LegoUntil last week, Lego was all: Ladies be shopping or suntanning or brushing their hair and putting on dresses. But Lego has changed their tune. Now, the company is all: Ladies be doing science and stuff too.
On Aug. 1, the Lego Group released their Research Institute Kit, which includes an all-female team of a paleontologist, astronomer, and chemist, as well as all their necessary accessories: a skeleton of a dinosaur and magnifying glass, telescope and star chat, and beakers and Bunsen burner (respectively).
It retails for $19.99 and has already sold out.
The newest addition to the Lego family comes (perhaps coincidentally) just a few months after 7-year-old Charlotte Benjamin wrote a strongly worded letter to the company, complaining about the toys they market towards girls. An except from her letter:
today I went to a store and saw legos in two sections the pink (girls) and the blue (boys). All the girls did was sit at home, go to the beach, and shop, and they had no jobs but the boys went on adventures, worked, saved people, and had jobs, even swam with sharks. I want you to make more lego girl people and let them go on adventures and have fun ok!?!
But Lego denies the Research Institute is, as the BBC puts it, "designed to mollify feminist critics." "The Research Institute set was proposed by geoscientist Ellen Kooijman and backed in a public vote on a Lego crowd sourcing website," they continue.
Kooijman is "pleased" with the final product, aside from their unnecessary makeup.