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Is it time for LEGO to stop being colorblind?

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I'll keep it short and simple. Obviously this is inspired by the happenings in the US (my country of origin).

LEGO has it's main line of sets all yellow. It's iconic. I wouldn't ever call it racist and this isn't exactly a top issue. But it is designed to be colorblind. They were designed to not adhere to any race or people so nobody felt left out. However the second they had to make a Lando minifigure they realized stretching the yellow into lighter skin tones was easy, but stretching it into darker tones was possibly too much of a stretch. This only mattered when representing real people with real races which wasn't the goal of the non-franchise lines. However it does potentially emphasize that the yellow, while designed to not let people feel left out, might not be the best option as it still might kind of subconsciously or consciously more represent certain skin tones over others. Plus I'm not sure it's effective to begin with.

There's the argument that not having clearer representation in the minifigures might not be as healthy or helpful to begin with. There are many arguments against colorblindness including the thought that refusing to acknowledge it can make it easier for people to not notice or ignore manifestations of racism and discrimination. Essentially potentially leading to ignorance and apathy and stuff. I'll keep this brief too as there's plenty of thoughts and articles and stuff out there that is all about why colorblindness can be bad.

The point is maybe there's a better way to go about it and maybe yellow'izing the figures isn't the best way possible when it comes to the kids.

OBVIOUSLY this isn't all on LEGO. Racism is a deep problem with it's roots in many MANY places (not saying one is LEGO). This is just me "theorycrafting" about the most efficient and logical manner of communication of skintones in a children's toy. And every little bit helps. And at the end of the day I just think the yellow'izing isn't really the answer. I think acknowledging other races in a productive and intelligent manner is just... better. If I ask myself "could LEGO do better when it comes to representation?" I can't help but think "yeah, probably". If I think of any future kids I may have I'd kind of rather them play with minifigures that are all colours and not just a generic "humanoids, ala the TV show Community, be it much cuter". (Though simple solution, go for the franchise sets ;p).

 

That said I also recognize it's a minefield. Have a classic cops and robbers set? I guess they'd have to stray away from "predefined" minifigure combinations.  So you might encourage kids to put whatever available skin tones on whatever minifigures how they want. Have a set with just a 1 cop and 1 robber? Do you provide 1 light skin tone and 1 dark? 2 light? 2 dark? How do you display this on the box? Obviously if the robber is dark... that might not be well received. But then you can't just make all the robbers white. Don't want to accidentally depict discrimination in a quest to be more inclusive! There'd have to be a whole lot of rules and I'm not sure all scenarios even have an answer! 

 

Will there be a time that the world outgrows the LEGO "colorblind" mindset? Or does nobody care? Does the yellow really leave nobody feeling left out? Is it such a tiny issue in the crazy 2020 world that you wonder why I'd bring it up? Blablabla. I'm just thinking out loud. :)

 

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For in-house sets, I think the simple answer is no. Leave it is at is.

With licensed sets, they get the distribution of skin colours from the characters being portrayed in the relevant media. But how to do in-house themes? Do they do equal numbers of each colour, or do they base it on the demographics for the world or the region or the country they are sold in and need to have different sets for different places, or do they base it on the demographics of the people actually buying the sets?

Plus they have to show some advertising on the box and the minifigures are made up. If there is a set with a reddish brown police officer and a light nougat crook and another set with a light nougat police officer and a reddish brown crook, then people will complain that the second set is racist and it will be all over twitter that LEGO is racist for producing this set and stereotyping people of colour as crooks.

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I think Lego just have to keep it to the yellow figures. It's yellow for years and it's really iconic. You can call it, what you say, 'colorblind'. You can also think 'everybody is the same'. I guess it's created years ago with the thoughts of just 'toys', kids can build what they want and play with it and having fun. And not to bordering them with political stuff and racism. Just having fun.
If it's a racist thing Chinese people could complain also, and I've never hear of them so ...
There more and more people who searching things behind ... everything, just like Saint Nicholas in the Netherlands.
I can give you more examples but I don't want to go complain to much :wink:

About the yellow figures? Wich is good, nice ... nothing wrong with it. However, it's pretty weird that Duplo and Friends well have colored kids. How about that?

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I don't know a company that tries to be more careful about these things than TLG. The yellow color of the hands/heads of the minifigs was already when they started with minifigs thought through from the perspective of not discriminating agains skin color (even if people have jaundice there are no people in the world that have yellow faces, maybe asians have a light yellow tint but by no means the vivid yellow color that LEGO uses). Here is a nice article about it: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-LEGO-minifigures-have-yellow-heads?share=1.

Interesting to see that they did use other colors before 1980.

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Keep in-house figures yellow (Robots/Monsters/Aliens/Orcs/Goblins etc excluded).

 

In the 2019 People Pack, there's a family with  this type of hair : 

cty1017.t1.pngcty1018.t1.pngcty1019.t1.png

Make of it what you want, but I don't see a particular race here.

In-House figures, even if they got names like Duke Detain, Harl Hubbs, Daisy Kaboom, etc. they are still 100% fictional figures.

Chinese New Year sets use Yellow figures with mostly Black Hair as well, but I don't see those figure designs as stereotypical toward Asian/Chinese.

Now, there are exceptions where LEGO uses skin tones for it's Minidolls, or has used it for themes like Scala or Belville, but those are still 100% fictional as well, just look at other doll toys like Barbie, or Baby Born etc, I don't see anything strange.

 

Licensed Figures are mostly based on characters designed outside of LEGO's own source, so a skin color based on an actor/movie/comic book makes sense, and that's why we see the swap from Yellow to skin-tones in the early 2000s.

In 2003 LEGO also started to make NBA basketball sets based on real people with skin tones, which very much makes sense.

 

And to Quote LEGO themselves :

 

Quote

Why some minifigures are different colours

We want to inspire the builders of tomorrow – that means kids from all around the world! We want every one of our fans, wherever they live and whatever their own skin colour, to imagine themselves as part of the action. When we invented minifigures almost 40 years ago, we chose yellow because it’s a neutral “skin colour” – nobody in real life has bright yellow skin, so LEGO® minifigures don’t represent a specific race or ethnic background and nobody is left out.

While we’ve made some minifigures that aren’t yellow, they’re usually based on characters we didn’t create. We try to make them look just like those characters so kids can play out the story at home.

 

Edited by TeriXeri

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When minifigures first came out, yellow was the obvious color to use for hands and heads. Flesh tone colored plastic was not available from TLG. Since then some cartoons used the same color scheme, such as the TV series "The Simpsons", everybody thought "that's cool, it's like TLG". Now TLG uses more realistic flesh tones when necessary, such as "StarWars". "Star Wars" Lego sets were still yellow for quite a few years before going with flesh tones. It's good the way it is . Leave it alone.

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2 hours ago, 1963maniac said:

When minifigures first came out, yellow was the obvious color to use for hands and heads. Flesh tone colored plastic was not available from TLG [..] Now TLG uses more realistic flesh tones when necessary, such as "StarWars". "Star Wars" Lego sets were still yellow for quite a few years before going with flesh tones

Thats actually incorrect.
"TAN" number code 2 in the color palette was officially introduced in 1957 and the minifig came out 20 years later in 1978!
They could have made tan minifigs, in fact, there is tan based figurines for the old town layouts. But they chose not to, to avoid the skin color political aspects at the time.
It was stated in several interviews aswell. Yellow is a "happy" colour. As it was also used for the first castle instead of a militaristic grey...
But knowing the rather limited color palette used in sets at that time, it might seem that they didnt have those colors - but in fact, they did have a huge array, just never used them because it was quite pricey and not reall necessary back in a day.

But yeah, TLG doesnt need to change anything atm. agreed.

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I could well imagine that LEGO could achieve a better representation of e.g. the African American communities in sets by better reflecting their overall life situation or including more figures in their clothing and hair styles, clichéed as that itself maybe. Changing skin tones on the other hand seems a bit futile and even pointless. It might only lead to more debates because then people will start counting which color was used how often in which sets and eventually everyone will complain about being misrepresented...

Mylenium

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LEGO minifigures are designed with removable components.  You can customize to your liking if you don't like yellow.  :classic:

 

 

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5 hours ago, Mylenium said:

It might only lead to more debates because then people will start counting which color was used how often in which sets and eventually everyone will complain about being misrepresented...

Yep, some have done exactly that with gender representation; counting the number of male vs female minifigures in sets throughout Lego history.

I strictly use yellow in my own builds but of all the flesh figures I have they are overwhelmingly majority caucasian due to the entertainment licenses they come from indicative of the typical Hollywood cast.

4 hours ago, dr_spock said:

LEGO minifigures are designed with removable components.  You can customize to your liking if you don't like yellow.  :classic:

Necklines, short sleeves and the legs sometimes prevent this.

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Never! A Minifig Person designed to represent a human should always be yellow. While my fleshtones collection has slowly increased as TLG expands their licences portfolio, I find the bright yellow is charming and can be as inclusive as you like. I do use both kinds of figure in my SF builds (along with aliens and robots!) but prefer the classic yellow for the more grounded environments. 

Everyone shouting about "representation" from whatever community they are a part of would be just as disgruntled at stereotypical appearances to represent them. That goes for anyone clamouring for a labelled figure, make a minifigure whatever you want it to be.

However, I suppose I try and maintain the philosophy that people are people first and I would be 100% more interested in their music/media likes, favourite drink and opinion on LEGO than anything else upon meeting them.

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Dude that Lando minifigure really has come back to bite them in the megablocks :laugh:

 

And to answer the OP question: no, they should keep them yellow. Switching to fleshies would really open a can of worms....

 

TLG doesnt need to "stop being colorblind": people need to stop looking at everything through the lens of race

Edited by Robert8

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54 minutes ago, Robert8 said:

Dude that Lando minifigure really has come back to bite them in the megablocks :laugh:

 

I wonder if that was even TLG's decision, or if Lucasfilm had the final say?

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I think the generic characters need to stay yellow. The characters being yellow is the best thing for Lego's in house themes. If anything, I don't think its being color blind. I think Lego is stopping racial tension. 

Take City for instance. Giving races to the characters would fume lots of racial tension. For example, if they made the cops white and the crooks black, that would piss a lot of black people off - myself included. Yes! Race reveal! I'm a black man. 

So Lego is taking into account the societal impact these types of things have on people. So I don't think Lego is being colorblind. I think Lego is being empathetic towards its fans and customers and their feelings on such a matter of going from yellow to flesh tones for their generic themes. Licensed themes is one thing. Generic themes is quite another. 

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Simply put, no. If someone has a problem thinking a non licensed minifig isn’t whatever race they want it to be, that’s on them. 

18 hours ago, koalayummies said:

Yep, some have done exactly that with gender representation; counting the number of male vs female minifigures in sets throughout Lego history.

I was thinking this as well, but you beat me to it. We don’t need more complaints such as that one.

6 hours ago, Robert8 said:

TLG doesnt need to "stop being colorblind": people needs to stop looking at everything through the lens of race

I’ll just keep this short & sweet...absolutely. 

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7 hours ago, Peppermint_M said:

A Minifig Person designed to represent a human should always be yellow.

Completely agree. All minifigures representing people should be yellow, licensed or not. That is not for reasons of ethnic neutrality but because it is characteristic of the LEGO brand. Fleshies are a betrayal of the brand. Of course, LEGO can do what it likes with its brand; it has the absolute right in all legal jurisdictions to do so. But that does not mean it should. There are many toy brands with realistic flesh tones (e.g. Playmobil) but only one, LEGO, is characteristically bright yellow. Anything other than yellow dilutes the brand, making LEGO less LEGO-like and more like other toys.    

Edited by AmperZand

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6 hours ago, Robert8 said:

... people needs to stop looking at everything through the lens of race

Amen! That's what I mean too.

Edited by neonic

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7 hours ago, Robert8 said:

TLG doesnt need to "stop being colorblind": people needs to stop looking at everything through the lens of race

Well said.

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4 hours ago, AmperZand said:

Completely agree. All minifigures representing people should be yellow, licensed or not. That is not for reasons of ethnic neutrality but because it is characteristic of the LEGO brand. Fleshies are a betrayal of the brand. Of course, LEGO can do what it likes with its brand; it has the absolute right in all legal jurisdictions to do so. But that does not mean it should. There are many toy brands with realistic flesh tones (e.g. Playmobil) but only one, LEGO, is characteristically bright yellow. Anything other than yellow dilutes the brand, making LEGO less LEGO-like and more like other toys.    

This is an interesting view on it. By its name though, licenses are the likeness of whatever subject they’re making. If they kept them yellow, instead of licensed, would it then be labeled as “based upon.”:laugh: 

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On 6/6/2020 at 1:44 AM, MAB said:

For in-house sets, I think the simple answer is no. Leave it is at is.

With licensed sets, they get the distribution of skin colours from the characters being portrayed in the relevant media.

This.

We do not need affirmative action for our little yellow armies. 

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It's an interesting debate.  I used to believe yellow minifigs are race-neutral but it became difficult to believe that with all the specialized hair molds and colors they produce these days.  That said, it does seem like they are mixing up the hair molds and including more black hair recolors in the last year or two, so it does seem like they're thinking about this.

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1 hour ago, SteamSewnEmpire said:

This.

We do not need affirmative action for our little yellow armies. 

What you and @MAB said is why I used yellow people as much as possible. There is no racism because there are no races. Problem solved. 

I do have ethnic stereotypes though. I hope that's not bad. 

Edited by Brandon Pea

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I agree with basically everyone else: in-house themes should be classic yellow and nothing else. You can point out the Wild West theme's Indians' faces (1990s was a different time), and the Islanders' from Pirates faces (that was a VERY different time). More specifically, you can look at the original NBA line where the figures were yellow but had very... uh... interesting faces...

In my opinion, if it's representing a real human being, then flesh-tone minifigures make sense. The original Lando was definitely an exception to the rule, but that was also the first black minifigure LEGO had made, soon followed by the EMT in the Spider-Man sets, NBA sets, and Mace Windu. If it's alive person, flesh-tone. If not, classic yellow.

Classic yellow honestly fits any race/ethnicity, aside from a very few specific faces/intsances. I grew up in the early 2000s, and a lot of my friends played/built with LEGO, and even in the conservative, Texan town I grew up in, a lot of kids of all races/ethnicities played with LEGO. Lando had arrived on the scene as did flesh-tones somewhat middle-way for some of my friends, when they started to grow out of LEGO, but friends of all colors would pick classic yellow for sigfigs. Maybe it was because there weren't more "representative" figures of skin tones, maybe it was because, "this guy looks cool!" I tend to find it somewhat straddling the middle but still leaning heavily towards the latter.

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Count me as another one for keeping the human minifigs of in-house themes uniformly yellow-skinned and using, if anything, hair and clothing to represent specific physical features and cultural markers. While it is true that people tend to interpret a neutral face as whatever they consider the "default," LEGO is a worldwide brand and that default is going to vary between nations, meaning that the identity of a given minifig can change depending on who's playing with it. That's much less possible for the licensed figures with realistic skin tones.

That said, sentiments like--

17 hours ago, Robert8 said:

TLG doesnt need to "stop being colorblind": people need to stop looking at everything through the lens of race

--are neither helpful nor compassionate. Everyone has the right to interrogate things they encounter in the world, including toys, from any standpoint that they find relevant. The fact that licensed minifigs use naturalistic skin tones proves that TLG is aware of race, and if that causes someone to wonder if that awareness affects how they manufacture yellow minifigs, I don't think it's a pointless question.

The People Pack figures highlighted by @TeriXeri are obviously intended to represent a black family--why else give all three of them that highly textured black hair? Some people might question whether specific representation like that undermines the notion that any minifig can be anyone, and that's probably a conversation worth having...but I think the potential problem is mitigated by the fact that parts can be freely swapped between minifigs.

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