Full set

Last year, Lego launched its Lego Friends initiative, a new project aimed at girls. But some Lego fans felt it stereotyped females, ignoring creative or engaged roles. Now, a New York hardware hacker named Limor Fried has come up with her own idea of what a Lego set for girls should be like. And if 10,000 people agree, Ladyada's Workshop, her design, could become a real Lego set, thanks to a program in which the global toymaker agrees to produce certain community-designed and -supported projects.

This is the full Ladyada's Workshop set, which features a pick-and-place machine, a laser cutter, a sewing machine, a soldering station, a computer, a microscope, and shelves of parts and packages. Adafruit Industries is Fried's open-source hardware development company.