Remix Gendered LEGO Commercials with HTML5 Video

New LEGO Friends mini-doll with LEGO Alien Defense Unit traditional style mini-figure

In January 2012 the LEGO Group released their new “LEGO for girls” line called Friends. As part of a 40 million dollar advertising campaign they also began airing 3 TV ads to promote this new theme. LEGO Friends includes 14 pink and pastel colored kits based on the lives of 5 Bratz or Polly Pocket style mini-dolls. The TV commercials feature the dolls baking cupcakes, getting their plastic hair styled and taking care of pets at the vet.

In contrast LEGO produces over a dozen LEGO lines marketed primarily to boys including Alien Conquest, Atlantis, City, Dino, Hero Factory, Kingdoms, Ninjago, Pharaoh’s Quest, Pirates of the Caribbean, Racers, Star Wars, Superheroes and World Racers themes. The TV commercials for these LEGO themes focus primarily on action, violence and combat based play scenarios.

The absurd gender stereotyping in each set of commercials create hilarious and insightful juxtapositions when placed into our HTML5 Gendered Advertising Remixer web app (beta version 2). You can easily drag and drop LEGO Friends ads and remix them with any of 10 recent LEGO commercials targeting at boys. Which of the 60 possible re-combinations do you think works best? What differences do you notice about how LEGO markets to boys verse how they market to girls?

Try remixing LEGO ads now!

NOTE: Please make sure to upgrade your web browser to the very latest version before remixing.

You can also see all the original LEGO ads aimed at boys and those aimed at girls collected in our YouTube playlists.

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