Famed children's toymaker LEGO has launched a new LGBTQI+ museum display that has been dubbed the "A to Z of Awesome" at the brand's flagship museum in Billund, Denmark.
Just days ago on May 24th, LEGO House opened the doors to the museum collection to the public ahead of the official start of Pride month. The new display features dozens of building sets that offer children an "inclusive" and "diverse" environment to interact with gender identity and LGBT-related building sets.
In a promotional video posted on the brand's Instagram last month, LEGO invited families who identify as part of the LGBTQI+ community to attend an early viewing of the collection, featuring sets which include a transgender garden, a trans-colored butterfly, a set including 10 different LGBT flags from the pansexual flag to the transgender flag, and even sets encouraging children to question their gender. It's unclear what gardening and butterflies have to do with sexuality or gender identity.
Earlier this spring, LEGO Pride displays came under fire from a father who was suprirsed to find that a trip to the LEGO store was filled with LGBTQ imagery. TPUSA contributor John K. Amanchukwu Sr. wrote about the encounter with Pride paraphernalia in a Twitter post, noting that four clerks are wearing Pride pins.
In the video, parents and their children interact with the various trans-themed designs. LEGO captioned the video, “Each build represents a personal interpretation of a meaningful word from the community.”
One of the children’s mothers who appears in the video is seen expressing her support for the LGBTQI+ LEGO concept, saying that “anything that allows a child to express themselves is an amazing achievement. And I think LEGO bricks really does that.”
Another mother added, “For my children to see something that’s aimed at them, they haven’t had that experience before. It’s pretty special.” The video has since attracted over 6,300 comments on LEGO’s Instagram account, most of them critical.
This is not the first time the brand has pushed gender ideology onto its young consumers, who are predominantly children aged five and older.
Last June, during Pride month, the brand first launched its "A to Z of Awesome" collection, featuring a handful of transgender creators building "inclusive" sets that helped them express their gender identity. One of the creators, a biological male who identifies as a female named Jeannie, can be seen explaining his transgender garden creation: “What I built here was a transgender garden, so all these different aspects of gender have their place in the garden.”
Another creator named Hope, a biological male, appeared in the video saying, “I’m a black queer woman who loves LEGO bricks” Another person who built a gender-questioning castle described it as a "safe space."
Additionally, in 2021, the brand launched its Everyone is Awesome set to “celebrate the diversity” of fans and to “send a signal to everyone that this is what we stand for,” according to Matthew Ashton, the Vice President of Design at LEGO Group.
