Lego figurines have gotten grumpier over the years.
In the 1970s and 80s, when my brother and I were building elaborate cities with colorful plastic bricks on our bedroom floors, the Lego figurines who inhabited our urban centers were all topped with the same yellow heads with two dots for eyes and a rainbow of a smile. Even when my brother decided an earthquake must strike and I shrieked in horror as our skyscraper came crashing down, all the two-inch figures remained happy in Pleasantville.
Today the Danish toy company makes a wide array of figures with different facial expressions and a team of New Zealand researchers has discovered that a growing number feature angry faces. The researchers are concerned that all of these grumpy and sneering faces could impact children’s moods and the way they play.
“We cannot help but wonder how the move from only positive faces to an increasing number of negative faces impacts how children play,” Christoph Bartneck, a professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and the study’s lead author, wrote.
Christoph Bartneck discovered that Lego figurines are no longer taking their happy pills. (Canterbury University)
Bartneck and his team analyzed the Lego heads produced between 1975 and 2010, taking a close look at a representative sample of 628 expressions, according to NBC News. They found that up until 1980 Lego produced only bright yellow smiley-faced heads. The company introduced a variety of faces in the 1990s, and by the mid-1990s about 80 percent of the figures wore happy expressions. The Lego people grew progressively crankier and by 2010 only 50 percent of the figurines expressed cheerfulness. (Lego must have cut back on the Prozac supply!) The pleasant expressions were replaced with looks of anger, horror, disdain, superiority and disgust.
“The children that grow up with Lego today will remember not only smileys but also anger and fear in the Minifigures’ faces,” Bartneck wrote.
Yes, this might all seem a little ridiculous and you might wonder who even notices those tiny faces, but as a mother of a son who played Lego for four hours straight yesterday, I was intrigued by this study. My son collects and cherishes his Lego figures. He has all the little pieces—the hats and helmets, swords and guns, pants and tops—sorted in a fishing tackle box, and he carefully chooses pieces when he assembles a figurine. After completing a figure, he often sticks it in his pocket and carries the guy around for the day, talking to it in the backseat of the car, making it act out scenes at the breakfast table.
This afternoon I decided to sort through my son’s Legos and take a look at the figurine faces. In his neatly arranged tackle box, I found 50 faces. Three of them were happy; the rest looked at me scornfully.
I talked to my son about the study and he had some interesting things to say. He told me that the figurines feature angry faces because, “There’s a lot of fighting in the Lego sets. Good guys are battling bad guys.”And he’s right, my son plays with the stereotypical boyish Lego lines: Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Ninjago, Indiana Jones. In all of these sets, good is fighting evil and the figurines come with mean- and fierce-looking faces as well as a lots of weapons.
My son went on to tell me the Legos that he plays with at his grandparents’ house, which are the plastic blocks my brother and I snapped together as kids in the 70s, “don’t have a lot of fighting so the people are happier.” And he’s right. The sets my brother and I played with were gender-neutral and meant to build houses, hotels, fire stations, shops, cafés. We also had a few space sets featuring smiling-faced astronauts.
All of that said, I think it would be far-fetched to say that today’s mean-faced Lego figurines are responsible for unhappiness among America’s youth. Bringing back the smiley faced Lego guys certainly isn’t the answer to solving kids’ struggles with depression and anger. But I do think these cranky guys are part of a larger trend among today’s children’s toy figurines, dolls, TV characters, and more. In the girl-oriented toys and characters, we’re seeing a lot more attitude and brattiness and with the more boyish toys we’re seeing more violence and conflict—and all of this is resulting in our kids seeing a lot more angry faces.
How much of this are kids picking up on? I asked my son if he notices the angry faces on his Lego guys. “Not really,” he told me. And then he wisely told me, “I notice your face more.”
And he’s right, at the end of the day what really matters is whether mom and dad are wearing smiles on their faces—because ultimately parents have the biggest influence on their kids.
