Sad that legos were/are traditionally thought of as boy toys and a generation of women grew up without them. It's basically what happened with computers too. Many of the most important early computer pioneers were women
They even complain about modern "girl's Lego", instead of being happy that it brings girls to using Lego.
It also doesn't make sense to complain about a Lego car as enforcing gender stereotypes. Don't they want girls to build cars? It is so illogical. They claim girls are not interested in engineering (cars), because of Lego not catering to girls, and at the same time claim Lego cars don't appeal to girls.
As if company bosses would shun earning billions by refusing to market to girls, just to enforce gender stereotypes. Companies want to make money. That's it. The new "themed" sets apparently sell better than the "random box of colored bricks" from the past.
In the 1990s, almost no sets were "random boxes of colored bricks" and they were all themed, but the themes weren't the commercialized junk they are today. You had Castle, Pirates and Space without any references to movie characters and the structures were rather harmonic without too many special or overly-sized parts. The minifigs had serious faces and were not cartoonish. A child would be able to invent its own story and get creative with those themes, rather than using the toy to play when it's not watching the movie.
Some parents prefer not to have brands or advertising within their children's toys, and Lego used to be free from this influence.
Of course they were commercial. They did a space theme because they thought it would sell, just like they are now doing Star Wars because they sell.
Apart from the price, I personally can't really complain about the modern Lego sets, either. They are nice puzzles, and my kids like to play with them. After a while they fall apart, and new things can be built.
I don't think Lego wants to pay for expensive Hollywood brands. They always try to establish their own brands, too, like Ninjago, Lego Movie, Nexo Knights. Often it seems the Hollywood stuff simply sells better.
Sales slump in 1993 - I don't think that agrees with your thesis. Maybe they put out so much stuff out of desperation, to find something that sticks.
That's at least partly because Lego won't sell you coloured bricks unless you buy a certain number of their sets anymore. (source: my step-mother who owned a toy-store).
When called on it, instead of making their general line more unisex again, Lego tried introducing lines specifically aimed at girls, with little success until the Friends line.
They're also now introducing more female minifigs in their main lines, which is great.
/me is still way ahead of his children, hah!
I don't think that they used to be gender specific however with the Lego friends and elves sets they have definitely gone that way
Gender specific - well the market to both boys and girls. What else should they do? Try to sell "friends" to boys and "warrior robots" (or whatever) to girls, just to please the feminists?
I don't think they would mind girls buying the warrior stuff and boys buying the friends or elves stuff. More sales for them.