and I read she hopes to have an iPAD interactive version available within a year. Interestingly, a professor at Pennsylvania State is going to track the success or failure of this effort to challenge the toy industry stereotypes. I think the list price, at $29.99, seems a bit steep and may present some challenges in achieving wide adoption, however, I’m assuming as the GoldieBlox line of items grows, there may be bigger and smaller kits, accessories etc.

It would be nice to have an actual Goldie action figure in the kit…

As far as the Kickstarter process itself, the initial goal was $150K at first, later $400K as the fundraising became quite successful. As a Backer, I was very satisfied – we got regular updates on progress via e mail and videos posted to youtube. The project had the problems you might expect in dealing with foreign manufacturers, a few design issues (holes too big in the first pegboards), etc. But the day I received my Backer Box with the toy, my T shirt and Goldie glasses, I was so pleased to have played a very teeny part in this innovative, worthwhile and fun idea. Now I’m looking for another small Kickstarter effort to back!

You can find out more at http://www.goldieblox.com/

Did you play with Legos as a kid? Do your kids play with them? Probably billions of those colorful little plastic bricks have been sold worldwide. (And I’ve personally stepped on at least 100 barefoot in the middle of the night – ouch.)

Recent articles on the company reveal that while the tightly engineered, “click-fit, clutch power, plastic bricks” are unchanged since their invention in the late 1940’s, Lego has been giving a lot of thought to how the toys are played with, at least by little girls.

The company’s name comes from two Danish word “leg godt” meaning “play well.” Per the website, their Mission is to “Inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow’, with a Vision of “Inventing the future of play.” Certainly a good start, for boys and girls…

Building with Lego bricks has been shown to assist children in developing spatial, mathematical and fine motor skills, allowing the use of imagination for hours of quiet, independent play. A good set of skills for boys and girls…

Now my daughters played with Legos a lot. They loved the castles, the Robin Hood forest, the city, the outer space sets…they had no problem being girls playing with Legos. Despite “being for girls and boys” as listed in Lego’s top ten corporate characteristics, the company focused on the market for boys, doing very well, topping $1 billion in annual sales worldwide. They’ve made periodic attempts to create “girl” Lego kits but didn’t put much thought into it, in my opinion and experience. And predictably the “pink” sets didn’t do well at all. My own daughters pretty much ignored the sketchy “Paradisa” kits in the 1990s, preferring the richly detailed sets I mentioned above.

Is boxy “ Minifigure Man” a hit or a miss for little girls? Lego researchers learned to their shock that the iconic man was a flop with girls. The all purpose plastic man with his swiveling legs, yellow jug head, and painted on face just didn’t cut it in the world of girl play.

In the research reports, the Lego team said boys tend to play with the minifig in the third person. Girls saw the minifig more as an avatar, projecting themselves onto her. Lego is now going to introduce 29 mini-doll figures, who will be 5mm taller than the standard minifig, with more curves. There will be five main characters, with names and backstories (Remind anyone of the American Girl doll series? Just a tad…).

According to the Lego anthropologists, girls need harmony (a pleasing, everything-in-its-right-place sense of order), friendlier colors, and a high level of detail. Boys tend to be “linear” – building the kits exactly like the picture on the box, maybe even racing against the clock to see who could build faster, while girls prefer to take breaks along the way, to start storytelling and playing before the kit is finished.

The Lego team does have some concerns about the fact that to break down stereotypes about girls playing with legos, they are reinforcing other stereotypes – girls need pretty and pink in their toys. Additionally, kids pick up on the cues in television commercials and elsewhere as to who plays with what. “Legos are for boys,” said many little girls the company surveyed, even as they happily played with the new Lego Friends line.

My own daughter, now grown, says, “I’d like to know what little girls they were talking to. All that stuff about harmony, order, blah blah. My fav games involved dinosaurs and time travel and shark chases and rogue centaurs. I even made my Barbies jump off buildings.”

Major department stores in the U.S. plan to display the Lego Friends in the girls’ toys sections, not with the massive classic Lego kit displays.

So will this new iteration of ”Legos for girls” – pastels and curves – work better than previous efforts? Is it really even needed? What do you think?

*Quotes and statistics drawn from “Lego’s Billion Dollar Girl,” by Brad Wieners, Bloomberg Business Week, 12/19-25/11, or from the LEGO corporate web page.