Legos were much more customizable 15 years ago than today. Here's a comparison: http://betterwrappedinbacon.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/lego-bl...
I don't think they looked hard enough:
http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Ultimate-Building-Set-Pieces/dp/B...
http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Bricks-More-Builders-Tomorrow/dp/...
http://letsbuilditagain.com/instructions/6630/ http://letsbuilditagain.com/instructions/6880/
(To pick 2 completely random examples)
Back in '82 there weren't as many different themes (afaik there were maybe 4: space, town, castle and trains), but the concept definitely existed.
Some might even argue about the gender-neutrality of those themes too: the majority of Lego I owned around that time was the space-themed stuff, and my sister had some of the town sets. In fact, as long ago as 1979 Lego brought out a range called Scala [1] that was targeted almost exclusively at girls (my wife has really fond memories of those sets!)