This year, to celebrate International Women’s Day, I have revisited some of the minifigures I have which are based on real-life, inspirational women, and taken some new photos. It’s short and simple and didn’t cause me to develop the same level of mental anguish as attempting to work out whether or not LEGO Star Wars was doing a better job with more female minifigures, as I did last year.
Continue readingWhen the “Women of NASA” LEGO Ideas set was released, many wondered why Katherine Johnson was not featured, despite inclusion in the original submission….
To Celebrate International Women’s Day, Mattel has announced a number of Barbie Dolls based on real life, inspirational women. As well as Katherine Johnson, we also see Pioneer Aviatrix Amelia Earhart and Mexican Artist Frida Kahlo. Further global role models (16 in the initial series) will be rolled out over the coming months.
Does this explain why Ms Johnson’s likeness was not released to LEGO for the Women of NASA set? I’m not sure, but if plans were already in motion, I reckon it’s a better than even money chance. However, I am glad she has been made available as a role model for Children around the world.
Even if not in Minifigure form.
The Announcement last year that the Women of NASA ideas submission from Maia Weinstock was to be developed into a set seemed to be greeted with a combination of excitement and disappointment, from different parties. There were complaints of it just being a collection of minifigures, only appealing to girls, not having as many elements as a UCS Millennium Falcon and being yet another NASA related Ideas set! But it is so much more than that.
Certainly with only 231 elements, it is the second smallest Ideas set to hit the market, next to the 21110 Research Institute, which was released in 2014. After the Old fishing store, however, I don’t need to have another set with a high piece count on display.
The set features several women who are notable in their contribution to the US space program in varied ways: I will discuss each of them in turn with their vignette.
This set was released on November 1st, and took a few weeks to make its way from Denmark to Melbourne. The box, like many of the Ideas sets is robust, and designed to be kept. It is a similar design to many of the other ideas sets, as well as the boxes for the Architecture series.
The instruction manual provides a background on each of the people portrayed in the set, as well as both the fan designer and the set designers from the LEGO Group.
