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My kid is Knee deep in Lego Knockoffs.

You can get the little one vehicle and driver sets for about $1 each if you buy them 20-30 at a time. I bought a 50 pack of generic people for $15. Also there is more variety of superhero minifigures by the bootleg companies than Lego actually puts out. I've got a collection of 200+ SuperHero Minifigs

 Kojiro wrote:
When was this 'at some point' and how did they market to boys? Can you show examples of this advertising?

I don't know exactly. I read a few articles about Lego's history and how they managed to get profitable again. By marketing to boys only they probably didn't have ads like the images I linked above and used (for example) magazines aimed at boys and not at girls. I think that was happening during the 90s when they has a slump (late 90s, early 00s) and lost a lot of sales (during that time they also tried to target girls but failed). They focused on boys (I think I remember part of the rationale being that Lego Technics and Mindstorms sets were selling to adult men and them thinking that was true for their whole line) and then later expanded with all the licensed products.

So in short the timeline was (I think):

Doing okay ->

leaving out girls bit by bit ->

trying to get them back in the late 90s (doesn't work) ->

even heavier focus on boys ->

financial problems in the early 00s (caused by, I think, not adjusting their product line/manufacturing (too many parts, …, manufacturing got more complicated over time)), no girls just meant less sales overall ->

licensed products and restructuring save them, bring back profitability ->

try to target girls again (more customer are better), this time with (some?) success

Sorry i don't have the articles but that's what/how I remember them.