For most of LEGO’s time creating IP (intellectual property) minifigures, they have been the only figures that were in human skin tones, as all other LEGO minifigures are built with the classic LEGO yellow skin. Because these IP minifigs are the only source of skin toned LEGO figures and because it is important to create products that accurately reflect the world, it is important that there are people of color (POC) in these IP sets. However, on looking at the data, there are not many POC minifigures in the most popular IP themes.
As seen below, for the most popular IP LEGO themes, there are very few POC minifigures. There are even some themes that have so few POC minifigures that they do not register on the graph at all, such as Batman, Minecraft, Spiderman, The LEGO Movie, NINJANGO, and Lord of the Rings. This is really concerning considering IP licenses are usually the only way that LEGO creates POC minifigures. It’s unfortunate, in the case of the LEGO Movie and LEGO Ninjago, LEGO had total creative control over creating a potentially diverse set of characters and yet still did not create a diverse LEGO cast for the franchise.
However, the problem gets even worse upon looking deeper into the roles being played by POC characters. Even in themes that have a higher proportion of POC characters, there are other problems with representation. For example, in the Indiana Jones theme, there are 12 POC characters and 31 non POC characters, which is one of the highest percentages of POC characters in a LEGO IP theme. At first glance this is good, but when researching the individual characters that are POC, they are often othered from the main character, Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones often travels to a new, remote, and seemingly exotic places to meet these POC characters and the majority of the time the POC characters are the villains or on the villain’s side, as shown by the graph below. It is not very often that POC characters are fighting with, as opposed to against, Indiana Jones. Short Round is a kid who helps Indiana Jones, but other than that, all other POC characters are the villains, such as Kazim and Mola Ram. In the Indiana Jones series, the POC characters are either villains or a kid.
There are two problems: there are not enough POC characters in sets, but also that many of the POC characters that do exist are be presented in a problematic way. This also leads to a third problem, being the popularity of individual characters. When one looks at IP minifigures in general, the most popular minifigure characters are not POC. When looking at the graph with all the IP minifigure characters with more than 10 versions of their character, only one character that is POC. That POC character is the broadly labeled Rebel Troopers, and only a portion of them are POC. This is a problem with Hollywood, which is not making enough stories with leading POC characters. However it’s also a problem with LEGO because they can definitely choose IP stories with more POC characters. It should be noted that even with the LEGO movies such as the LEGO Movie and LEGO Movie 2, there are no POC minifigures created.
In general, LEGO IP minifigures are important because they bring to life some of our favorite stories from movies and books, however it is important to look more at the people who are represented in these sets. It is clear that there are not many POC minifigures being produced by LEGO and LEGO historically chooses to create stories and to select IP stories that do not have many POC characters. The good news is that there is evidence that LEGO sees this problem and wants to change this. The LEGO minidolls in the Friends line were revamped in 2018 to be more inclusive, so now 3 of the 5 main characters in the theme are POC characters. This is a great step in the right direction and we can’t wait to see more of this improvement in inclusivity in the future. We’d like to see this expanded to how LEGO decides to make IP minifigures.
4 comments
Mitch
Just a few points I thought I’d note:
1) Only a couple of minifigures have flesh skin tones in The LEGO Movie themes, therefore it seems pointless to include them. I understand that yellow is more aligned with light skin, but there is no reason to include them given LEGO’s official statement regarding the colour. And if almost all the yellow characters are white, where is Vitruvius?
2) If you have seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you’d find Kazim is more of a neutral-aligned character as a protector of the grail. You may have exaggerated his villainous role.
3) Going off my last point, I’m 99.9% sure that the cemetery warriors were POC, both in the movie and the set they came in.
4) It seems unfair to include non-human characters in your final chart. R2-D2, Spongebob Squarepants and Unikitty may not be white for all we know (even if they were played/voiced by white actors).
5) In 2020, LEGO also gave the clone trooper’s nougat heads to reflect actor Temuera Morrison’s Maori heritage. Yes, they were light skinned for about ten or eleven years, but I find exclusion of these variants in the final chart to be extending the truth to say the least.
6) Finally, you also can’t blame solely LEGO completely for the lack of diversity: the creators of these IPs are the main source of these characters, so they have all the control in regards to the ethnicity of these characters. Even a small mention of this would be appreciated.
In conclusion, I do agree that LEGO is struggling to keep up with such diversity, but the blame shouldn’t be directly on LEGO. Instead, the creators of these IPs should be held more accountable. Also, you make valid points, but they’re backed up by outdated information (even at the time of publishing), lack of context on some IPs, ineligible themes, and extremely broad categories. I hate to extensively criticise this, as I appreciate what you’re saying, but I feel like this needs to be addressed.
Håkan
One thing that has struck my mind is how Lego is struggling on how to do Asian characters. Not as a complaint, but I think they are seriously confused on how to handle it, considering a minifig face is so simplified and stylized.
The skin tone is so similar to Light Nougat, (with a yellowish rather than pinkish tint, I’d say) that a new color doesn’t feel warranted. (I could imagine something between Light Nougat and Tan, but it doesn’t seem like a color that would have much use outside minifigs and minidolls.)
Accentuating the nose could be construed as racist, and would generally look rather weird on a minifig.
Accentuating the eyes could be construed as racist, similar to Short Round. The eye shapes for Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) were so stylized that the same head also was used for Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders).
Bob
The IP characters with 10+ figs chart is inaccurate…. Unikitty, R2D2, and spongebob are not human and shouldn’t be racially categorized, and Boba Fett is not a white person (native New Zealander). Since the clone troopers are also clones of him, I wouldn’t count them either as they’re all (light skinned) poc.
The Other Mike
I would just like to point out that Vitruvius is dark-skinned. I realize that’s not much, and he doesn’t return for TLM2,but you should at least acknowledge his presence.