LEGO suffers another PR setback over street harassment sticker

Oh, LEGO... You used to be so cool. You sometimes still are. But too often now,  you're just so far behind the times it's sad.

This puffy sticker set was, according to AdFreak's David Gianatasio, released in 2010 by defunct licensee Creative Imagination. So they had a convenient player to throw under the bus.

But they still screwed it up. At first.

The whole PR nightmare began a little over a week ago when journalist and press freedom organizer Josh Stearns posted a photo of it on his Tumblr bog, Talking To Strangers:

I was stunned. Maybe it’s the fact that I just saw the team at Hollaback speak this month, or maybe it is that this is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, or maybe it is just that street harassment sucks. But chances are it was all three of these things that made me so mad to see a brand I love pushing this sort of thing. 

The Hollaback website notes that street harassment is the most prevalent form of sexual violence for both men and women in the United States. Internationally, they point out, “studies show that between 70-99% of women experience street harassment at some point during their lives.”

The issue was picked up by Slate and championed by the group Stop Street Harassment. That got LEGO's attention.

First, Charlotte Simonsen, Senior Director at LEGO’s corporate communications office, told Josh “To communicate the LEGO experience to children we typically use humor and we are sorry that you were unhappy with the way a minifigure was portrayed here.”

That's what we in the communication industry refer to as a "non-apology". So Josh wrote back and got the following reply from Andrea Ryder, the head of the LEGO Group’s Outbound Licensing Department, who said she was "truly sorry" that Josh "had a negative experience" with a LEGO product. She refered him to LEGO's brand values, including the line "Caring is about the desire to make a positive difference in the lives of children, for our partners, colleagues and the world we find ourselves in, and considering their perspective in everything we do." And she concluded, "we would not approve such a product again."

This is progress in brand responsibility, but it does not happen unless people are willing to speak up about the little things that reveal big problems in our society.


Laura Northrup from Consumerist wrote, "Street harassment isn’t the most pressing issue facing women today, but it can be a problem, and certainly isn’t appropriate for a children’s product."

I beg to differ on how serious this "one little picture" really is.

Just recently, I was having a conversation with someone from Hollaback about street harassment and rape culture. When you look at the big picture, the normalization of sexual harassment through bystander apathy is just one end of a continuum that ends with the dehumanization of women as targets of sexual violence.

LEGO builds a fan for life

10-year-old LEGO fanatic James Groccia, who has Asperger syndrome, saved up his money for two years to buy the building set of his dreams. Unfortunately, by that time it was discontinued. So in September, he wrote a letter to corporate headquarters asking if they had any left.

Two weeks later, he received a typical customer service response, explaining that they had to retire old sets to make way for new ones. But then, as if by a miracle, James received a mysterious box in the mail...



It came with this letter:

Dear James, 

We are always thrilled to hear from our LEGO fans! You truly have a passion and joy for LEGO. I am amazed at how many sets you have at only ten years old! I am a very big LEGO fan myself and enjoy some of the same sets you do. We received your letter here in Consumer Services and were very touched by your determination. 

The Emerald Night Train is a wonderful set, so we can understand why it is your dream to own it. I commend your willpower and patience to save money for over two years just to purchase this set. It is very evident that no other set could make you happier. We can understand how disappointing it must have been to find it had been discontinued. Due to your passion for LEGO and your heart-warming letter, we knew we had to go above and beyond to help make this a reality. 

We have located an Emerald Night Train for you, James, and included it in this package! I am sure you will enjoy building it and cherish your time playing with the train. We are excited to know that we could help make this dream come true for you! Now there will be no more sadness or disappointment when you think about it ...just happiness! 

We hope you will continue to love to build and create with LEGO. Fans like you are why we are so lucky as a company. Who knows, maybe you will be working for The LEGO Group one day! You certainly have the heart and passion for our bricks to do so! Happy building, James! 

Sincerely, 

MeganConsumer Services Advisor

Nicely done.

Tip via Buzzfeed

No girls allowed in LEGO Middle Earth

There has been quite a lot of talk lately about how LEGO went from a gender-neutral building toy to a series of highly-gendered play sets for boys and girls.

Well, Casey recently alerted me to the latest in the "boy" play sets: LEGO Lord of The Rings.

Clearly based on the movies, rather than the books, it features a number of scanarios from Galdalf's arrival in Hobbiton to Sauron's subterranean orc factory.

What it doesn't feature is any female characters. No Arwen, no Galadriel, no Éowyn. Not even female Hobbits. The only female in the entire set, apparently, is Shelob the horrible giant spider.

The sets focus on battle and brutality, but the complete lack of female characters is striking. In the Peter Jackson movie franchise, some effort was made to give some appeal to female viewers, apart from all Tolkien's old-school unattainable princessy characters, by making the character of Éowyn more prominent as a warrior. But even the crusty old author, with his medieval worldview, gave the "shield-maiden" a front-line role in killing the Witch-King. Why miss the opportunity for at least a token kick-ass woman?

This just goes to show how increasingly ut-of-touch the LEGO designers are getting. They may claim to be appealing to boys' demands for gross and violent battle toys. But even my vintage Star Wars action figures had a kickass Leia. Not the gold bikini one, the "Someone has to save our skins!" bun-headed Rebel spy from the original film. (You know, the one LEGO put into its classic Star Wars collection?"

LEGO is entirely within its rights to tell girls to forget about fantasy and adventure and get back to the kitchen, I suppose. But I also get to call them on it.

I miss the good old days of ugly Lego

This Lego ad, from about 1981, is immensely popular on the internet circa 2012. It, and two others of the same vintage, were recently featured on the academic blog Sociological Images as examples of gender-neutral marketing of children's toys.

SI's Lisa Wade contrasts the Lego of her childhood with today's more gendered Lego sets for girls that put women back in the kitchen:

Or the beauty shop:

Granted, there are lots of different Legos for kids, but this is the one Mastermind Toys lists as "a brand new LEGO world for girls!"

I get it. I only have a son myself, but all of his little girl friends have totally bought into this whole "princess" thing — even though their parents are socially progressive yuppies like me. Kids should be able to (safely and responsibly) play however they want with whatever they have (my son has started making "spy weapons" out of cardboard tubes) so is there really a problem here?

Lisa writes, "In the circles I run in, it’s being roundly criticized for reproducing stereotypes of girls and women: domesticity, vanity, materialism, and an obsession with everything being pastel."

By the way, this controversy is a few months old already. What inspired me to weigh in was an even older Lego image, from a 1973 catalogue, that was featured on Retronaut:

This was around the time when I started playing with the iconic blocks, almost 40 years ago. Note that the craptacular ambulance built by 5-year-old "Maria" could have just as easily been built by "Mario".

And then it hit me what the real problem is.

Lego stopped being a "blank slate" imagination toy sometime in the '80s. While you can still buy plain blocks if you look hard enough, Lego is now much more about getting kids to act out branded and scripted narratives than asking them to start from scratch.

Here's an example. It's the bio of "Emma", one of the Lego Friends:

Favorite animal: Horse, Robin
Hair color: Black
Favorite color: Purple
Favorite food: Fruits and veggies. And chocolate. And cupcakes. And pizza…
I love: Designing clothes and jewelry, crafts, interior decorating, remodeling and horseback jumping.
I’m also good at: Yoga, giving makeovers, martial arts, making origami animals.
My friends think I’m sometimes: Forgetful, but I never forget to accessorize.
I want to be: A designer
Motto: “That’s SO you!”
I would never: Leave home in clothes and accessories that don’t match!
I like to hang out: At the beauty salon and my design studio.

There is literally nothing left to the imagination here.

Toys representing fictional characters with complex backstories existed when I was a kid, too, but not in Lego form. Instead they were "dolls" and "action figures".

I still have mine.

So my question is, should Lego be held to account for defining and gendering the play narrative for its dolls and action figures more than any other toy company?

To be fair, no. Parents do not have to buy these sets for their daughters, and they could well buy kitchen sets for their sons. It's just another company in the business of making money by giving kids (and parents) what they say they want.

I think the real shame here is that a classic toy that engaged children in unique imagination exercises 30 or 40 years ago has become just another product tie-in to increasingly monotonous children's entertainment. And part of this monotony is the cute girlie-girl thing.

I just miss my ugly, impractical Lego machines and houses. And I miss ads that sell nothing more than imagination. But then again, I miss being able to lose myself in a bucket of plastic bricks for an entire afternoon.

There is hope, though. In some places, Lego and its advertising still rock.

Check out this German campaign that shows retro lego geniuses. And this amazing Russian campaign that turns Lego kits into something else. And this fantastically minimalist American one from 2006.

More LEGO retro awesomeness

It turns out that the LEGO campaign I fell in love with last winter has an online video version:



I love the realistic silent home movie, the bad cuts, and the awkward posing. Why won't anyone let me do a campaign like this? *sigh*

Via Reddit

Awesome (and unprovenanced) LEGO ad

My son is at this stage with basic LEGO, so the ad really hit me in my soft spot:

Via

If you know where this ad came from, and when (or if) it was published, please fill me in below.

Because imagination is why the battleship above is so much awesomer than this one. (new window)

More LEGO ads on WTM.

The only thing I hate about this campaign...

Is that I wish I had done it. For 15 years, I've been pitching Gen-X friendly, ironic, '70s and '80s childhood nostalgia campaigns to clients. Nada.

But now Lego has done it, and done it well:

Okay, so the compact florescent lightbulb is working a bit too hard. But just look at the parents!

And, of course, the strategy is bang-on for today's parents, who see their kids as projections of themselves (and perhaps of some of their own wasted potential). In a time when you can get all kids of expensive, annoying and rapidly obsolescent high-tech "educational systems", I see a real desire to return to the most basic of learning toys: Building blocks, Tinker Toys, Play-Doh, Meccano/Erector Sets — and of course Lego!

The idea that these types of toys are capable of unlocking a child's imagination and individuality has already been exploited by Lego, and exploited well, by a great Russian campaign I blogged about in 2010.

This one is from a German agency, serviceplan, via Ads of The World.

PS: Meccano! Call me!

Lego my Imagination!

Ever since the late '70s, I've been kind of a crotchety old man when it comes to Lego. That was when the iconic building blocks went from focussing on generic pieces to what can only be described as glueless modelling kits.

Okay, so a Lego AT-AT is really freaking cool, but where's the imagination in that? And how impressed would you be if your kid was able to design one using only those old primary coloured blocks?

But these fancy model kits aren't necessarily the end of imagination — just a lazy way out. Really creative kids ignore the instructions and make whatever their fantasies demand.

And that's why I love... no, LOVE! this campaign I just saw in I Believe in Advertising:

[click pics for larger versions]

Thank you, Leo Burnett Moscow. That's a truly refreshing and inspirational campaign for a parent like me!