LEGO, the makers of the toy building brick, has recently made a step that may give kids a more inclusive view of the world today. The toy company released a new set of minifigures that portray a modern family setting.
The Huffington Post reported that LEGO has released a new Lego City Line that includes minifigures of a stay-at-home dad along with his baby in a stroller and wife in a work outfit. A young man in a wheelchair with a guide dog is also part of the much-celebrated new set of minifigures.
Soren Torp Laursen, president of LEGO Systems, told Fortune that the new minifigures "mirror the world we live in today." He stated that the company needs to stay in tune with the present world.
"We aren't responding to demand from anyone," Laursen added. "We are trying to portray the world around us and listen to our consumer base."
According to Laursen, the new set of minifigures is part of being a responsible corporate citizen. "We are all part of the same world and we need to portray that to the best of our abilities."
The new set is an answer to the past clamors that LEGO needs to depict gender equality on their toys. In an article of Elissa Strauss of The Week last year, she said it would be fun to have "a LEGO town dad and baby or, even better, a playhouse option where dad is in an apron, cooking food for his family."
"This would surely be progress from current playhouses where, in the pictorial descriptions on the box, the dad is shown on a different floor than the rest of his family," Strauss wrote. "By playing with these LEGO sets, boys would not only get used to seeing men playing a larger role in domestic life, but come to think of it as fun too."
