Poster said Lego has been promoting aggressiveness, not that it has caused aggressiveness. It's undeniable that Lego themes have drifted a lot more to violence (Lego City is half about Policing), plus all the Ninja and other stuff.
I deny Lego themes drifted towards violence. I just went through my kits from the late 80ies/early 90ies since kid is reaching Lego age. I was a big fan of Space, and like > 60% of the sets are Blacktron and Space Police.
City kits always had police and my cousin mostly owned Castles/Knights. There were pirates and pirate ships with cannons that can shoot bricks (we loved those) Pirates seem to be mostly gone and replaced by Ninjago but police stuck around. No surprise, kids love police stories.
On the civilian side of Lego City, a large collection of civilian space exploration has been added. Space definitely has been demilitarized.
Yeah, the answers in this thread clearly show that I greatly overestimated whatever pacifism commitment Lego ever had. I'm genuinely surprised, apparently they were quite successful at overselling the "play good" brand to me. Pirate cannons actually throwing plastic? Before today I was convinced that this was the defining difference between Lego and Playmobil.
I'm from the region that is home to playmobil and we have a joke here that by count of items identifiable as "handgun" we have the world's largest guns manufacturer at our doorsteps, given the number of pirate and wild west kits sold each year.
The LEGO shooting cannon came out, and then went away for a number of years, and then came back - I guess whatever "safety" reason they took it away for was decided not as important later.
I remember as a kid finding one of the then-old "shooty" cannons and it was the most prized one I had.
I don't think it's s much about Lego promoting it, but giving in to demand. The more violent lines are consistently their most popular ones. The excessive amount of policing and lack of hospitals in Lego City is disturbing, but I'm sure their sales numbers dictate this. They used to have hospitals in the past, but I guess they never sold as well as the police stations.
The top sellers in LEGO city are always police, fire, then a close tie between mechanics and hospitals.
They've said that a main reason is there's a direct visible story with those, and their main customers are boys (not as much with LEGO Friends which is their first girl-oriented and successful line) and boys want conflict/story. "Save the people from a fire" or "catch the robber" - even a hospital falls a bit short there.
The old joke is LEGO City has fifty five thousand police stations, almost as many fire stations, one gas station, and one house.
