[recoil]

Longer ago than that... More than 30 years ago there were themed sets with somewhat custom pieces:

http://letsbuilditagain.com/instructions/6630/ http://letsbuilditagain.com/instructions/6880/

(To pick 2 completely random examples)

Back in '82 there weren't as many different themes (afaik there were maybe 4: space, town, castle and trains), but the concept definitely existed.

Some might even argue about the gender-neutrality of those themes too: the majority of Lego I owned around that time was the space-themed stuff, and my sister had some of the town sets. In fact, as long ago as 1979 Lego brought out a range called Scala [1] that was targeted almost exclusively at girls (my wife has really fond memories of those sets!)

[1] http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Scala