2012 Friends Discussion Thread

[lightningtiger]

LightningTiger, you clearly arent the target audience for these sets.

I am also not the target audience for these sets but I can see enough to know that they WILL be attractive to the sort of girls who like Polly Pocket, Bratz etc.

Your right 'jon' it aimed at me.....thank goodness, but I know for a fact that girls prefer minifigs and city sets.....I've seen it first hand.

I do see the angle of Polly Pocket, but that has limited potential......a handful of girls who are into cute things.

Lucky then I have a son eh ? (he's a good lad)

I see Lego clamped down again.

[vexorian]

Girls that like Polly Pocket-style things will buy Polly Pocket. It is likely that it will be less expensive anyway.

[Pingles]

I am currently converting a Fire brigade into a dollhouse for my 3 year old daughter. She has no interest in Duplo but plays with "Daddy's" Legos every day. Fire Brigade has large, open spaces perfect for her to wildly swing her little arms through. Currently I am very disappointed by the tiny play areas in current sets.

I will definitely be interested in what "play" value they design into these new sets.

With my daughters passion for my minifigs I get the feeling that these new minifig-ish sized characters will be perfect.

I'll definitely report back with her experiences. It will be interesting if she ends up preferring the standard minifigs.

[Brickdoctor]

I am currently converting a Fire brigade into a dollhouse for my 3 year old daughter. She has no interest in Duplo but plays with "Daddy's" Legos every day. Fire Brigade has large, open spaces perfect for her to wildly swing her little arms through. Currently I am very disappointed by the tiny play areas in current sets.

I will definitely be interested in what "play" value they design into these new sets.

If it's anything like Belville, the spaces should be rather open, with some large <insert that tiresome argument> elements making up walls, floors, and roofs.

[Brickity]

Hmm since these figures are actually just a bit taller than the normal sized minifigures then I do think they will be successful, at least on sales for little girls. Still, I'm hoping for another city sub theme based on leisure :) We still don't know all the surprises LEGO has for us!

[Aanchir]

Girls that like Polly Pocket-style things will buy Polly Pocket. It is likely that it will be less expensive anyway.

What about girls who like Polly Pocket but would like the ability to better customize a dollhouse? This is the situation where LEGO's status as a building toy would give it an edge.

If it's anything like Belville, the spaces should be rather open, with some large <insert that tiresome argument> elements making up walls, floors, and roofs.

I am hoping that even if the parts are <insert that tiresome argument>, they won't be like Belville parts. I'm fine with homes made with one-piece walls, and even fine with homes that are missing walls to allow for easier play, but giant one-piece latticed walls just made no sense to me. They did have the practical advantage of allowing light in, which is important for dollhouse-style play, but in general they were an aspect of Belville design I was never too fond of. I'd rather see walls made with the same sort of 5-brick-tall columns and panels which are so frequent in the City theme.

[lightningtiger]

Hmm since these figures are actually just a bit taller than the normal sized minifigures then I do think they will be successful, at least on sales for little girls.

Sorry, but success is not judged how many are sold to 6 year old girls, I have always seen Lego as a unisex toy......pity Lego don't see it that way !

[Fugazi]

I'd rather see walls made with the same sort of 5-brick-tall columns and panels which are so frequent in the City theme.

And that would hark back to the first Girl-oriented theme of all, Homemaker (or whatever was its official name), for which these panels were created in the first place!

[Triborough]

A Girls theme that would use standard minifigs and would integrate into the City theme seems like a lost opportunity, since it could be an in to Lego for girls, who could buy other non-girl theme sets, or for girls who are already into Lego but want to have some more girly stuff. It would also have made sense from a cost standpoint, since existing minifigure molds could be used instead of some odd sized stuff.

[Aanchir]

Sorry, but success is not judged how many are sold to 6 year old girls, I have always seen Lego as a unisex toy......pity Lego don't see it that way !

TLG usually tries to cast themselves as a unisex toy in a lot of marketing materials. Catalog images and packaging have typically shown girls playing with LEGO toys or wearing LEGO licensed clothing alongside boys. There's a bit of imbalance (boys are more likely to be pictured playing with BIONICLE sets, while girls are more likely to be pictured playing with Belville sets), but TLG still puts forth the effort to convince parents that yes, their product range does have toys that girls and boys alike can be happy with.

The problem is that buyers (or on the other side of the coin, non-buyers) don't see it that way. Most buyers of LEGO sets are boys-- female buyers make up just around 8% of LEGO's sales, if I remember correctly. It's still a larger percentage than the amount of sales that come from AFOLs, but it's still a huge imbalance between male and female buyers.

TLG designs girl-oriented themes to cash in on the largely untapped female market without compromising the success their other themes tend to have with boys. Your claim that success is not judged by how many are sold to six-year-old girls makes no sense-- if the line is designed for that demographic, then that is exactly how its success must be measured. If boys or adults tend to buy the sets, then that's a bonus, but frankly there are already plenty of sets and themes that cater to those markets, so the theme would overall be failing in its core objective if these groups continued to make up the majority of sales.

[vexorian]

Sorry, but success is not judged how many are sold to 6 year old girls, I have always seen Lego as a unisex toy......pity Lego don't see it that way !

That's actually the most objective way to measure the success of a girls' theme of a toy brand...

[Hinckley]

LEGO toys, not just for un-conjoined twins anymore!

[Haltiamieli]

Today when I was going through some Series 5 bags, a little girl (aged 6-10, I guess) and her mother went by the Lego shelf, and the girl took a Belville set on her hands and said something like "These are what I'd like to have!". I suppose she will be happy, come next year. Just saying.

[Brickity]

I almost forget about the Paradisa line! Can't really tell how successful these were on THEIR years of release. These sets are very pricey nowadays, but the thing is.. which line would sell more: a girly system theme like this one, or a line with these new sort of figures (forget if the buyers are kids/AFOLS) and then, which two of these lines would sell more to little girls. And what about some kind of program to decide this, would it be useful to decide? Curious, not affirming it though, cause maybe I forgot considering other facts.

And yeah, I know maybe this is useless cause LEGO is already planning the release of the new line, but this is just like some sort of "analysis"

[Brickdoctor]

I don't think we can make that comparison yet, having not seen any of the new sets, only the figures, and we can't compare the figures accurately without considering age of the buyer, since the AFOL will almost always pick the Paradisa traditional minifig.

[Tequila Teala]

Started reading this at the beginning and now am caught up. I'm a female and I loved the Paradisa set and hated the Belleville set. I only bought one Paradisa set while it was around, but that was because that was all I could afford to buy. There weren't enough cheap sets in the line, especially if your allowance was only ten bucks a month! Do you know how many pirates and castle sets I could get? Or at the time lots of race car impulse sets.

During the time I was really into Lego, I was all about the Forestmen. I loved the little green guys with their trees and pointy hats. They were super cool too me. I also had a lot of pirates, but that was a price factor.

If I was to build a Girls theme now, I would make two aimed at different ages. I would go with what they are putting out for an early age group and then about age 8 or so go with a minifig scale series. Now on the minifig scale series, I would want to see the following themes:

Amusement park, Zoo, Vet CLinic, Open air mall with different stackable shops to build up mall, Concert Stage with band, singers, fans, public swimming pool, beach resort/houses, Internet Cafe, Duck Pond/park, a molded chicken, a pregnant lego minifig, a baby, baby animals, and

College theme

-fountain

-library

-football game w/cheerleaders

-dorms

I also would like to see a city subset of camping, maybe even with a boyscout and girlscout camp/troop. I also think a lot of food places would be good like Sushi/Teppenyaki Grill, Burger Joint, Taco Stand, Farmers Market, etc. And more recreation themes like Golf Course, Baseball stadium, and Football Stadium. A Rodeo set could be fun! For the Golf set, could have Golf Cart, Club House, Club Pool and Spa, and some real fancy Country Club houses and dances.

The most important thing to get girls interested in sets is to have female minifigs in the set. Girls can be cops, construction workers, bad guys, military, fishing, store clerks, pilots, baggage handlers, etc. I mean, c'mon, Girls do it ALL! ;) I will buy one set over another if there is a girl minifig in it.

[A-17]

well i can say at some point in time Lego will release a girls version of Lego city

[badboytje88]

well i can say at some point in time Lego will release a girls version of Lego city

And you know this because...

[TheKingOfBuilding]

I looked through this thread several times and cannot find the photos of the new girl's theme figures. Was I too late? Were the photos removed? Or was I just not paying enough attention to this thread?

[Aanchir]

I looked through this thread several times and cannot find the photos of the new girl's theme figures. Was I too late? Were the photos removed? Or was I just not paying enough attention to this thread?

They were removed. You can still see them here, though. However, since TLG has asked for their removal from this topic I won't deeplink the individual pictures.

Anyway, as far as Paradisa is concerned, it had a decent lifespan, but not nearly as impressive as Belville's, and since the themes did overlap I think that TLG must have had some reason to expect better sales from Belville than from Paradisa.

I liked Paradisa myself, frankly. When I was very young I bought a couple Paradisa sets (always claiming they were gifts for my mom, of course, but guess who always ended up building them). In retrospect the color scheme of Paradisa could be slightly sickening (the sheer number of pastel colors made brown palm tree trunks, green plants, and red flowers contrast horribly), but Belville was not immune to garish color schemes itself.

Still, I think Belville's dollhouse-style play gave it a bit of an advantage over Paradisa in some regards. And I expect at least some of that in this upcoming theme. My hope, as I have said many times, is that any dollhouse-style sets from this theme will be more substantial than Belville's enormous latticed walls. I also both hope for and expect many useful accessories in this theme, just as Belville and Scala had on occasion.

From what we've seen of the figures, of course, they do stand out from Belville and Scala dolls in many ways. They can be customized by switching parts rather than adding fabric clothes, and they seem to use regular minifigure hair pieces. So while they're still not classic minifigures, they're a lot closer than past girl-specific figures have been.

[Joebot]

The most important thing to get girls interested in sets is to have female minifigs in the set. Girls can be cops, construction workers, bad guys, military, fishing, store clerks, pilots, baggage handlers, etc. I mean, c'mon, Girls do it ALL! ;) I will buy one set over another if there is a girl minifig in it.

This seems exactly right to me. TLC doesn't need an entirely separate "Girl Theme." They just need to tweak their existing City theme slightly to make it more appealing to girls (and simultaneously keeping its current boy-appeal). In my experience with my now-15-year-old daughter, she liked PLAYING with my Legos more than she liked BUILDING. Girls naturally gravitate towards the female mini-figs to do their role-playing.

Presumably TLC has done a bunch of market research to arrive at their decisions for this new line, so I guess they know what they're doing, but it sure seems to me like they're missing the point.

[AndyC]

They just need to tweak their existing City theme slightly to make it more appealing to girls (and simultaneously keeping its current boy-appeal). In my experience with my now-15-year-old daughter, she liked PLAYING with my Legos more than she liked BUILDING. Girls naturally gravitate towards the female mini-figs to do their role-playing.

I'm not sure that's as easy to do as it sounds though. You can't just swap some of the minifigs for females without potentially alienating the existing (and extremely successful) boy market. Simply adding more sets, some of which have predominantly girl figures also creates the issue that you have to second-guess where the appeal might be when selecting figures, would the recent 7285 police dog handler have been more popular with girls or boys, for example. It probably doesn't help that minifigs are one of the more expensive components of a set, so throwing in an extra female figure probably isn't an option either.

What's more, if girls generally prefer playing with sets than building them (and to some degree I'd probably say that was my experience growing up with 4 sisters, even though we didn't have much in the way of 'sets') then it stands to reason that sets targetted at girls should be quicker and easier to assemble, so they can focus on the bit they enjoy. Putting such sets in the existing City line would bring back the problems of juniorization and lessen the appeal for the boys who do enjoy the building aspect more.

Having an entirely seperate "Girls" line is probably actually the most risk-free strategy, even if it deviates from the traditional minifigures. At least these newer figures are a lot closer to minifig scale, meaning that girls will probably happily mix and match the two and let their imagination fill in the discrepencies, something that would be much harder to do with the much larger Belville figures. I think, as AFOLs, we sometimes forget that kids are much better at that than we are.

[greenpaw]

Meh!

Can't believe Lego is going for the different sized figures again-girls do like the minifig sized elements as well.

My daughter often wants to play Lego with her brother.

How can she do that with figures that look like giants?

Perhaps girls generally aren't into the act of building as much as most boys, as someone else pointed out.

Sure juniorize the sets a little but please Lego lets have some female minifig related sets.

Inger

[Oky]

Well, according to the rumors on this blog, the figures in this theme will be the same size as minifigs, which is believable judging from the pics we have seen if you ask me, so the sets should be compatible with City.

The long-awaited new LEGO theme for girls is entitled ‘Friends’. There will be huge range of sets launched, in a variety of sizes. The theme is based around five girls who, as the title suggests, are friends. The mini-figs are reportedly not the mini-figs we know and love, but are in the same scale. Some of the sets have a doll’s house type feel to them, and the line will include typical girl’s products like a car, horse based sets, a vet, a café, et cetera.

[lightningtiger]

They might be right 'Oky', but we need to see two things.....the sets themselves and more importantly this new figure compared to a minifig !

I still don't have good vibes for this subtheme, also importantly will it live here in the town forum or will it be moved ?