Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Lego's Female Scientist Figures

From ABC News:

LEGO Launches Collection of Female Scientist Figurines


PHOTO: New Lego set, Research Institute.


When a 7-year-old girl wrote a stern letter to Lego earlier this year to express her discontent with the Danish toy company's offering of female figurines, she set in motion an effort to do something about it.


"I want you to make more Lego girl people and let them go on adventures...ok!?!" Charlotte Benjamin wrote in her letter.
At the time, Lego officials assured Benjamin that they were in fact considering a brand new female set. Now, Lego has made good on its promise.


The company debuted a the Research Institute play set on its website today. Created by geophysicist Ellen Kooijman on Lego Ideas, the crowd-sourced design platform, the collection features three female scientists: an astronomer, a paleontologist and a chemist.

In a blog post, Kooijman wrote: "As a female scientist I had noticed two things about the available Lego sets: a skewed male/female minifigure ratio and a rather stereotypical representation of the available female figures."

She added that she hoped her designs would "make our Lego city communities more diverse."
The collection launched today and is already sold out. According to the site, it will be available for purchase again later this month.

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