Lego builds conflict

Lego, one of the world's most well-known toymakers, is under fire from activists and some parents for a new marketing campaign aimed at girls.

The line, Lego Friends, premiered this year and includes five girls who live in a fictional hometown called Heartlake City.

Each of the female characters -- Olivia, Mia, Andrea, Stephanie and Emma -- has a distinct personality and interests, such as animals, performing arts, invention and design. Building sets reflect different parts of town where the girls' adventures take place.

Hannah Atkins, 7, recently received the set as a gift because of her love of Legos, but she won't touch it, saying it is too "girlie" and pink. Her 4-year-old sister, Kennedy, gladly plays with it.

The girls differ in their approach to playing with their Legos. Hannah likes to build elaborate sets before free playing. Her favorites are the Lego City kits. Meanwhile, Kennedy likes the pink ones. She plays with the girl figures and horses and brushes their hair.

"I've seen how they have reacted differently to Legos, and they are both girls," says their mom, Julie Atkins. "I can see how it's different, but I wouldn't say the Lego City ones are for boys. The pink ones are definitely for girls."

The protest

The protest began in late December when SPARK, a movement to end the sexualization of girls, began a series of blogs, videos, Facebook discussions on the Lego Facebook fan page and a petition on Change.org stating the Lego Friends campaign panders to traditional gender stereotypes.

They have gathered close to 52,000 signatures so far.

Instead of marketing solely to girls, the toy company should instead include more female characters in its regular Lego sets, says Dana Edell, executive director of SPARK.

"Their marketing strategy for this new line of Lego Friends is to really target girls in a very condescending and stereotypical way that assumes that all girls care about is looking pretty, going to the hair salon and then sitting out at the pool. ... It portrays very limited images of girls," she says.

Michael McNally, Lego's brand relations director for the line, said the company anticipated the new sets would spark lively conversation, and possibly even a backlash by delving into the sensitive topics of gender and childhood.

But McNally also said the company felt it essential, for both business and social reasons, to find ways to get more girls building with Legos.

"Will there be people out there who don't agree with this?" he said. "The clear answer is, 'Yes.' But at the end of the day, we're not trying to tell people how they are playing with Legos. What matters is that they are building."

Alison Piepmeier, director of the women's and gender studies program at the College of Charleston, says there are very few gender differences that are biologically based. She said that gender roles are something that people have been trained to think of and aren't part of a person's biology.

"I think it's a bit ridiculous the notion that girls would be naturally attracted to Legos that are set in the kitchen, but we live in a gendered world and girls are taught that they are supposed to enjoy being in the kitchen, so they may well enjoy that more," Piepmeier says. "Boys and girls should both have fun in the kitchen, should both have fun building spaceships and skyscrapers and anything else that you can do with Legos."

Segregation in toy aisle?

In stores, the boys' toy aisles are packed with toys that represent ambitious careers such as astronauts and pilots, Edell says, while girls' choices are more restricted, with less powerful professions represented.

"(If you are a girl) you can grow up to make cupcakes or to be at the hair salon," she says.

Legos were originally created to be gender neutral, but the company veered from that a few years ago. The Lego company was going bankrupt, and to turn things around, it made a strategic decision to focus on making kits for boys.

That decision was sparked by research that challenged the conventional wisdom about boys and play, McNally says.

Previously, Lego had begun to make simpler kits because it thought video games were evidence of the increasingly short attention spans of boys.

Instead, Lego's research showed boys liked complex tasks that allowed them to immerse themselves in the process and show they could master something.

The boy focus got Lego back on its feet, and in 2010, it became the No. 3 toymaker in the world, surpassing $1 billion in sales, according to a press release.

A couple of years ago, however, the company decided to figure out how to attract girls after several unsuccessful attempts. It hired anthropologists to study how girls played compared to boys.

What they found, McNally said, was that girls wanted more reality-based toys that let them see themselves as the characters, whereas boys liked more escapist, fantasy stuff, including ninjas and wizards.

For girls, how they could play with the kits after they built them was more important than it was to boys, who might be just as happy to set them on a shelf to show them off.

Danielle Feerst, 18, is conducting her senior research and outreach project through Tufts University Center for Engineering, Education and Outreach at Ashley Hall.

The high school senior teaches Lego Robotics to fifth- and sixth-grade girls at Ashley Hall.

She discussed the new Lego Friends line with her students, who are passionate about this topic. The students said they don't like the new line of Legos, stating they think girls should be able to play with whatever Legos they wish.

Feerst hopes more girls will become interested in the engineering field in the future, and believes Legos teach the necessary skills to go into those fields.

She said her research shows girls and boys learn differently when learning Lego engineering.

"Girls definitely learn differently than boys and are attracted to brighter colors and to things that relate to emotions," Feerst said. "We like to story build and role play, and I think the Lego company has put in an ample amount of research and found girls were responding better to the new Lego brand. I think it's fascinating, and I think time can only tell."

Chris O'Brien of the San Jose Mercury News contributed to this report.