LEGO’s new line of toys for girls @ Business week via BoingBoing.

Then there are the lady figures. Twenty-nine mini-doll figures will be introduced in 2012, all 5 millimeters taller and curvier than the standard dwarf minifig. There are five main characters. Like American Girl Dolls, which are sold with their own book-length biographies, these five come with names and backstories. Their adventures have a backdrop: Heartlake City, which has a salon, a horse academy, a veterinary clinic, and a cafe. “We had nine nationalities on the team to make certain the underlying experience would work in many cultures,” says Nanna Ulrich Gudum, senior creative director.

The key difference between girls and the ladyfig and boys and the minifig was that many more girls projected themselves onto the ladyfig — she became an avatar. Boys tend to play with minifigs in the third person. “The girls needed a figure they could identify with, that looks like them,” says Rosario Costa, a Lego design director. The Lego team knew they were on to something when girls told them, “I want to shrink down and be there.”

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That’s pretty interesting – so we could all celebrate science, design and engineering with LEGO minifigs & LEGO sets and that’s what the kids will want to be. Let’s do this! We’d like a LEGO factory minifig set, where you get to see how the men and women who make LEGOs make LEGOs. OR… Hey LEGO! Want to do an Adafruit factory LEGO set with a Ladyada minifig? Is there a “maker” LEGO set in our future?