Lego succeeding at marketing to girls

Lego A/S, the family-owned toymaker based in Denmark, is succeeding at marketing its Lego Friends sets to girls, according to

a

Wall Street Journal

report.

Although Lego doesn’t provide separate sales statistics for the product, the company reports that the percentage of girls who play with Lego toys has increased, the article said.

Lego kits from the 1950s and 1960s “were designed as unisex toys” but were perceived as being for boys, the


Journal


report said.

Lego Friends, launched in 2012, has been criticized by feminists for “perpetuating gender stereotypes through pink-clad universes,” the article noted. However, Lego Friends is more challenging than previous Lego sets that were marketed to girls, which is likely the reason the product is faring well, the report said.

Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, son of company founder Ole Kirk Christiansen, “had decreed in 1963 that the company’s plastic bricks should be aimed at both boys and girls,” the article said. But the company began targeting its marketing to boys after it became clear that male children preferred the products.

“Lego’s breakthrough in spanninc the gender gap, compounded with the growing success of its licensed products, could allow the compay founded by a carpenter during the Great Depression to overtake Mattel Inc. and become the world’s biggest toy maker by revenue,” the

Journal

article said.

(Source:


Wall Street Journal


, Dec. 30, 2015.)