Skylander Toys and LEGO Friends - Girls at Play

The physical Skylanders toys are part of a video game that began with an older video character, a flying dragon named Spyro. The Spyro’s Adventure game was released in the fall of 2011, and has been a major hit. There were 32 original Skylanders characters (organized into 8 element groups).

A big innovation of this game, the characters in the game are also small plastic figurines with a chip in the base. The chip allows the character to be “transported” into the game via a device called the Portal of Power. The chip also records and stores points, levels and thereby the increasing powers of your copy of the character, obtained as you play. This is how Skylanders have memory.

The original characters have been joined by the Skylanders Giants (2012), Lightcore and Series 2 versions of some new and some original characters.

Stealth Elf is the most popular of the Skylander girl characters. She’s featured on a number of products for kids who love the game (such as t-shirts, back packs, lunch boxes) and is one of the few characters so far announced for Series 3.

Swap Force Skylanders will be released in fall 2013, along with some Series 3 character versions. These 16 Swap Force characters have interchangeable top and bottom sections, to allow players to make 256 combinations of powers. (Their new power is more choice.) These toys have two names, based on their top and bottom sections, like Wash Buckler and Freeze Blade

Talk about innovative play and scope to flex the imagination, Skylanders have it.

Skylanders are rated for age group 6 and up.

Lego Friends playsets are designed around a make-believe suburb called Heartlake City, and use primarily pink and purple color schemes.

The five Friends (Olivia, Mia, Emma, Andrea and Stephanie) are main characters, along with many other friends, lots of animals (cats, dogs, horses and others) and the accessories of daily living that go with their environment.

The five main characters have varied but interactive interests in nature, animals, hiking, soccer, science, school, dancing, baking, beauty, music, horse riding and parties. Olivia is often considered the lead of these five, though it depends on a girl’s interests whether that holds true when the playsets come home.

Girls get to build the environments, which include houses, a tree house, outdoor café, bakery, beauty shop, veterinarian office, horse stables, riding camp, and lots of other elements to go with them. These include a music stage, inventor lab, splash pool, airplane and cars.

These LEGO bricks in the Friends playsets are the same shape and fit standard as all the other sets, so they can be used to build any structure the kids wish to. They are not limited to the “official” builds shown in the instructions. Even boys like to get their hands on some of the unique pieces in these sets, like Olivia’s Invention Workshop (where she builds a robot among other things) or the Adventure Camper set with a travel trailer and lots of camping accessory pieces.

The bother comes from opinions that these toys and their play environment perpetuate stereotypes that are limiting to girls.

As I see it, girls like to play with these sets. They get to build houses and businesses. They can imagine the interactions of their girl mini-dolls in these environments any way they like, and play them with their friends.

I say, if girls ages 6 to 12 – the core age range these toys are designed for – start building with Lego Friends, some will graduate to the more other Lego building sets like Architecture, City or Creator. All will benefit from the creative imagination of playing with toys like this.

If the kids want them, let them have them. I think it’s just as stereotypical to say “no” as “yes.” Martha Stewart, Vera Wang, Kate Spade and a long list of other women have used some categories that might be deemed “typical” to create some larger than average business success.

Innovative play. There are thousands, if not millions, of ways to play these toys on their own, let alone when the kids get creative and combine them in their play. Imagining and thinking are skills any toy should foster.

Expanded universe of play. The environments are somewhat like our world, and somewhat different. Lego Friends has its own town and natural world around it, with more sets being released to populate that world. The natural tendency of girls to focus on the relationships and interactions are the basis for this play. How they expand on it, their imaginations can go anywhere.

Perhaps taking a page from Skylanders, there is a Lego Friends game for Nintendo coming out in the fall of 2013.

In Skylanders, they have their own world, but have been banished from it. They are here in our world, trying to reclaim it.  Because these characters are present in the physical world, as well as the digital, they can be incorporated into all kinds of scenarios that they kids can envision for them, outside the world of the game.

Age groups. Skylanders are set for ages 6 and up, and LEGO Friends for ages 6 to 12.  By the time a child is in this age range, her (or his) scope for creative play can easily be ready to go up a level or two, and these toys are an avenue for that.

Either one, or both, of these toy franchises will give your kids hours, and years, of wonderful play opportunities that they largely make for themselves.