Lego launches gender-neutral range in a bid to 'break stereotypes'

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• By Avi Yemini

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In a classic case of giving people what they weren’t asking for, Lego has gone gender neutral. 

The toy building bricks company announced this week that it wanted to break down what it described as “silos between girls and boys”. 

It said that a range of new products – including a pegasus horse, a robot, a crocodile car and a shark ship – would all be gender neutral. 

While Catholics are normally focused on spreading the Good News, Australian Catholic University Associate Professor Laura Scholes described the gender-neutral Lego as “great news”. 

She said the new product was important since grandparents often promoted gender stereotypes. 

“Because that is what they are used to,” she said.  

Lego’s gender-neutral range was “a good acknowledgment from these bigger companies” that something needed to be done. 

But Scholes said it wasn’t enough to neutralise the influence of gender stereo-typing grandparents. She said that the location of toys on shelves should also be reassessed. 

Boys’ and girls’ toys should be displayed on shelves together rather than separated in order to break down the silos between them, she said. 

Lego said that it sought input from 23,000 children across 29 countries over four years before creating the new product that would usher children into a gender neutral “dream world”.