In 1971, LEGO began specifically targeting girls by introducing the "Homemaker" theme, which included dedicated furniture pieces and dollhouse sets. These sets provided a dollhouse-like play experience using specialized, pre-molded pieces alongside standard bricks.
1971 Homemaker Sets
The initial 1971 release focused on specific rooms of a house, which could be built on provided baseplates.
LEGO Set 260 Doll's Living Room: This set focused on a lounge area and included furniture like a sofa and chairs.
LEGO Set 261 Kitchen: This set provided a full kitchen setup with molded and printed pieces depicting appliances and cabinetry.
LEGO 344 Bungalow: A set that included a complete house structure, featuring some of the new furniture pieces and a vehicle.
LEGO 380 Village Set: An ultra-rare, large set released in 1971 that contained several smaller sets within a special box, including residential buildings with furniture options.
LEGO 350 Spanish Villa House: Another set that offered a residential building experience, including house elements and potentially some basic furniture configurations.
Furniture Pieces and Figures
The furniture in these sets was created using both standard LEGO bricks and specialized, single-purpose pieces.
Molded Pieces: LEGO introduced specific molded pieces like curved sofas, chairs, and kitchen appliances, some of which had printed details to enhance realism.
Baseplates: The earliest sets came with fully studded baseplates, later replaced by a design with studs only around the edge to allow for more flexible furniture placement and building.
Figures: These sets often came with the non-posable, brick-built "Homemaker" figures (introduced in 1974) to populate the houses and interact with the furniture.
This theme was a key step in LEGO's history of creating theme-based play sets that went beyond basic free-building, allowing children to build detailed environments for role-playing domestic scenarios.