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LEGO To Release Female Scientist Figurines
A trio of female scientists—an astronomer, a paleontologist and a chemist—are coming to the LEGO universe later this summer. The series was selected as the latest LEGO Ideas winner, which allows fans to submit and vote on ideas for upcoming sets.
The upcoming "Research Institute" is the brainchild of Dr. Ellen Kooijman, a geochemist and LEGO fan from Stockholm.
The motivating behind her submission, she explained on her blog, was that "as a female scientist I had noticed two things about the available LEGO sets: a skewed male/female minifigure ratio and a rather stereotypical representation of the available female figures. It seemed logical that I would suggest a small set of female minifigures in interesting professions to make our LEGO city communities more diverse."
This echoes a sentiment popularized earlier this year when a seven-year-old girl wrote a letter to LEGO complaining about their sterotypically gendered sets. She asked that they "make more LEGO girl people and let them go on adventures and have fun ok!?!" And now they are doing just that.
"Research Institute" came about through LEGO Ideas, a website that allows enthusiasts to submit suggestions for new sets. Each idea that gathers 10,000 supporters is reviewed by a board of set designers and marketing representatives and from there, select designs are chosen for full-fledged production.
A blog post on LEGO Ideas says "the final design, pricing and availability are still being worked out, but it’s on track to be released August 2014, so keep an eye out!"