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Lego Friends is a line of Lego construction toys marketed for girls. The toy line utilizes slightly larger and more detailed "mini-doll" figures in place of the usual Lego minifigures.
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Text from the Wikipedia article “Lego Friends”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Lego Friends is a line of Lego construction toys marketed for girls. The toy line utilizes slightly larger and more detailed "mini-doll" figures in place of the usual Lego minifigures.
Launched in 2012, the Lego theme features five core characters named Andrea, Emma, Mia, Olivia, and Stephanie. To feature a more diverse set of characters, the theme was later relaunched in January 2023 with Aliya, Autumn, Leo, Liann, Nova, Olly, Paisley, and Zac. Lego Friends is set in the fictional town of Heartlake City, where sets depict scenes from the character's day-to-day lives. The sets are accompanied by a CGI-animated series, Lego Friends, which debuted in 2012. Each character's personality is built around a specific interest, such as animals, cosmetics, or pop music. Playsets are designed to depict locations where the character might spend their day-to-day life, such as houses, cars, or locations tied to their interest. The Lego Friends characters are represented by the line's distinct "mini-doll" figures in place of the usual Lego minifigures, a feature that is shared with Lego's previous girl-focused theme, Belville, who are similar to Lego Friends, except they were non-customizable. While the mini-dolls of Belville and Lego Friends are considered more "life-like" than Lego's minifigures, the Lego Friends pieces are compatible with other Lego products. Lego Friends also introduced a range of new Lego brick colors, including purple, lavender, teal and turquoise.
The launch of Lego Friends sets in 2012 was one of Lego's biggest successes: in addition to doubling sales expectations, it also widened Lego's customer base within the girls' sector. Despite receiving initial criticism regarding its representation of girls and their interests, the line has consistently performed well and has been regularly listed as one of the Lego Group's best-selling themes.
Prior to January 2023, Lego Friends focused on five teenage girls from the fictional town of Heartlake City. Each character had a distinctive personality illustrated by her favorite activities, along with their own pets.
Before the launch of the Lego Friends range, the Lego Group had originally targeted both genders with its marketing as commercials from 1955 depicted both young boys and girls playing with their toys. Lego in the following years continued to introduce girl-centered products to follow their themes of inclusivity:
In October 1999, Lego released a computer game for Windows PC titled Lego Friends. The game followed five girls as they "do all the things [girls] enjoy most -- from being part of a girls 'gang' to playing in a band." According to Lego, this game "was created as a sort of experiment, the byproduct of research conducted by Elena Catón in 1997 for the Lego Group into some concerns the company had about the demographics of its toys."
Years of additional research into the Lego customer base revealed that 90% of Lego sets sold were aimed at boys. This meant that there was a huge untapped market of girls who were not using Lego. Lego spokesman Michael McNally, reported that, "Seeing that the play pattern was really skewing so heavily toward boys, we wanted to understand why. We embarked on four years of global research with 4,500 girls and their moms. Some of the things we heard were really surprising and challenging in ways that weren't really comfortable for us as a brand."
The research showed that boys and girls play very differently and construct different worlds of play. McNally noted that, "The boys immediately grabbed the figures and the horses and the catapults and they started having a battle". By contrast, the girls were more focused on the structure. "They all looked around inside the castle and they said, 'Well, there's nothing inside'. This idea of interior versus exterior in the orientation of how they would then play with what they built was really interesting. If you think about most of the Lego models that people consider to be meant for boys, there's not a whole lot going on in there. But [the girls had] this idea of, 'There's nothing inside to do.'"
The Lego Friends line was developed to target the girl's market. The Lego Group conducted extensive ethnographic research, which aimed to identify girls' preferences. Friends model designer, Mauricio Affonso, commented, "One of the main things was they couldn't really relate to the minifigure, it's too blocky. Boys tend to be a lot more about good versus evil, whereas girls really see themselves through the mini doll. They wanted a greater level of detail, proportions and realism".
The research also showed a difference in the way that girls assemble Lego sets. McNally commented, "One of the things we learned in the research was that—where boys were perfectly happy going through two hours assembling a single structure—girls were much more interested in small bite-sized assembly that provided a role-play opportunity, before then building again".
The Lego Friends toy line was launched in January 2012 in North America (December 2011 in France), with the release of 14 sets. The first wave afterwards contained 23 sets. In the initial release, the larger sets included the Heartlake Vet, City Park Cafe, and Butterfly Beauty Shop. Smaller sets in the initial wave included vehicle and hobby-themed kits, such as Stephanie's Cool Convertible and Olivia's Invention Workshop.
Lego Friends is one of Lego's biggest successes. At launch, the line doubled sales expectations, with sales to girls tripling in the same year. In the first six months of 2012, The Lego Group's net profit rose 35% to 2bn kroner (£213m), partially driven by the success of the Friends line. This success caused other construction-set companies such as Mega Bloks to introduce girl dolls. Following the launch of Lego Friends, sales in the girls' market were growing as much as 20% each year. Three years after the launch, Lego achieved sixth place in the list of gifts that girls wanted most for Christmas, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation.
Lego Friends has also reappeared in The Lego Group's annual report as one of its five top-selling themes, most recently in 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Lego's chief operating officer, Bali Padda, remarked, "We tried reaching into the girls' audience a number of times over the last 15, 20 years, and this is the first time, with Friends, that we've had true success". On September 28, 2022, The Lego Group reported that Lego Friends, alongside Lego Star Wars, Lego Technic, Lego Icons (formerly Creator Expert), Lego City, and Lego Harry Potter were the top earning themes for the six months ending June 30, 2022.
The Lego Friends theme received initial criticism for its reinforcement of gender stereotypes. Campaign groups in both the UK and the US particularly disliked the use of pink in the product range, as well as the activities the characters were given felt stereotypical. Abi Moore of UK campaign group Pinkstinks remarked, "We want toys that offer all sorts of opportunities to all children. We think that cupcakes, parties and having everything revolve around leisure is just tiresome and heavily stereotyped." In the US, a petition launched by the Spark movement achieved 50,000 signatures with the aim of pressuring The Lego Group to change its marketing strategy.
The slim figures of the Friends characters have drawn additional criticism from eating disorder specialists. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood nominated Lego Friends for a TOADY award, a "worst toy" award whose acronym stands for "Toys Oppressive And Destructive to Young Children." The Campaign declared that the Lego Friends line was "so jam-packed with condescending stereotypes it would even make Barbie blush." In response, the Lego group has stated that the line was result of 3,000 girls who wanted to find relevance in Lego construction sets.
Lego spokesman Michael McNally commented, "There were a lot of people at the beginning who said, 'They've dumbed it down, it's not nearly as complicated [as the original Lego], it's special for girls because they don't think girls can build. The reality is, just about piece for piece, there are just as many pieces required to put something together [among Friends sets]." McNally defended the Lego Friends product line against its critics by stating, "I think there's been a lot of momentum around this idea that everything should be gender neutral. That's not what we're striving for. We don't see anything wrong with the natural ways that children are choosing to play. We try being gender inclusive."
In 2014, a letter written by a 7-year-old girl expressed further criticism about the nature of the girls' activities in Lego sets. The Lego Group responded with the release of a Research Institute play set which included an all-female trio of a palaeontologist, an astronomer, and a chemist.
In October 2022, The Lego Group announced the relaunch of the brand, which introduced eight new characters in January 2023 named Aliya, Autumn, Leo, Liann, Nova, Olly, Paisley, and Zac. The lineup represents a new generation of characters accompanied by a new series. The Lego Group stated that it had been working with the Geena Davis Institute to present greater diversity. The new sets were launched on January 1, 2023. The new characters were created to offer greater representation by featuring a variety of skin tones, disabilities, cultures and neurodiversity. Unlike the first lineup, the main characters of the relaunch include male characters.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Lego Friends”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.