Bonus Material

This section is devoted to bonus material, including visual episode content. It is organized from most recent to last. If you want to see some of the items mentioned in our "How as Your Week?" segment, you can find them on Instagram.

In this 2-part series, we have prepared a 5-pronged approach: Gender, Religion, Race, Disability, and LGBTQIA+ representation.

We were prompted by the amazing Pride set, Everyone is Awesome. We’ll talk more about that set in Part 2.

In this 2-part series, we have prepared a 5-pronged approach: Gender Equality, Religion, Race, Disability, and LGBTQIA+ representation.

We were prompted by the amazing Pride set, Everyone is Awesome. We’ll talk more about that set in Part 2.

Gender Equality

% female, across all themes for the last decade

2020: 32% (266/823)

2019: 32%

2018: 32% Elves ends

2017: 31%

2016: 26%

2015: 25% Elves launches

2014: 19%

2013: 21%

2012: 18% Oddly the increase slowed even with the launch of the Friends theme

2011: 16%

2010: 12%

2009: 9% (28/323)

Friends

• 343 friends female figures, 40 male, 431 figs, so about 800%

• I think they should merge with city, have a boutique in the city under same branding so not to genderize

City is a better measure of “reality”, right?

Recent years cleaned up act, yet only on par with above data:

2020: 35%

2019: 36%

At least management, labor, equal quality jobs

Star Wars as opposite? Let's put that theory to the test:

2020: 6/59 10%

2019: 10/87 11%

2018: 14/94 15%

2017: 9/81 11%

Weirdly, clone troopers are not assigned genders on Brickset despite being male

yeah.

At least that doesn't account for stormtroopers, etc. that could be either gender.

→ Plenty of Official social media acknowledgement

Religion

DISCLAIMER: People don’t like talking about religion in any way, but consider this;

→ We (Americans) care about the representation of a nonwhite minority, despite varying levels of organization

→ We care about the representation of the minority LGBTQIA+ community

→ So why can’t we care about the representation of religious minorities, huh?

• Big topic, largest exclusion effect on me personally

• Lego officially doesn’t do any, like in Lego Ideas submissions forbidden

  • Do consider that Lego Ideas says “No First-Person Shooters”

  • They made Overwatch as a separate line though.

• Starting ‘86 Easter and Christmas, Non Religious stuff but still a religious holiday

  • 97 sets not even including winter village and advent (See Holiday Special 2020)

40426 Christmas Wreath alt. build from 2020 Sketchy?

Kinda Religious, Right?

→ Chinese New Year (Lunar New Year) is not religious most of the time, so we don’t count more traditions than religion here (like christmas trees)

→ Monkie kid (Journey to the West) based in mythology but largely not expressed in sets

• We’ll count it though as half, because many Buddhist and Daoist Roots

→ No official social media acknowledgement of other religions, I far as I can seeRace

• Credit to All Sorted for a lot of this

Officially, yellow figs to be transcendental and imaginative, beyond race

• True, but also associated with White ppl

I would agree that they are beyond race to me when I play with them, but if I had to assign a race I would instantly say white.

Back in the ‘50s, made these HO scale figs to go with the likes of Town plan

White Cops.

Painted by stay-at-home housewives with no guide, so a few out there might be nonwhite

Native Americans and Islanders in the ‘90s, yellow with unusual printing and facial features like noses

2003 Cloud CIty set had balck lando and yellow rest, 1st Lando

2003 NBA all real-life figs flesh tone, weird exaggerated facial features

• 2004 Orient Expedition had stereotypical facial features on yellow figs

• Some sketchiness with India, Chinese, Middle East exaggerated features in Indiana Jones

  • We discussed stereotypes in Orient Expedition and Indiana Jones in Adventurers Podcast

• They've fixed a lot by just using normal minifig heads in the Chinese New year’s Line

Stereotypes still exist when choosing people from another culture in CMF...

Licensed not that diverse because based of Hollywood Films, etc

2012 Friends has race, let’s see how it stacks up:

99/431 or 23% (that I could count, some robots were in there)

→ Not bad, could be better, in the US 40% are nonwhite as of 2020 census

Lone Ranger line Brings back stereotypes not that badly, fairer representation

EXCEPT FOR THIS THING!!

Here’s Johnny Depp, A White American, playing The Native American Comanche Tonto from Lone Ranger. Yeah. 2013.

Just NO.

→ Lego Ninjago did blue-skinned Islanders in 2021… Sketchy-ish

→ Peter Pan, the movie, has three figs. All white, but movie is tied to serious mistreatment of native culture

→ Some official social media recognition

[NOT Mentioned But Important: Looney Tunes CMF brings back negative stereotypes from back in the day]

Disability

→ Pirates Count, right? We’ve gotten lost of prosthetics in fantasy settings, more to look cool than needed

Not until 2016 Did we get…

Normalized Wheelchairs (5 sets), regular crutches

Rio Paralympics Mascot, 2016

(From set 40225)

Wheelchair Extreme Sports, 2021

(From set 60290)

Cochlear Implant/Hearing Aid for Adult, 2020

(From set 60271)

Seeing Eye Dog + Blind Fig, 60292 Town Center 2021

A Bright Future for Lego Disability!

LGBTQIA+ Representation

→ Official Support on social media

Existing figures, bricklists, not advertised as such and mostly Super Heroes (not-realistic)

The set that inspired this discussion: 40516 Everyone is Awesome

→ Would make great public art installation in a modular park

→ Will hopefully lead to more diverse marketing

• There’s only so much you could do, but you could have a gay couple in their camper van or a lesbian couple in the advertising for a city set

→ Also relies on licensing, Disney doesn’t have many, if any, LGBTQ+ characters

Here’s the current pride flag for reference:

SUMMARY

Race and gender were pretty bad for a while (I’m looking @ you, ‘90s) and are improving in the modern day. They still aren’t at where they should be by 20%.

Religion is an Osprey situation: Lego says no but it can slip through the cracks. Mostly, it just doesn’t come up.

Disability and LGBTQIA+ Representation is steamrolling ahead to a bright new future.