Skin Tones

[JPinoy]

Thats a good thing, plus its only limited to the licensed products. Meaning the rest of the non-licensed Lego world should still be free of "ethnic tensions".

BTW, Asians such as myself come in a very wide variety of skin color. Koreans, Japanese, Kazahkstan (central Asia), far Northern Chinese, and some Mongols have a "white" though not "pale" skin tone. Whereas further south in places like Sri Lanka, and India have a very dark and almost "black african" type skin tone. Then of course you have "middle-brown" colored people like Southern Chinese, Filipinos (my ethnic group), Arabs, Turks. Even people from other continents such as some North African, Native-Americans and southern Europeans have this skin tone as well. Not to mention many people in Central and South America as well as Pacific Islanders particularly those of Polynesian descent.

[LEGOFREAK]

I brought this up in a private post but I cant resist.

how about yellow for light skin tones and orange for darker skin tones?

orange lando anyone?


hm - sounds like something you'd order at the mall.
Never mind.


Freak

[Dragon Master]

Food for thought.

Do you think LEGO would get better sales if other skin colors were made?

DM

[JPinoy]

I doubt it. EVERYONE I've talked to associates Lego figs being yellow. This comes from non-die-hard fans of Lego. Just casual buyers and people who had Lego when they were small. There are more of these kind of people than us die-hard types, and its them who make up the bulk of Lego sales, despite the dozens and sometimes hundreds of Lego sets we die-hards buy.

Besides its bad enough we still have racism in this world. Would we want kids to keep learning it?

[LEGOFREAK]

Besides its bad enough we still have racism in this world. Would we want kids to keep learning it?

Just out of curiousity, how would having multiple skin tones teach kids racism? Wouldn't that teach kids that there are lots of different people out there?

Freak
(with a desire to learn more )

[JPinoy]

There's these things called real life people, SCHOOL, television, magazines, pictures, and etc. which IMO would do a much better job to telling kids about "other people" than toys.

Besides, I can predict that it'd another "black and white" thing, marginalizing the appearance of peoples who have larger populations than both those ethnic groups COMBINED, like Asians. Just take a look at the NBA figs. Its the 2003-2004 season now. Yet no Yao-Ming minifig, and that guy is into his 2nd year in the NBA. How many Asians or for that matter even Blacks are in Star Wars and Harry Potter? Not that many Blacks in SW and the ones in HP are almost all extras. Whereas there was a lone Asian Jedi woman, and for some reason Eastern Magic/Wizardry/Sorcery isn't welcome in Hogwarts.

Now unless Lego partners with Disney and Disney creates a new TV show based on the Mulan movie, which Lego in turn makes sets about.... I don't think 3 billion people will be represented well in Lego.

OR

If Lego makes a "Real World City" theme, a new Town theme of course, then you could have sets of city-sections and city blocks. Just think of buildings, blocks, and sections of such cities like Paris, Moscow, Kuala Lampur, Delhi, Cairo, Riyadh, Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, and etc. THEN, perhaps I'd be ok with "multi-ethnic" minifigs in regular non-licensed Lego products.

Back to sports.....
Why stop in the NBA? There's FIFA and the Olympics, you could have teams from different countries like Team USA, China National Team, Australia, Columbia, and etc. just like they did with Lego Soccer.

[Christopher McCleerey]

So where are we at with the options?

I see four ideas:
(likely more or less or something )

Yellow - with range between? - then Brown (or Orange )

Pink/tan - with a range between? - then Brown

Yellow and try to forget about Lando and the NBA sets.

Or we could hope they change to some other color. And try to forget about Lando, NBA and all of minifig history. Mahaps like HP troll light blue, or green, or purple, or whatever. A color change to an unhuman color (except, I suppose, a human can freeze blue) would make it obvious that the minifig was ment to be just a representation of all humans. (this idea is an, perhapse undesirable, extension of Legofreak's post about Orange Lando.)

I now see that I had kind of been thinking of this as "white is represented, not black" with Yellow being "white". Perhapse Yellow was ment to be the middle ground; between "white/light" and "black/dark" skin color. In that case you could think that brown (representing dark skin color) was introduced into mainstream system lego before "white" was and those with medium skin color have been the only ones represented all along.

In that case I say keep it yellow man! Middle ground is most unspecific and allows for the best creativity. The middle can be made to appear more one way or more the other way with minor tweaks. I see now, like some of you previous posters were saying, Yellow could be the perfect color to genericly interpret human coloring. I have just now come around to understand that viewpoint.

I can still handle change if TLC goes the other way. It really doesn't upset me all that much.

Like JPinoy said:

If Lego makes a "Real World City" theme, a new Town theme of course, then you could have sets of city-sections and city blocks. Just think of buildings, blocks, and sections of such cities like Paris, Moscow, Kuala Lampur, Delhi, Cairo, Riyadh, Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, and etc. THEN, perhaps I'd be ok with "multi-ethnic" minifigs in regular non-licensed Lego products.

It would be neat if TLC took this direction. Great idea!

Back to the specific question, or close, anyway:
How many skin tones need to be created (with in reason) since TLC has already taken a few steps this way?
My shot in the dark says three(light, medium, dark). But I usualy miss.

Ahh... Mind stretch. What fun!
C
ps: I aggree with you JPinoy. Kids will definetly figure grown up stuff out from exterior sources and shouldn't have to face it when they just want to play.

[Blasterman]

I aggree with you JPinoy. Kids will definetly figure grown up stuff out from exterior sources and shouldn't have to face it when they just want to play.

1 - Then they shouldn't have made Lando brown, or made
the NBA sets...by that thinking.

2 - So we should shelter them from the reality of life?
All under the guise of "it's just a toy"?

Race, or color, is part of life. The real world. The stuff
that we all have to deal with one way or another, in
our everyday lives. I thought "playing"(as a child)was
to have fun, but to also learn valuable lessons that
carry over(usually)to adulthood. Am I wrong?

Bottom line, I would have been perfectly happy with
ALL minifigs being yellow as I've stated before.
However, a brown Lando amongst a sea of yellow
figs just doesn't look right. Not to mention fair.
We also live in a very race sensitive society from
what I can tell. Why should one race have special
treatment?

I'm all for generic themes being yellow. Licensed themes
should be color specific, to some degree. If you look
at any pic of Lando, he's brown. Now look at any pic
of Luke. Is he yellow? No, plain and simple.

[Devari]

Bottom line, I would have been perfectly happy with
ALL minifigs being yellow as I've stated before.
However, a brown Lando amongst a sea of yellow
figs just doesn't look right. Not to mention fair.
We also live in a very race sensitive society from
what I can tell. Why should one race have special
treatment?

I must say, by that argument, the brown Lando was a BIG mistake. However, if LEGO makes everyone else these "White" figures, they will, most likely, get an uproar from minority groups. Looking from their point of view, you have only one "Black" figure to 10 or more "White" figures. The race issue would haunt LEGO to the end of its days. Plus, LEGO would have just dug a BIG hole for themselves by making the Chinese, Indian, and Tibeten people in the Orient Express theme the generic yellow. If White people got representation in LEGO, every single other minority would need to be represented as well.

I may be mistaken, but I haven't heard any news of the other 90% of LEGO buyers (parents and children) being upset over this brown Lando. Maybe even excited...?

I think people might not mind having visible minorities in toys as much as much when it is a "generic" versus "real" race, instead of "real" versus "real". I hope you understand what I mean.


A Yellow Lando would have been fine with me as well... But that isn't what we got, did we? I can live with it.

You know, perhaps we should just use our imaginations to make these Yellow people whatever we want... After all, LEGO is a tool of imagination, as well as a toy. The more you imagine, the better you will build.

I would be sad if Star Wars and HP went "racial". Even with a new castle theme, HP and SW would still play an important part in my new minifigs. I got into Castle a wee bit too late for even KK, not to mention DM and Black Knights. My Castle world is pretty much all Yellow, and I want it to stay that way. The odd black or white figure is fine (mostly NBA), but those are the foreign "barbarians". (That is not a racial slur, just meaning that these people are rather foreign to my Yellow people. At this point I haven't even put them in to my world. I may not...)

My people are Yellow! (And brown and tan, if you're an Ewok )

~Devari

PS - I'd rather we spend our time lobbying TLC to give us more variation of Ewok fur colours! *Dreams of an Ewok Village set*

PSS - I'm sorry if my post made no sense! :p

[stuifzand]

First: I want the figs to keep yellow heads. I have already difficulties with the lady-face. I never wear lipstick and all those lego-women do. When I look at my collection of figs, it's hard to find a classic smiley...

As for the racial thing, why only bring out black people?
There are so many other groups that can feel left out.
If it's going that way, I also want gay people. I know you can put a handbag in a blond legoguys hand, but I want it as a set. Also, some short girlhair is needed to make lesbians.
And why not bring out disabled people? With wheelchairs... I know you can make them for yourself, but I want it as a set.

So, minifigs should have yellow heads, that´s the way it´s supposed to be. If your imagination says it´s black, than it´s black.
When I look at the indianfaces, I´m sorry but if I was indian I wouldn´t like to be represented with such a nose.
Just take a classic smiley, stick some feathers in the hair, and here you have an indian...

Pffffff...

Sorry, but I just had to say this. It is in no way my intention to hurt anyones feelings.
Also, political correct is an expression that is not done in the Netherlands these days, so I can blame my country

[Christopher McCleerey]

I wrote a lot of stuff and then realized that it's way to late for me to be posting. So away it goes. I can never write anything worth reading when I'm asleep. Therefor, you should skip over the rest of this post as I babel.

This is what I know: Lando is brown, LEGO or otherwise. LEGO NBA is NBA without Yao Ming. I like Yellow minifigs best. Everyone on this thread made great points, except me. Imagination is the key to having fun. I'm in low earth orbit. It's way to late for me. RUN! SAVE YOURSELF!!! (heh heh... I make funny ).

Blasterman said:

I swear, this is the last time I will comment on
this subject.

I agree with ya man!

Happy days people!
Smiley faces all around.

'night all
C
ps: Hey, look at that! An Elf has my bricks! *goes back to sleep*

[JPinoy]

As for the racial thing, why only bring out black people?
There are so many other groups that can feel left out.

If they wanna emphasize race they should keep to making (non-licensed) minifigs yellow, but with particular facial features like the almond shaped eyes for the Orient China and Ninja castle figs. Native-Americans in Wild West and the basketball (non-NBA) figs have particular facial and or hair printing on them.

[Stephen]

stuifzand wrote:

So, minifigs should have yellow heads, that´s the way it´s supposed to be. If your imagination says it´s black, than it´s black.

I agree. Recently TLC has been acting like they don't believe in imagination anymore. In the newest catalog, I don't even see the classic smiley face except in the Legends.

Bring back the yellow smiley face!

Stephen

[Dragon Master]

I just found this on LEGO.com, maybe this answer's our questions.

Why are LEGO people yellow?
John,11,Canada

You know, I've often wondered about that myself. The Amazing Redini has been trying to get a nice bronze tan for years, but no matter what I do, I'm still yellow! But seriously, the yellow color was originally decided in 1972. The LEGO Company asked a bunch of kids about what complexion they thought looked the best. The kids they asked thought that yellow was more catchy, vivid, exciting and warm than the other colors. So we LEGO minifigs have been yellow ever since!

Hmmm....if this is the case, why the Brown Lando?

DM

[Devari]

Heh, I saw that a long time ago. I thought everyone here knew that...