Lego Friends Butterfly Beauty Shop 3187

These are so much better than most of the girl toys out there! What you need to know:

1. These are fully compatible with all other Lego sets.
2. The colors are customized for girls, especially the girly-girls or princess girls.
3. The people are different than normal Lego people in that the legs are connected and bend just below the hip, the heads are shaped more rounded than the normal Lego head, and the arems are more slender with hands that are not rotatable or or changeable.
4. This set includes two people - one is black and one is white, so Kudos for making the girls ethnically diverse! - and the pieces needed to make a beauty shop.

I marked this down to 4 stars because of the $100 "bill" block. It may already be seen as condescending to make a girl line of Legos where mostly all the sets are bakeries, cosmetic salons and shops, (is Lego saying that girls only eat sugary snacks, put on makeup and buy stuff?) but it also sets the incorrect expectation in children that beauty shops naturally cost $100+. It would have been just as easy to put simply a $ on the block instead of an amount, especially a high amount. I believe that every decision made by toy makers is on purpose and I question this one.

I still love this line of toys but this one I'm less fond of than some of the others.

Let me start off to say that I have a boy and girl, both 5 that love lego's. I started them both off with the larger version and then moved them to the smaller "pink" and "blue" containers. They would share pieces and have a great time, whether or not it was for a girl or boy. My son has received most of the lego toys, airplanes, starwars kits, Harry Potter for this Christmas, but my daughter has delighted more in building them. She didn't care if it's a "boy" toy, it's all about the building. So at first I wasn't sure about friends because I wanted to make sure it didn't get to "girly". Because she has alot of lego experience building she has done 98% of this one herself. She started the beauty shop tonight and will complete it tonight, she is having a magnificent time discovering all the pieces, after all she is a girl so she loves the lipsticks the hair decorations etc. She just came up to me to show me how the mirror and the chair moves. She also loves the dollar bill:) And I do like the figures, they are what a girl wants and as long as the boy and girl lego's all fit on the same bases I'm just fine.

I don't think my son will really want to play with the beauty set, but I definately see a meeting with Lego Darth Vadar and Emma in the Harry Potter castle at some time:)

Thanks Lego and please keep it up! I know my daughter will, we also got her Olivia's house and she'll be starting on it tomorrow.

My 5+ daughter chose this lego set when we were browsing online. I was hesitant at first to buy it because it was so girlie. However, it turned out to be cleverly designed and educational. There are a lot of pieces and easy to follow instruction booklet. Once my daughter started learning how it worked she was able to put together some of the parts on her own. It was a fun family activity. And, of course, now she loves playing with it!