Lego Friends magazine is slammed for sexist storyline

Lego Friends magazine
(Image credit: Lego)

Lego has come under fire for a comic strip that features in its magazine, Lego Friends, which has been deemed sexist. This is one of those cases where you hope that people might be over-reacting, but then you click on the actual magazine – which is aimed at girls aged seven to 11 – and your heart sinks. 

The comic in question shows a group of girls who decide to sneak into a meeting. One of the characters says that they won't be able to just walk right in because: "A group of girls among researchers – we'll stick out like sore thumbs!" (The astute among you will point out that Lego figures don't normally have thumbs, but these characters do, so therefore can apparently stick out like sore ones.)

The girls then decide to dress up as bakers and hand out muffins, so that "nobody will suspect a thing!" One of the girls is excited about designing uniforms, another hopes they can sing songs while they bake and another is concerned about the ingredients for the muffins. 

In another panel, one of the characters complains about the meeting being "A lot of scientific jargon," while another one declares it boring, and says it's time to do some baking. 

Click the top-right corner to enlarge the image (Image credit: Lego)

@laurabee1980 called out the magazine on Twitter, saying it was "an embarrassment" to the brand. 

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Plenty of people agreed with her too. 

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While others suggested Lego might do well to hark back to its earlier messaging. 

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Other Twitter users pointed out that perhaps the characters were saying they'd stick out like sore thumbs because they are children, and presumably these researchers are adults. But then the follow on 'let's dress up as bakers' plan doesn't seem to make much sense. Frankly, none of it seems particularly logical. 

In response to complaints, a spokesperson for Lego said: "With this story, we were trying to show that girls have lots of different interests and passions including science and STEM but we appreciate that some of the language we used missed the mark this time and we apologise.

"We will certainly learn from this and do better in future."

We'll admit it, we've never paid a lot of attention before to Lego Friends magazine, but we'll be keeping an eye out in future to see if Lego does decide to do any further "research" on the matter.

In the meantime, if you're still into Lego (and we do love those bricks!), you can read more about the new Star Wars sets coming soon here.

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Rosie Hilder

Rosie Hilder is Creative Bloq's Deputy Editor. After beginning her career in journalism in Argentina – where her blogging prowess led her to become Deputy Editor of Time Out Buenos Aires – she moved back to the UK and joined Future Plc in 2016. Since then, she's worked as Operations Editor on art and design magazines, including Computer Arts, 3D World and Paint & Draw, and got the 'Apple bug' when working on US title, Mac|Life. In 2018, she left the world of print behind and moved to Creative Bloq, where she helps take care of the daily management of the site, including growing the site's reach through trying to please the Google Gods, getting involved in events, such as judging the Brand Impact Awards, and helping make sure its content serves its readers as best it can. Her interests lie in branding and illustration, tech and sexism, and plenty more in-between.