Mills 1

Thomas Mills

Professor Huver

English 1B

May 7, 2018

Obviously a Gender Neutral Toy: The Super Big Awesome Tough LEGO Truck with the

Dumper and Strong Grabber Thingy

Originally a gender-neutral product, LEGO® was designed to foster imagination in

children of all ages: some of their boxes displayed a recommended age range of 4-99. However,

after running into economic difficulties, LEGO® decided to focus on the consumer group that

showed the most interest: boys. By producing sets that involved action, excitement, and what

have been seen as masculine activities, the company was able to build itself into the success that

it is today, but not without the cost of creating an image of a toy that girls do not identify as well

with. In fact, before 2012, when LEGO®’s girl-oriented line, Friends, was released, 90% of

LEGO®’s consumers were male. Now, there are more LEGO® products that cater to girls, but

the majority of the sets still have elements that fit the male consumer group better. One of

LEGO®’s flagship models demonstrates this well. The LEGO® Mercedes-Benz Arocs set

#42043 socializes its predominantly male interest group to what has been typically seen as more

masculine gender norms through its packaging and product design, amid other factors.

fig. 1. LEGO Technic Set #42043 Box, Jim, REVIEW -

42043 - MERCEDES-BENZ AROCS 3245, Eurobricks,

www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/

111478-review-42043-mercedes-benz-arocs-3245/.

Mills 2

What is immediately noticeable upon viewing the set’s packaging is the impressive white

cab face and red pneumatic arm, contrasted on the box’s black background. In dominant white

lettering across the top of the box, the type of LEGO® is proclaimed: Technic. On the right side,

the recommended age range is displayed in large typeface: 11-16. This set is clearly for more

advanced builders, as it employs difficult building techniques and has almost 3000 pieces. On the

right side of the box is an orange sidebar, presenting the special electric and pneumatic features

that the set contains. Although LEGO® does not display any images of boys or girls using the

set, the style that rubs off seems to reflect a masculine design, with rugged, angular layout and

strong placement of feature descriptions. It is as described in Thomas Hine’s essay, What’s in a

Package, “many packages are designed so that people will respond to them even if they are not

paying attention” (Hine 114). The packaging does not contain a hint of styling common to

products marketed to girls, such as pink or purple frilly designs, so people will unconsciously

think that it is for boys. The back of the box also shows the set’s dual functionality: it can be

rebuilt as two different trucks.

fig. 2. LEGO Arocs set back and inside front cover, Jim, REVIEW - 42043 - MERCEDES-

BENZ AROCS 3245, Eurobricks, www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/111478-

Mills 3

review-42043-mercedes-benz-arocs-3245/.

One of the key influences on this set’s projection of masculinity is the category and style

of LEGO® that it is made of: Technic. The name alone carries connotations associated with

men: mechanics, people working with their hands, building machines and working in an

impersonal atmosphere. Unlike the Creator line that primarily employs the standard flat and

rectangular bricks with studs on top of them, the Technic line uses pieces with holes in them and

interlocking pins to facilitate building complex mechanical objects. Technic makes it easy to use

gears, wheels, motors, and advanced systems like pneumatics and the Mindstorms robotic

systems. Since many people in the world today still hold to the idea that mechanical things are

for men, girls can be looked down upon or feel judged if they want to get this set. Just as Aaron

Devor notes in his essay, Gender Role Behaviors and Attitude, “persons who perform the

activities considered appropriate for another gender will be expected to perform them poorly;

[and] if they succeed… they may be rewarded with ridicule or scorn for blurring the gender

dividing line” (Devor 506). This judgement still occurs even though individual girls could have a

mechanical aptitude that equals or surpasses their male peers, and some individual boys may be

utterly clueless when it comes to mechanical design. In this way, LEGO® caters to the male

interest group by following the dictates of our culture, providing what its consumers ask for

without trying to change their minds to be politically correct. And since LEGO® is a company,

out to make money, why should it be forced to change who it tries to sell its products to if it is

making plenty of money with its current strategies?

Mills 4

fig. 3. Assembled LEGO Arocs set on grey

background, Jim, REVIEW - 42043 -

MERCEDES-BENZ AROCS 3245,

Eurobricks,

www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/111478-review-42043-mercedes-benz-

arocs-3245/.

Moving in to the next category beneath its Technicality, the LEGO® Arocs is a truck.

Not only that, but it is also a dump truck with a powered grabber-arm. Young boys love trucks,

and are encouraged to play with them, enhancing their natural inclination to want to wield

wheeled vehicles and powerful pneumatic appendages. Devor relates, “such appearances of

strength and readiness to action serve to create or enhance an aura of aggressiveness and

intimidation central to an appearance of masculinity” (Devor 509). Boys are cultivating their

masculinity by playing with this toy that exudes strength and action. Young girls, while often

interested in trucks to some extent, are not typically encouraged by their parents and peers to

pursue them. LEGO® merely goes along with the norms that American culture follows when it

makes mechanical trucks, since it knows that parents are more likely to buy their boys LEGO®’s

anyway. LEGO® consumers have had it fixed in their heads that the brand in general is for boys,

because of the vast majority of purchases being made are for boys. As the gender norms in

America change, it will most likely become more typical to see girls enjoying sets like the Arocs,

but at this point, some females still feel discouraged to enter into activities such as truck-

building.

Mills 5

fig. 4. LEGO Arocs set Showing Arm and Suspension, Autoevolution,

www.autoevolution.com/news/mercedes-benz-arocs-3245-launched-it-s-a-lego-technic-truck-

made-of-almost-3000-pieces-97736.html.

One aspect of this set that I cannot determine whether it applies to a specific gender is the

fact that it was designed to be functional after completion, not a display model. After the hours it

takes to assemble a LEGO® set like the Arocs, the happy consumers can now spend their time

playing with it and putting its overwhelming amount of awesome features to good use. To

summarize, one study that LEGO® performed found that whereas boys enjoyed the building

process and exterior of their project more, and were more likely to be content with setting it up

as a display model, the girls were more concerned with the function of the set and wanted to

continue using it after it was built. Through personal experience and a pretty solid general

knowledge of boy’s interests, I can attest to the fact that boys can be inclined to set their

completed project on a pedestal and receive the glory for their achievements, then turning to the

next project. So, from this aspect, it seems that the functional Arocs vehicle would be more

Mills 6

attractive to the role-playing and story-building nature of girls.

The largest area in which this set socializes the children who use it to particular gender

norms is through the contrast with the line of girl-oriented products that LEGO® makes:

LEGO® Friends. These sets were created to fill demand for toys that fit more with girls’ playing

habits and so that LEGO® could appeal more to the other half of consumers (previously, 90% of

fig. 5. LEGO Friends Ice Cream Parlor rear view, LEGO, Amazon, www.amazon.co.uk/LEGO-

Friends-41132-Heartlake-Charging/dp/B01AC1D23S.

fig. 6. LEGO Friends Butterfly Beauty Shop 3187, LEGO, Amazon, www.amazon.com/LEGO-

Friends-Butterfly-Beauty-Shop/dp/B005VPRETO.

LEGO®’s customers were male). Friends sets feature larger minifigures with distinctive

feminine features, bright pastel colors such as pink, purple, yellow, and light blue, and a

dollhouse-ish building style. The Friends sets were designed to appeal to girls by being activities

that had a story to them, lots of detail, and identified more with their users. The way this

negatively impacted the rest of LEGO®s was by reinforcing in more people’s minds the idea that

“normal” LEGO®s are just for boys. However, the Friends line was an instant hit and major

Mills 7

success for LEGO®, and thousands of parents were thrilled to see their daughters being as

creative with building blocks as their sons. Girls had been asking for LEGO®s that appealed to

them more for a while, and many who were disinterested in LEGO®s before now became

enthusiastic, branching out into more advanced mechanical lines such as Technic as they

progressed.

Partly through manipulating the preconceived notions regarding gender that American

culture carries, and partly by just designing a solid product that focused on a single focus group

in which LEGO® has always found success, the LEGO® company achieves its goal of selling its

products and inspiring minds, young and old, literally across the globe. Although its focus on

gender-specific products may alienate some consumers, LEGO® more than makes up for it in

the impact is has on the world through developing minds. I owe most of my mechanical know-

how to the LEGO® sets that my parents gave me to use all through my childhood, and now I will

be going off to study mechanical engineering to learn how to use real LEGO®s: the physical

building blocks of American life.

Mills 8

Works Cited

Devor, Aaron. “Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes.” Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on

Popular Culture for Writers. 8th ed. Ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Boston:

Bedford, 2015. 504-510. Print.

Hine, Thomas. “What’s in a Package.” Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture

for Writers. 8th ed. Ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford, 2015. 113-

122. Print.

Note: I read that if I included the image citations with the images, I didn’t have to put them on

the works cited page.