LEGO Just Made A Statement Long In The Making

By Victoria Robertson on February 27, 2016

Photo Via: http://i2.cdn.turner.com

The popular children’s toys have always included little, yellow figurines. However, before now, these toys never made a statement — they were just small male and female toys to inhabit a child’s Lego universe.

But now, Lego is introducing a new line of figurines in an effort to “mirror the world we live in today.” In doing so, Lego has created the Lego City line, which debuted on Thursday at the New York Toy Fair. Featured in this new line of figurines? Stay-at-home dad and working mom figurines.

The mom figurine dons professional, business attire while the stay-at-home dad has a beard, a baby and a stroller.

According to Lego president Soren Torp:

“We need to stay in tune with the world around us. We aren’t responding to demand from anyone. We are trying to portray the world around us and listen to our consumer base.”

And Torp isn’t just speaking to a select few. Since 1989, the number of stay-at-home fathers has almost doubled according to the Pew Research Center.

But the switched parenting roles aren’t the only call to action that Lego is enacting upon.

Society today is very much politically correct, and it’s difficult to do anything without upsetting, excluding or insulting someone else. Still, the drive for inclusion is felt by the toy company, and as another character in the new, City Line, Lego unveiled a new figure that uses a wheelchair.

The character dons a knit cap and a hoodie and once images of the new toy were released, disability advocates rejoiced.

Normalizing such characters in a child’s imagination is a great place to start, and the company saw the opportunity and took it, much to the public’s happiness.

A group known as Toy Like Me asked the toy industry last year to better represent children with disabilities, specifically lobbying Lego to add the disabled figures into its sets.

They created a Change.org petition, which received over 20,000 signatures.

And Lego reacted, prompting the group to respond:

“We’ve got genuine tears of joy right now … Lego have just rocked our brick-built world … It’s momentous, The message behind it is far bigger than a little one-inch-tall plastic guy.”

However, the company hasn’t quite reached full public support. Melissa Wardy, author and co-founder of the Brave Girls Alliance, still notes the unequal female balance in the toys, calling for a change in her own Change.org petition.

In the petition, she urges Lego to develop an all-female scientist series. While it’s easy to jump to judgments and say we’re asking for too much since the company has already made quite a few positive changes, Wardy notes the inequality of the male to female ratio in Lego toys. In total, female Lego characters only make up 16 percent of Lego sets.

Wardy stated in her petition, “Girls can’t be what they can’t see and we demand more examples of girls and women that celebrate our intellect, courage and creativity.”

She went on to explain:

“As the parent of a young son and daughter, I am tired of the gender stereotyped toys marketed to my children. My daughter is oversold pinkwashed redundant themes. Families are looking for multi-layered, diverse and strong media characters to enrich our girls’ imaginations. It hurts my heart to hear my 7-year-old ask why there are not more girls represented in LEGO, her favorite toy.”

The petition received over 40,000 signatures and on June 12, 2014, Lego announced they had approved designs for an all-female scientist series.

So while all demands may or may not be heard by the company, they are being made, and the desire for change is present. That right there is as good a place as any to start, so at the very least, this will hopefully be an eye-opening change for the toy industry in general.

We can only hope this opens the gates for other companies to make similar changes. And then, who knows? Maybe generations from now, the topic of “inclusion” will be nothing but a thing of the past.

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