Tag Archives: legos

July 22, 2012 · 7:40 pm

Sunday Scraps 67

1. TELEVISION: Someone took the time to make a Lego-animated recap of The Wire. It’s disconcertinly accurate, down to McNulty’s boozing and Lester’s dollhouses (via The Atlantic Wire).

2. NAMES: File this under things “Things I Worry About A Lot.” NPR investigates what happens when hyphen-girl meets hyphen boy and they try to name their offspring.

3. CRIME: Great, complex New York Times Magazine essay on the fate of Greg Ousley, who killed his parents at age fourteen, was tried as an adult, and is now a “model” prisoner.

4. BOOKS: Do you like books? Do you like the history of books? How about the history of the deckle edge (that rough, uneven way that some printers style book pages)? Then this piece from The Millions is for you.

5. BEAUTY: Just a little reminder that we could all be supermodels if we had the resources, and cheekbones. Or, at bare minimum, supermodels are really just very tall normal people when you take off the make-up.

6. TECH: TimesCast interviews Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, about her new project, Pinwheel.

Related Post: Sunday 66: Library propaganda, Nancy Pelosi, dying languages, etc.

Related Post: Sunday 65: Nicki Minaj, Margaret Atwood on Twitter, lady scientists.

2 Comments

Filed under Art, Body Image, Books, Hollywood, Media, Really Good Writing by Other People

Tagged as Atlantic Wire, beauty, body image, books, Caterina Fake, children, crime, deckle edge, flickr, Greg Ousley, interview, jail, legos, make-up, marriage, names, New York Times Magazine, NPR, parenting, Pinwheel, prison, publishing, supermodels, technology, television, The Millions, The Wire, TimesCast

January 5, 2012 · 5:52 pm

What’s so masculine about colored plastic blocks?

Can someone explain to me why we need special LEGOs for girls? They are still just colored plastic building blocks, right? Have they changed in some dramatic way since I was a child? Oh yes, I guess they have:

1981

Images from Sociological Images

In the fine print: “LEGO Universal Building Sets will help your children discover something very special: themselves.”

2011

Here’s a full list of the available LEGO Friends sets, but a sampling includes a treehouse, a design studio, a cafe, a “cool” convertible, a beauty shop, a vet’s office, bakery, pool, stage. Does it sound a little Kardashian to anyone else?

LEGOs, Lincoln Logs, k’nex… these toys are awesome because they don’t project anything. They are just building blocks (literally and figuratively) for kids’ imagination and creativity. A kid that wants to make a nail salon can make a nail salon, and a kid that wants to make a U-Boat can make a U-Boat, but nobody is suggesting that you should make either. Well, except the packaging and advertising….

Related Post: Ballerinas and Bridesmaid sticker books.

Related Post: Some people do real cool shit with LEGOs.

3 Comments

Filed under Advertising, Art, Gender

Tagged as children, gender, Kardashian, Lego Friends, legos, sociological images, stereotypes, toys

April 27, 2011 · 12:03 pm

Legomania

This Lego ad (via copyranter) is amazing. It kickstarted a trip down memory lane that ended a 4 foot Eiffel Tower I built out of k’nex one Christmas. I still have it in a closet somewhere. For a few weeks (ahem, months), I was obsessed with making the biggest, baddest creations, like the Great Ball Machine, or the roller coaster that dominated the living room.