Well when working in toy store I was amused that, in the run up to christmas, we never once had to restock on Pink sets, but we had frequent orders out for Blue sets. Though this is purely anecdotal, this at least reaffirms that notion. Pink sets don't sell well (at least here).Smeatza said:
I read somewhere that it's something like 1:5 female figs to male figs in the playsets on average, with some sets having no female figs at all (and others having more then that average).
Just checked, it's not an official count, but someone took some of the more popular playsets (both classic lego and duplo range) and counted the numbers of male figs to female figs and he arrived at 5:1. I'll quote the comment:
Source: http://amodularlife.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/legos-female-oriented-products/#comment-2259
The list part the way down, but it's a decent read anyway.
The ratio is bad enough on it's own, but when you look at the individual sets...
*City, which is meant to be gender neutral, was 59 male to 5 female.
*Harry Potter, which has a notably diverse cast (and reader/viewership) in both books and films, was 20 male to 3 female.
*Collectible Mini Figs were 37 unique males vs 10 unique females. You collect these ones at random, since each pack you buy is based on luck, meaning you have a much higher chance of getting a male minifig then a female minifig.
That's pretty bad.
The only major caveat to this is that the person doing the research didn't exactly open up each box and count. From what I gather he counted out what was depicted on the box (back and front), but considering that the boxes often have a figure count, I'd say it would be easy to deduce how close or off you are.
So, take it with a grain of salt, but ultimately it does fit with other observations.
Yeah it does come down to marketing. It always does. But ask yourself, is the disparity in the sets influencing the buyers? Or are the Buyers influencing the disparity of the sets? Then consider that the pink sets sell pretty bad anyway (at least here) and ask yourself, why even bother making gendered distinctions? They tried to tap a niche market by creating a gendered brand, rather then diversifying the core brands.
There is little for young adventurous girls to identify with in Lego these days. The sets geared towards them are highly domestically or casually themed, not adventurous. And then consider that it's the parents who make the purchases and they are way more likely to be gender biased (this varies from parent to parent, but many parents are "hardcoded" to view the world in binary still... Boys like Boy things and Girls like Girl things).
Why isn't there a straight up adventure sets geared toward girls, without the hilariously outmoded gendered pandering? I mean, look at what NERF did (only recently):
While the marketing is clearly meant to tap into the "girly" motifs, the end product is still a nerf gun (and a pretty bad ass looking one if you were to take away the (imo) cluttered graphic paint). It doesn't have a mirror built in so you can do your makeup, or a brush attachment to make yourself look fabulous in battle. It's JUST a Nerf gun and you shoot people with it... preferably other people with nerf guns.
EDIT: Further inspection on the Nerf Gun paints a slightly less positive picture. Again forgetting the advertisement, we are led to believe that these are equivalent to the boys in terms of power and performance, but testing them out has shown they under perform in comparison and they tried to manipulate "accessorizing" trends by selling overpriced ammo packs with pretty colors and patterns. One step forward 2 steps back.
EDIT EDIT: Underperformance was measured by the lower ammo stocks in the Rebelle range. This was likely to encourage people to buy the overpriced glamor ammo. Looks like they started going forward, but got turned around and went backward instead.
