While Washington elites spent Monday fussing about the merits of Mike Flynn versus Mike Pence, real America was rocked by leaked pictures of Lego’s newest super set, the 71040 Disney Castle.
No, really—the news was covered by Forbes, the Hollywood Reporter, and pretty much every other place on the Internet. And do you know why? Because the Lego Disney Castle is awesome. And it’s also a big, 4,080-piece step toward gender equality. Allow me to explain.
I’m not normally simpatico with the SJW set, but for years feminists have complained about Legos being too geared toward boys and not having enough options for girls. Being a good bunch of Scandinavians, the folks at the Lego Group tried to make amends with sets such as the Research Institute (21110), which features a trio of lady scientists and a maddening number of tiny, tiny pieces.
The Research Institute was the worst sort of gender pandering; a triumph of messaging over functionality. A 20-year-old comp-sci major might have loved the Research Institute, because it looks neat on your desk. But for a 6-year-old girl it provided zero playability. Instead of inspiring girls to go into STEM fields, it was primarily meant to make grownups feel good about themselves. It was the Lego equivalent of virtue signaling.
All of which is to say that the feminist complaints about Lego sending girls bad messages were wrong. But that the feminist complaints about Lego not doing enough for girls wasn’t crazy. Because Lego’s girl problem wasn’t the messages it was sending. It was that the Lego Group wasn’t making many good sets for girls.
What makes a “good” Lego set? Aside from the ROI, of course, a good Lego set is one that combines an interesting building experience with maximum playability. It’s fun to build and fun to play with, too.
Lego has been giving boys great sets for 30 years, starting with the original castle and space packages. And in recent years they’ve given boys a bunch of amazing super sets—the kind of giant, expensive sets that beggar the imagination and usually come courtesy of Santa. There’s the Saruman’s Tower of Orthanc (10237) from Lord of the Rings. There’s the Ninjago Temple of Airjitzu (70751). And then there’s the granddaddy of them all: the Death Star (10188).
It is impossible to overstate the awesomeness of the Lego Death Star. It’s 3,803 pieces and the size of a small child. Building it takes weeks, and then only if your kid is really ambitious. The instruction manual alone clocks in at almost three pounds.
But the Death Star really shines once it’s built. That’s because it lets kids reenact iconic scenes from the original Star Wars trilogy: There’s a working trash compactor; a power converter for Obi-Wan to turn off; a bridge for Luke and Leia to swing across; the Emperor’s throne room for the final showdown with Vader.
In short, the Death Star is the greatest Lego set ever made, which puts it in the running for greatest toy ever made. (Which is why, if you haven’t bought one for your kid yet, you should get on it now, before the prices on the secondary market get really insane.)
And here, then, is where the feminists sort of had a point about Legos, even though they didn’t realize it: There was no Lego Death Star for girls. And that kind of sucked.
In the last couple years the Lego Group has produced a few fun mid-scale sets geared towards girls—the Arendelle Castle Celebration (41068) and Cinderella’s Romantic Castle (41055) for instance. But there has never been a Lego set for girls on the scale of the Death Star, the kind of set that would make a girl scream uncontrollably on Christmas morning.
And that’s why the news about the Disney Castle set was such a big deal. It finally gives girls the kind of amazing, blow-your-mind Lego set that they can spend years pining for—followed by the catharsis that only childhood anticipation provides when their parents eventually take out a home equity loan and buy it for them.
Of course, I can hear the feminist complaints already: Lego gives girls a super set and it’s the freaking Disney Castle? More gender stereotypes! It’s just a glorified dollhouse.
And again, this isn’t wrong, exactly. The Lego Disney Castle is a glorious (not glorified) dollhouse. But so is the Lego Death Star, which is—I’ll let you in on a secret—just a dollhouse for boys. What Lego finally seems to understand is that however much some people might wish it otherwise, more often than not, boys and girls have different tastes in toys.
And that’s just fine so long as Lego gives them sets that are separate, but awesome.
