Lego for Boys and Girls

A few years back Lego changed the focus of their marketing strategy to focus explicitly on marketing to boys rather than a gender-neutral marketing focus. What were the results?

... the Lego Group deliberately focused on boys, and the short-term effectiveness of this strategy is undeniable. Revenue has increased 105 percent since 2006.

More recently Lego started Lego Friends, targeted at girls. How'd that work out?

Lego Friends turned out to be one of the biggest successes in Lego's history. ... The line doubled sales expectations in 2012, the year it launched. Sales to girls tripled in just that year.

What did Lego research find about how boys and girls differed in terms of playing with their Lego?

Johnson says the company carefully studied differences between how girls and boys play. "When boys build a construction set, they'll build a castle, let's say, and they'll play with the finished product on the outside. When girls build construction sets, they tend to play on the inside."
And research showed that girls loved little details, says Lego brand relations manager Amanda Santoro. "When we were testing this, we asked girls what would you like to see in a Lego school?" she said, as she showed off the line at Toy Fair, the massive industry event held each year in New York City. "Of course, they said an art studio. So we see a lot of detail here with the different paint canisters and the canvas here [a Friend] is creating."

Lego characters in Lego Friends are structured a bit differently than traditional Lego Figures. They can't move each leg independently and they can't turn their wrists. David Pickett is cited in the article as suggesting that this "sends a message about what we expect women being able to do physically." To any women reading this: if you haven't already noted please be advised that The Patriarchy requests that you hop everywhere instead of walking and cease trying to rotate your hands.