Photo credit: Mamademics (www.mamademics.com)
Seattle, WA — Real Life Bricks, a company created to fill the LEGO® toy diversity gap, is set to offer their Real Life Bricks Playbox – a custom, monthly LEGO® subscription box designed to reflect the diversity of the real world with African American mini-figures. The box will also facilitate social-emotional learning and cultivate engineering skills.In 2018, as a response to LEGO® sets’ ubiquitous yellow minifigures that the toy maker says are meant to represent every ethnicity, Real Life Bricks developed custom heads and hands to convert monochromatic minifigures to African American minifigures and minifigures representative of Black and Brown skin tones. The conversion kits also include biography trading cards for each minifigure character, meant to positively represent diverse people and lives around the world.
Subscribers to the company’s new Real Life Bricks Playbox can choose from The Architect Playbox, loaded with LEGO® bricks; games and activities; and an exclusive, custom, collectible racially diverse minifigure and accompanying biography card introducing different modes of living and locations around the world; or The Engineer Playbox, which adds LEGO® Technic elements and guides children to build their own small-scale engineering projects.
Real Life Bricks is helmed by a multiracial family – wife and husband, Giselle and Josiah Fuerte, along with their preschool-age son who is 10% owner – who developed their conversion kits after they had a difficult time finding Black and Brown minifigure characters to better represent their children, family, and friends.
“We are an AfroLatinx and white multiracial family. But there is a huge gap in toys that mirror the way my children look,” said President of Real Life Bricks, Giselle. “Research shows that when Children of Color play with toys and characters that look like them, it builds their self-esteem and lays the foundation for leadership skills. And white children develop compassion for other races when they see positive representations of People of Color in media and toys. Our product can help parents normalize diversity while also helping their children develop a passion and aptitude for STEAM.”
The Real Life Playbox is part of the new Real Life Bricks Membership that includes a number of benefits such as an online library of additional activities, games, and courses, and a private membership group to connect and learn with others in the Real Life Bricks community.
About Real Life Bricks LLC:
Real Life Bricks (https://reallifebricks.com) positions itself at the intersection of demographic reality, the promotion of the healthy self-image of children, and the benefits of constructing with construction toys like LEGO® bricks. They show parents of color and their children how valued and important they are by providing minifigures in the skin colors that resemble them. Non-POC parents and children are given the gift of playing with minifigures that reflect the demographic realities of the world they live in, thereby enabling their positive connections to humans of all races and ethnicities. Real Life Bricks is not associated with the LEGO® Group of Companies. LEGO® is a registered trademark of the LEGO® Group.
PRESS CONTACT:
Giselle Fuerte
866-930-3034
info@reallifebricks.com