![]() ![]() ![]() “Our most important role is to bring creative play to children - and across the product ranges we feature strong role models - be it strong characters in different play themes to real-life persons like in the Lego Ideas set in question.” Can one set showing women who aren’t shopping, cooking or grooming animals stem the tide of “pink”, gendered toys that are increasingly irritating consumers? “As a company we are dedicated to inspire and develop all children, and we do so in many ways,” says a Lego spokesman. In 2012, it launched Lego Friends, a line targeted at girls aged 5-8, which is sold in purple boxes and include a frozen yoghurt shop, a cup-cake café, a horse trailer, puppy daycare centre and a supermarket. Lego bricks have been available in their present form since 1958, and though the company is known for its inclusive approach to play, over the years the company has released various lines aimed at girls. Lego needs to address the scarcity of sets and prevent their toys from becoming commodity products only available to a select few.” “Especially with all the media frenzy surrounding the Research Institute. Because production of these sets is limited, Research Institute is now available on eBay priced from £35 to £93.Ī Lego fan who blogs about the toy at Jay’s Brick Blog has pointed out that when a great set like this comes out, it needs to be as widely available as possible. But the Nasa set is the first based on real people. And there is one other, Research Institute, that also features three women scientists, a palaeontologist, a chemist and an astronomer, all modelled in their workplaces. There are 18 Lego Ideas concepts that have been made into actual sets since 2014. The set is aimed at children aged 10 and over and costs £19.99. ![]() There are two astronauts, Sally Ride and Mae Jemison, who come with a launch pad and the space shuttle Challenger the astronomer Nancy Grace Roman who comes with a Hubble space telescope and computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, who has been modelled with a stack of books, representing the Apollo guidance computer onboard flight software source code. The Women of Nasa set does, however, include four inspiring female employees, and three “builds” which illustrate their areas of expertise. My dream would be to know that the first human on Mars - or an engineer or computer scientist who helped her get there - played with the Lego Women of Nasa as a child and was inspired to pursue a Stem career as a result.”Īlthough she pitched the idea hoping to include Katherine Johnson, who is now 99 and one of Nasa’s most famous employees, Johnson declined the offer to become a miniature play figure. “With this project, I wanted to spotlight a fantastic group of women who have made seminal contributions to Nasa history. We have also seen that when girls and women are given more encouragement in the Stem fields, they become more likely to pursue careers in these areas. Weinstock says: “In all realms of science, engineering and technology, pioneering women have historically been underappreciated for their often groundbreaking work. With 10,000 votes, her idea got the green light and is available to buy this week. Weinstock, a science editor and writer, suggested a Lego set that celebrated women in Stem professions (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), by immortalising the Nasa women in plastic. It was these women who last year inspired Maia Weinstock to submit an unusual concept to Lego Ideas, a crowdsourcing platform that accepts suggestions for possible Lego sets from fans. America ultimately beat its close rival, the USSR, to land the first man on the Moon, but it would not have been possible without Katherine Johnson, Mary Vaughan and Mary Jackson, two mathematicians and an engineer who fought racial and gender prejudice to emerge as pioneers in space travel and human rights. When the film Hidden Figures was released last year, cinemagoers were blown away by its story of three black women working at Nasa in the 1960s, who were instrumental in the great space race. ![]()
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