76 replies to this topic

[Mister Phes]

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Is it OK to mix dark skinned mini-figures with yellow mini-figures?
Or should the dark skinned only be seen amongst with flesh tones?

See our new Dark Skinned mini-figure Index

[SlyOwl]

Quote

Is it OK to mix dark skinned mini-figures with yellow mini-figures?
Or should the dark skinned only be seen amongst with flesh tones?

Very good question. TLC did in Cloud City, with Lando. But somehow it didn't look quite right...
However, as TLC don't do many "medium" dark-skinned minifigs (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, mixed race), it is difficult to get a broad spectrum of colours in a crew. Therefore, a dark-skinned minifig would stand out as much in a fleshie crew as a yellow one.
So maybe. Yellows have the advantage of many different expressions (inc. angry+scared) and oriental/native ones too. But fleshies look more realistic when used with dark-skinned figures.

I'm thinking that a crew member like the black helmsman from POTC1 would be awesome! A similar character - Anaconda - also features in Brian Jacques' book The Angel's Command...

[Sandy]

Mister Phes, on Jul 16 2008, 11:59 PM, said:

Is it OK to mix dark skinned mini-figures with yellow mini-figures?
Or should the dark skinned only be seen amongst with flesh tones?

I would use them, if only I had them. As a matter of fact, I'm such a heretic that I would use all skin tones together if I needed to get multiple nationalities together. I think the BrickTestament is a great example of this.

[Mister Phes]

I've decided my question can become the July poll topic so you'll find the
See our new Dark Skinned mini-figure Index is where the original discussion took place.

[Sinner]

No. Using yellow and only yellow allows you to delude yourself that minifigs are either all the same or whatever you want.... as opposed them all being white-ies. Cloud City was a huge mistake on LEGOs behalf; I bet they got letters galore over that one...

You can however get away with it easier in a made-up space setting; you can say that they are the "aliens"!  

[Svelte]

I agree with Sinner - if you have other colours, yellow becomes 'white' by default. That would be fine if there was an equal mix of multi-coloured heads in production, but 99.9% of non-licensed figs are yellow. Any other fig then becomes a token representative of some other group. Not the message of equality that TLG probably wants to promote.

[Sandy]

svelte_corps, on Jul 18 2008, 01:17 PM, said:

I agree with Sinner - if you have other colours, yellow becomes 'white' by default. That would be fine if there was an equal mix of multi-coloured heads in production, but 99.9% of non-licensed figs are yellow. Any other fig then becomes a token representative of some other group. Not the message of equality that TLG probably wants to promote.

But it's a MOC, not an official statement from The Lego Group. If Captain_CreamFields wants a dark-skinned character to his creation, of course he should use a dark-skinned minifig instead of a yellow one. That way anybody can tell the difference. You guys, on the other hand, make it sound like a variety of skin colors is a bad thing.

Anyway, you can ask for opinions, Captain_CreamFields, but ultimately it's your decision. Whatever you decide, I don't think anybody will put your head on a chopping block for it.

Edit: Sorry, name confusion!

Edited by Sandy, 18 July 2008 - 11:35 AM.

[Mister Phes]

Errrr...  It's supposed to be the monthly poll topic, not a personalised question to assist me with my MOCing...  I'm certainly not going to be building anything with tanned mini-figures in the near future.

[Commander Red Hat]

In my opinion one can make out of lego what ever he or she wants.
I use dark minifigs next to my yellow ones, and i think it looks pretty cool!
I also like the new fleshies, but they are to little present and not many different ones are available, so they can never replace my 500 yellow ones.....

[Sandy]

Mister Phes, on Jul 18 2008, 02:26 PM, said:

Errrr...  It's supposed to be the monthly poll topic, not a personalised question to assist me with my MOCing...  I'm certainly not going to be building anything with tanned mini-figures in the near future.

Oh, sorry! I didn't realize that the original topic was made my another member!

But that's where this topic all started, really. Captain_CreamFields made a topic about diversifying the minifigs in his pirate crew. So that's what I was referring to.

[Sinner]

Sandy, on Jul 18 2008, 08:22 PM, said:

You guys, on the other hand, make it sound like a variety of skin colors is a bad thing.

Not at all; in fact quite the reverse. I like the idea that, for example, an asian can see yellow minifigs as asian if he wants too, or a black (with a good imagination ) could do the same. Afterall, no humans have skin that yellow; LEGO just chose that colour as out of their pallette at the time it was the best neutral choice. To think otherwise brands LEGO as being racist... when I don't think they were. I think they were just leaving things to the childs imagination... and trying to save on excess colours.

Why do minifigs need to be of any particular skin colour anyway? They aren't very realistic copies of humans anyway so why make them skin accurate? Is skin colour that big a deal? I don't think so.

But I'm just giving an opinion, as asked. You don't have to agree with me.

Interestingly, as my wife reminded me of, LEGO have really confused the issue with Duplo.

[Commander Red Hat]

Pretty strange to see flesh and dark skinned figs in that Duplo set, as far as i know the firebrigade aint a licensed theme...

[skelliesgang]

SlyOwl, on Jul 16 2008, 05:55 PM, said:

However, as TLC don't do many "medium" dark-skinned minifigs (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, mixed race), it is difficult to get a broad spectrum of colours in a crew.

just FYI, on the ethnicity "colour scale" yellow is equated to asians. therefore, all yellow minifigs are already asian by default. i suppose that is why the fleshies emerged to assuage the "white" population.

[Sinner]

skelliesgang, on Jul 18 2008, 09:59 PM, said:

just FYI, on the ethnicity "colour scale" yellow is equated to asians. therefore, all yellow minifigs are already asian by default. i suppose that is why the fleshies emerged to assuage the "white" population.

True, but as I said, no ones skin is that yellow. When you consider the colours LEGO had to choose from at the time (white, black, red, yellow, blue and green... I think), yellow was the best choice.

Captain green hair, on Jul 18 2008, 09:59 PM, said:

Pretty strange to see flesh and dark skinned figs in that Duplo set, as far as i know the firebrigade aint a licensed theme...

My thoughts exactly.   Looking at older sets that my kids have, they have been doing it for a while. They also have men with asian looking eyes.

[Sir Dano]

The Simpsons mix dark skinned with yellow.
Thus, I voted yes.

Now if only TLG would make some dark-skinned female heads...

Edited by sir dano, 18 July 2008 - 01:33 PM.

[Shoc]

I voted no, yellow and fleshies I don't like to mix.    I don't like using fleshies much anyway, yellow figures are much more Lego looking.  

Mister Phes, on Jul 16 2008, 09:59 PM, said:

Is it OK to mix dark skinned mini-figures with yellow mini-figures?
Or should the dark skinned only be seen amongst with flesh tones?

Dark skin is a flesh tone...  

Sinner, on Jul 18 2008, 02:06 PM, said:

When you consider the colours LEGO had to choose from at the time (white, black, red, yellow, blue and green... I think), yellow was the best choice.

Think of it, if minifgs had been blue or green, conversations like this would not have arisen. But because yellow is more similar to lighter skinned people's skin tones, people got crazy over it and now we have fleshies...  

[blueandwhite]

I'm of the opinion that dark-skinned minifigs should be used with other flesh-toned figs and not with the yellow figs.  I always appreciated that LEGO was race-neutral.  Simply put, a yellow fig can be of any ethnicity whereas adding skin tones defines the figure.  The result is something like the Simpsons where yellow becomes synonomus with caucasian or east asian while brown becomes black or south asian.  If creating an ethnic distinction between figs is necessary, then simply use all flesh tones.

[Sandy]

Captain green hair, on Jul 18 2008, 03:59 PM, said:

Pretty strange to see flesh and dark skinned figs in that Duplo set, as far as i know the firebrigade aint a licensed theme...

Hello? Where have you been living? Duplo figures had different skin colors back when I was a kid, and that's a long time ago. I still remember that they had a caucasian family, an asian family and a black family, and I always wondered why System couldn't do the same.

Because like it or not, a white-skinned kide like I was affiliates yellow minifigs to his or her own skin color. I'm not saying that asian or dark-skinned people don't do the same (how should I know?), but to me as a kid it seemed like there were no other skin colors in Legoland. And that was sad.

So I'm rejoicing for the new diversity, and like sir dano, I'm looking forward to a dark-skinned female's head.

[Shoc]

Sandy, on Jul 18 2008, 08:45 PM, said:

Duplo figures had different skin colors back when I was a kid, and that's a long time ago. I still remember that they had a caucasian family, an asian family and a black family, and I always wondered why System couldn't do the same.

Because like it or not, a white-skinned kide like I was affiliates yellow minifigs to his or her own skin color. I'm not saying that asian or dark-skinned people don't do the same (how should I know?), but to me as a kid it seemed like there were no other skin colors in Legoland. And that was sad.

So I'm rejoicing for the new diversity, and like sir dano, I'm looking forward to a dark-skinned female's head.

Fair enough (I don't agree with all of that), but what actually is your view on using dark skin toned figs with yellow ones? I would be interested to see.  

[Sandy]

Shoc, on Jul 18 2008, 11:00 PM, said:

Fair enough (I don't agree with all of that), but what actually is your view on using dark skin toned figs with yellow ones? I would be interested to see.  

I've already answered that question many times in this topic, as well as the one this was separated from. I'm all for it. Like I said previously, BrickTestament uses all three skin tones cleverly together.

[Adam]

Sandy, on Jul 18 2008, 11:45 AM, said:

Hello? Where have you been living? Duplo figures had different skin colors back when I was a kid, and that's a long time ago. I still remember that they had a caucasian family, an asian family and a black family, and I always wondered why System couldn't do the same.

Because like it or not, a white-skinned kide like I was affiliates yellow minifigs to his or her own skin color. I'm not saying that asian or dark-skinned people don't do the same (how should I know?), but to me as a kid it seemed like there were no other skin colors in Legoland. And that was sad.

So I'm rejoicing for the new diversity, and like sir dano, I'm looking forward to a dark-skinned female's head.

Hmm, where has he been living... Captain green hair, perhaps you can answer that question   . Well, consider this: Perhaps our green haired friend did not play with Duplo as a child and is associating it with the various knowledge of LEGO sets- that liscenced themes are generally the only ones to contained flesh-toned minifigures. I don't see race, so I always didn't care what color my minifgures were. For me, adding a dark skinned minifigure to a group of yellow minifigures is alright under specific ocasions: If you have a couple of dark skinned minifgure (and there aren't many different heads for them) and a lot of yellow minifigures, it seems odd that there are so few, and the whole thing seems akward. It's not always like that, but let's say you have twenty dark skinned minifigures and, say, two hundred yellow minifigures (this isn't random, I'm afiliating these numbers to the minifig count of a friend of mine; I have far more yellow than dark-skinnd minifgures), and you want to put all of them into, say, a large City MOC, it would seem... akward and, to some, very disturbing. For me, it depends both on what the minfigures shall be used in and how many there are. It's only really wierd if it's public, see. I'm definately not against dark skinned minifigures, exactly the opposite, but certain uses/amounts can be offensive, as are certain coments that have and undoubtedly will come up in this topic. Others simply say they don't want to mix, or benign reasons like that, but this really differs from person to person. In closing, yes, it is alright, but be careful with how you display your mixings. Also, none of this is meant to be offensive, and I apologize if it is, and also hope that this does not start a string of replies and arguments, as quoting person to person becomes tiring.

[Norrington]

I don't think it's a problem, but it does kinda depends on the context. I am a proponent of diversity in my LEGO. The only black minifigure I have is the bespin gaurd. I in some way skin colours would have allready bee nere. Rather than be basically yellow with flesh tones for liscences. I tend to think of yellow as white. Scince fleshies (which I think most figures actually look better with), I think of them as white, brown as african, and scince Adventurers and Ninjas introduced large amounts of Asian paterns into yellow, that's asian, or Jaundince-infencted.

So my awnser: 'yes', but is still put 'it depends'.

[MoonCheese]

I would intermix them in any setting as I like diversity, of I had any dark fleshies to mix in! When Lego switched to fleshies, I was already in my dark age, and after the end of my dark age I mostly am buying Castle. I might have some fleshies from a few SW sets I got in the meantime, but that'd be about it.

And yes, I think there should be a dark female fleshie head. I also remember seeing different skin colours in a Duplo catalogue a while back.

[JimButcher]

It depends. If its an official LEGO set (yellow skin), then no. TLG intended for yellow to be a neutral skin tone, for all races. When flesh came in, that changed. If its a custom, then yes, because you are not TLG, and yellow doesn't have to be neutral skin tone, especially if you want to emphasize that the fig is dark-skinned.

[Phred]

I mix mine all the time.  

I agree with what Captain Greenie said.
I've got less than 20 fleshie heads and about 300 yellow heads.

I don't really care about the political correctness or the actual correctness of dark figs with yellow figs.
The yellow figs have always been the only color of the figs, it was nice to see some variety in the Besbin set.

Fleshies were at first a pain, but i'm growing used to them and probably will use them in the future if i ever get enough.