[bjt]

"Do they make pink girly legos?"

Why yes, yes they do: http://friends.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx

They're controversial for the same reasons people are complaining on this thread, but they're selling. (See http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/09/lego-friends-tr...)

[grueful]

My experience is limited to sisters, but they played with the normal legos just as much as I did. I suspect these would have been a hit.

Users care about things like color far more than engineers often suspect. If changing the color makes a substantive improvement to outcomes you care about - change the color.

[Rolo0321]

I think there's a bit more to this toy than simply 'pink it and shrink it' as they say in retail.

The story + building is the innovation - meeting girls where they are and presenting construction/engineering themes through something other than a jumble of Legos. (This coming from a girl who loved Legos but didn't end up as an engineer)