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A Stumper
I realize that there are many many many more pressing issues being floated these days and, indeed, I have lost sleep over them, but I also know that my opinions on these matters are not particularly helpful, so forgive my commenting on something light.
My mind snagged on something at the toy store yesterday. We went to purchase some "original" size Lego blocks for Felix, because he seemed to be ready and interested in more delicate Lego work than the Duplo sets offer (though I now realize that I will be spending considerably more time on all fours-- and, no, not doing anything that even vaguely smacks of sin and intrigue: picking up tiny pieces from under the couch). We succeeded in finding a pretty good set and now there are about 500 pieces of Lego that pave the floor if I'm not on top of things, but the choices were very odd.
Not only are there hundreds of branded sets (Star Wars, Batman, Thomas the Tank Engine), even the regular boxes of bricks that aren't affiliated with a movie or television show offer a lot of options. Where I got stuck was on the difference between the normal Brick Box, which offers a nice starter set of Lego bricks and the made-for-girls Pink Brick Box. Now I don't really object to the pink girly set, even though it seems a little dopey to me that even these generic little bricks have to be "genderized" and stuck in a pink box for some parents to buy them. (Or maybe I'm the foolish one. Surely Lego did do some research and discovered that girls are more likely to play with their random blocks if a few of them were pink. I'd love to hear about such a thing if it exists.) What really bothers me is that both sets, which cost the same amount-- $14.99-- have different numbers of bricks in the boxes. The blue brick box has 5 more blocks (221) than the pink one (216). Why is this? I can tell you that it isn't because the pink blocks take up more room than the others because those boxes are far from filled to the brim with little bricks. I can't imagine it is because pink blocks are so much more expensive to fabricate. So why are there fewer blocks in the pink bucket?
Perhaps I'm just missing the point. Perhaps it is just one of those things girls, or people who prefer pink generally, should unfortunately expect. After all, women do tend to make less money than men do for the same jobs, and I could make a relevant but clumsy point about the Republican nominee for president, but it is obvious and I'll just stop here.
posted by Elise at 11:48 AM
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Laura K. Curtis said...
And in case any reader thinks one can have too many lego blocks, I encourage them to check out Brickshelf. This project, to me, is particularly impressive: the working V8 engine composed of lego. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=276743
10/02/2008 8:54 AM
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Laura K. Curtis said...