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Lego Was Promoting Gender Neurtral Toys In 1974, Vintage Product Note Shows

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The Lego company was promoting gender equality and marketing their building blocks as gender neutral toys as early as 1974, encouraging parents to focus less on their child's preferred toys and more on the creative possibilities they provide in this vintage instructional note to parents.

The photo, posted to Imgur by Redditor fryd_ yesterday, has been going viral with the caption "70s Lego had the right idea." It's incredible because it proves the Lego company was literally decades ahead of other toy manufacturers in squashing the awful "blue manly toys for boys/pink frilly toys for girls" logic.

The note reads:

The urge to create is equally strong in all children. Boys and girls. It's imagination that counts. Not skill. You build whatever comes into your head, the way you want it. A bed or a truck. A dolls house or a spaceship.

A lot of boys like dolls houses. They're more human that spaceships. A lot of girls prefer spaceships. They're more exciting than dolls houses.

The most important thing is to put the right material in their hands and let them create whatever appeals to them.

On Reddit, the original photographer explained they had found the note in a Lego box set from 1973 at their partner's Grandma's house:

I had no idea this would blow up so much, so didn't take more photos but this was at my partner's Grandma's house, on the back page of a pamphlet that came with a set from 73 she still has. There was a blonde girl on the front with a white Lego house. Sorry I don't have more info...

Naysayers have called the note a "fake," pointing to the indented type as inauthentic. That argument, however, has already been thoughtfully debunked by io9 — you should head there if you want to check out the specifics.

io9's quest to verify the note's authenticity also uncovered the following Lego ad from 1981, which sports an equally liberating slogan: "Lego Universal Building Sets will help your children discover something very, very special: themselves."

lego-gender-neutral-toys-1974

Can I get an Amen!?

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