City taking a break from rescue based sets? You've got to be joking!

[Vindicare]

This is disappointing. They’re taking a side here, and in my opinion, it’s a pretty bad one. They just labeled all 3 million cops(and that’s only if we’re talking about the States) and vilifying all of them over the actions of a few. Not only that, but they are stereotyping the crap out of them, removing the Donut Shop Opening...all because of a motorcycle & cop? Seriously. And the White House...way to make this political(I thought that honor was left to our left leaning media). 

 

More broadly, this isn’t a message I’m fond of. To me, police brutality isn’t a competition. Sadly, to many, including those who like to virtue signal, it only matters when a black person gets killed by police. I say this because recently, a white man by the name of Duncan Lemp was shot & killed by police in his home. There was no outcry or social media movement on it. Same with Daniel Shaver years before that. And Dylan Noble year’s before that. And that’s only the few I remember off the top of my head. Every death matters to me. I’d like to add, I was a bit unsure whether to add this part, as I would prefer not being banned, and I know going this route is slightly frowned upon(understandably so), but I felt it needed to be said. If it needs to go, that’s perfectly fine. 

[Robert8]

43 minutes ago, Vindicare said:

This is disappointing. They’re taking a side here, and in my opinion, it’s a pretty bad one. They just labeled all 3 million cops(and that’s only if we’re talking about the States) and vilifying all of them over the actions of a few. Not only that, but they are stereotyping the crap out of them, removing the Donut Shop Opening...all because of a motorcycle & cop? Seriously. And the White House...way to make this political(I thought that honor was left to our left leaning media). 

EXACTLY

First responders save millions of lives every year, including black people, and yet they are all being demonized by media just for the actions of a single individual. And TLG comes and joins this idiocy

Truly sickening...

Edited June 4, 2020 by Robert8

[Vindicare]

10 minutes ago, Robert8 said:

EXACTLY

First responders save millions of lives every year, including black people, and yet they are all being demonized by media just for the actions for a single individual. And TLG comes and joins this idiocy

Truly sickening...

Yep. There’s 60+ million interactions with police in this country annually. As tragic as that incident is, it doesn’t speak for the whole. But TLG seems to think it does. I feel this thread will be closed as it’s wading a bit far in the weeds...but I hope it remains, provided it’s kept civil. But, I do realize people come here to escape that. That’s part of why a lot of turn to LEGO when the news is overwhelming. But to see TLG go there, I hope it’s fair game to discuss. 

[JopieK]

1 hour ago, Vindicare said:

More broadly, this isn’t a message I’m fond of. To me, police brutality isn’t a competition. Sadly, to many, including those who like to virtue signal, it only matters when a black person gets killed by police. I say this because recently, a white man by the name of Duncan Lemp was shot & killed by police in his home. There was no outcry or social media movement on it. Same with Daniel Shaver years before that. And Dylan Noble year’s before that. And that’s only the few I remember off the top of my head. Every death matters to me. I’d like to add, I was a bit unsure whether to add this part, as I would prefer not being banned, and I know going this route is slightly frowned upon(understandably so), but I felt it needed to be said. If it needs to go, that’s perfectly fine. 

The issues are much more complex indeed than black vs. white. Even though I know that there are too many silly people that judge people by their skin color (I have a few friends that originate from Haiti, in primary school I had a friend who's dad was from Surinam and I attended a bible study group in the US when I did my internship for my bachelor there (there were only two 'whites' including me), from the stories of all those people I heard the sickening stories and anekdotes of how others look at them just for their skin color. I do step up to e.g. a high school when a young friend gets called out just for his skin color (and argue against fellow teachers that do not stand up in such a case). But racism runs much deeper I think. Maybe it would be time that teachers would take people like Victor Frankl serious. He was a Holocaust survivor and Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry and said: "I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.". I read Sartre and Camus in French High School class (took French as an elective) and I think has a good point there. I don't however think that a lot of the protesters understand that there is a much more fundamental problem than just discriminating people by the amount of melatonine in ones skin.

[Peppermint_M]

From the statement TLG made, it was simply a pause in advertising or promoting them? Not a cancellation of the whole lot and a demand to bin them.

It is maybe pertinent to know: A charity organisation that sends toys and games to children in need and extreme situations requests no Emergency Services toys. They are concerned that those toys might trigger upsetting memories for the children due to their situations. Even where the services are a positive force in the situation (natural disasters etc).

 

[The Island Chronicles]

4 hours ago, KotZ said:

I'm also annoyed by the LEGO fans who are like "So can you make black characters now?" No. LEGO was made yellow to be nobody. Specifically. Aside from licensed themes. Stop thinking classic yellow is white. It's whatever/whoever you/kids want.

I agree with this statement 100%. 

[TeriXeri]

5 hours ago, Zarkan said:

You seem to be under the impression that there are any sets containing doctors on that list. There are not. The last released set in that subtheme was the hospital from 2018, which is already discontinued. 

Technically the last Doctor set was the September 2019 Ski Resort set but you're still right, it was not on the list.

4 hours ago, KotZ said:

I'm also annoyed by the LEGO fans who are like "So can you make black characters now?" No. LEGO was made yellow to be nobody. Specifically. Aside from licensed themes. Stop thinking classic yellow is white. It's whatever/whoever you/kids want.

Agree here, LEGO minifigs were yellow for decades, and still are in all in-house themes.

Yellow was sometimes seen as a Racist color/slur toward asians but I don't think it was a big issue regarding LEGO minifigs & nowadays just look at Chinese New Year sets + Monkie Kid etc. use yellow figs.

I never saw it as a color of any race myself, I didn't see the yellow Spacemen as naked either. 

Funny enough the yellow spaceman in Benny's Space Squad was the first figure with full yellow legs in 10 years, the character before that being also a yellow spaceman in 2009.

 

Edited June 4, 2020 by TeriXeri

[Mylenium]

24 minutes ago, Peppermint_M said:

They are concerned that those toys might trigger upsetting memories for the children due to their situations.

Maybe. But to be honest it hearkens back to that old thing that a lot of people tend to underestimate how well kids can handle some things. They are more psychologically robust and aware of their circumstances and environment than even many scientists and medical doctors give them credit for. It may not be the best comparison, but due to my own chronic illness I'm occasionally in groups with parents or children suffering similar life and death situations. The kids can cope with that just fine in many cases and differentiate what's real and what's not. No denying that they still need help and support, but it's not that they don't have their own way of dealing with it. So I would think that while some kids may be traumatized and respond negatively, most of them could separate real life goings-on from their fictional play world and not suffer any damage. And of course, taking a page from psychiatry books, confrontation is better than evading a problem. So perhaps the issue is not LEGO's minifigures depicting certain scenarios, but rather how the kids and their parents may need to talk about these things...

Mylenium

[Trekkie99]

5 hours ago, Vindicare said:

And the White House...way to make this political

Not really. I think they're just removing anything and everything that could have a negative connotation with what's going on. 

[MAB]

11 hours ago, Robert8 said:

What's next? A rioting/looting people pack??

You can still get baseball bats in 71716. And smash up the arcade if you want.

 

[The Island Chronicles]

4 minutes ago, MAB said:

You can still get baseball bats in 71716. And smash up the arcade if you want.

 

Ok! That was good. 

[Karalora]

1 hour ago, Trekkie99 said:

Not really. I think they're just removing anything and everything that could have a negative connotation with what's going on. 

This is my take as well. The fact is that right now, real-life scenes involving police, urban fires, and the White House are not happy scenes. The cops are not acting like good guys, the fires are likely to be vandalism, and the less said about the White House, the better.

TLG isn't saying "All cops are bad," they're saying "Right now, cops look pretty bad, and we don't want our City tarred with the same brush."

[The Island Chronicles]

1 hour ago, Trekkie99 said:

Not really. I think they're just removing anything and everything that could have a negative connotation with what's going on. 

Even though no medical sets are on that list, I wouldn't be surprised if the scandal with the medical field and COVID-19 would be reason for Lego seeing fit to apply this rule to the hospital and ski resort too. 

[neonic]

17 hours ago, Brandon Pea said:

So...I just saw the toy book website that Lego is pulling back on rescue toys due to the protests and George Floyd situation. What do you think of this?

I think it really suck like ... (better not say it), absolute megablocks.

I can understand that they are disagree with what happend but what has all those thousends of 'good' cops to do with it? With this action it looks like they make all the cops black, maybe a wrong choice of word? The're a lot of cops who demonstrate with the people against that action of that cop.
So to pull back all those sets makes no sense at all. And what the megabluck has all those other emergency stuff to do with it? What did the firebrigade? Those people risking their lives fighting fire and rescue people. And that donut shop? Why? Can a hardworking cop, risking his live every day not go for a donut? It's really dumb to shave everything and everyone over a comb (dutch saying).

And why the White house? Only because of that retarded rules there? If you look at it that way they can also pull back the Chinese wall because the Corona virus started in China, pulling back all the sports and racing cars because some people do streetracing and so on.

[The Island Chronicles]

@neonic Well...put yourself in a Lego parents shoes. 

The acts of police brutality (not just race related either), protesting, arsonists and COVID-19 are very serious topics. Would you want your child even PRENTENDING with that kind of stuff? 

If anything, I think Lego is taking that into account with City sets as most of the time (not all the time), it's really parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. buying these sets for children. 

Edited June 4, 2020 by Brandon Pea

[danth]

9 hours ago, Vindicare said:

This is disappointing. They’re taking a side here, and in my opinion, it’s a pretty bad one. They just labeled all 3 million cops(and that’s only if we’re talking about the States) and vilifying all of them over the actions of a few. Not only that, but they are stereotyping the crap out of them, removing the Donut Shop Opening...all because of a motorcycle & cop? Seriously.

To be fair, this is exactly how the police treat black people in the USA. I'm all for fighting fire with fire.

Whenever we see these displays of police brutality, as a rule, every other cop involves either takes part in the brutality, looks the other way, or actively falsifies police reports to cover it up. This is why they say "All cops are bastards." If there were good cops, they would stop the bad cops. But police forces have a way of weeding out good cops.

Ever heard of Serpico? He was a good cop, and his fellow cops tried to have him killed. They made a movie about him.

9 hours ago, Vindicare said:

(I thought that honor was left to our left leaning media).

There is almost no left leaning media in the USA. Fox is fascist/alt-right. The other cable networks are corporatist/middle right.

9 hours ago, Vindicare said:

virtue signal

Literally every person I've ever heard use that phrase ends up being a white supremacist. This is sadly not an exaggeration. Nobody else uses this phrase. It's merely said to dismiss calls for racism to end.

Also to clear things up regarding riots/looting. Almost every riot over the weekend was started by the police, or right-wing agitators posing as antifa. The protests were 99.9% peaceful, at least until the cops started in. The cops literally rammed people with their cars, pushed over an old man with a cane, hit people with their car doors while driving by, shot at people on their front porches for no reason while saying "light them up", flashed white power symbols, and kicked a lady who was sitting down in the face, among other things. You can watch a supercut of all the police violence here:

And frankly, if a few broken windows bothers you more than police murdering people, you are part of the problem.

Police culture is toxic. People are starting to understand this and call for change. Millions of people don't look at police as heroes anymore, but thugs. This is 100% the fault of police, and police culture.

[Vindicare]

3 hours ago, Trekkie99 said:

Not really. I think they're just removing anything and everything that could have a negative connotation with what's going on. 

 

2 hours ago, Karalora said:

This is my take as well. The fact is that right now, real-life scenes involving police, urban fires, and the White House are not happy scenes. The cops are not acting like good guys, the fires are likely to be vandalism, and the less said about the White House, the better.

TLG isn't saying "All cops are bad," they're saying "Right now, cops look pretty bad, and we don't want our City tarred with the same brush."

If that were true, they would’ve had the entire City range on that list. The everyday folks in sets 60249, 60250, 60251, 60252, 60253, 60254, etc could be seen as the looters destroying cities. And what about the Creator sets with everyday folk in them? Same deal. The fact that they put an emphasis on cop sets is a very bad look, and it’s very loud. 

[The Island Chronicles]

9 minutes ago, Vindicare said:

If that were true, they would’ve had the entire City range on that list. The everyday folks in sets 60249, 60250, 60251, 60252, 60253, 60254, etc could be seen as the looters destroying cities.

Tbh, I'd like to think that those people are the civilians just minding their own business and not giving a flying brick about the crap that's going on in the world today. The street sweeper is going to clean up the streets so that the construction bulldozer can rebuild. Then people business can continue as usual. The mail plane delivers its rounds. The ice cream truck is back in service....and we can now race boats again. I'd like to look at it that way. Car enthusiasts can also go back to normal in 60255 to 60258. 

As far as looting and destroying the city is concerned, I think Vito and the Bulldog gang have that under control. 

Edited June 4, 2020 by Brandon Pea

[Vindicare]

3 minutes ago, danth said:

To be fair, this is exactly how the police treat black people in the USA. I'm all for fighting fire with fire.

Whenever we see these displays of police brutality, as a rule, every other cop involves either takes part in the brutality, looks the other way, or actively falsifies police reports to cover it up. This is why they say "All cops are bastards." If there were good cops, they would stop the bad cops. But police forces have a way of weeding out good cops.

Ever heard of Serpico? He was a good cop, and his fellow cops tried to have him killed. They made a movie about him.

There is almost no left leaning media in the USA. Fox is fascist/alt-right. The other cable networks are corporatist/middle right.

Literally every person I've ever heard use that phrase ends up being a white supremacist. This is sadly not an exaggeration. Nobody else uses this phrase. It's merely said to dismiss calls for racism to end.

Also to clear things up regarding riots/looting. Almost every riot over the weekend was started by the police, or right-wing agitators posing as antifa. The protests were 99.9% peaceful, at least until the cops started in. The cops literally rammed people with their cars, pushed over an old man with a cane, hit people with their car doors while driving by, shot at people on their front porches for no reason while saying "light them up", flashed white power symbols, and kicked a lady who was sitting down in the face, among other things. You can watch a supercut of all the police violence here:

And frankly, if a few broken windows bothers you more than police murdering people, you are part of the problem.

Police culture is toxic. People are starting to understand this and call for change. Millions of people don't look at police as heroes anymore, but thugs. This is 100% the fault of police, and police culture.

I really shouldn’t respond to this absurdity, but I’ll tread carefully. There is no “way” black people are treated in this country. To every cop/black interaction ends in death/assault. Very few actually do. And there’s a gigantic list of circumstances that lead to why some end up going that route in most cases. 

The way you see our media tells me all I need, which is why I’m treading carefully, about how you see things. But whatever, I don’t care. 

Just because you seem to see things one way, doesn’t make it true. Virtue signaling is just that, nobody can claim ownership over the phrase. That black square is a great example of virtue signaling. Posting a black square with no substance is virtue signaling. “Look how great of an ally I am” is exactly what that is when there’s nothing behind it. There was no suggestions or solutions on what people can do. Just a black square. Sure, there’s symbolism there, but it’s ultimately meaningless without action. I appreciate you assuming/attempting to paint me as a white supremacist based on a two word phrase...

4 minutes ago, Brandon Pea said:

Tbh, I'd like to think that those people are the civilians just minding their own business and not giving a flying brick about the crap that's going on in the world today. The street sweeper is going to clean up the streets so that the construction bulldozer can rebuild. Then people business can continue as usual. The mail plane delivers its rounds. The ice cream truck is back in service....and we can now race boats again. I'd like to look at it that way. Car enthusiasts can also go back to normal in 60255 to 60258. 

As far as looting and destroying the city is concerned, I think Vito and the Bulldog gang have that under control. 

Yeah, but that wasn’t the assumption with the two I quoted. They believe the negative connotation is what had the cop sets targeted. To use your reasoning, what about the cops marching & siding with the protesters? They’re trying to keep the peace & better their neighborhood(as the vast majority of cops do).  They get thrown into the same pile as the bad cops. 

[danth]

12 minutes ago, Vindicare said:

I really shouldn’t respond to this absurdity, but I’ll tread carefully. There is no “way” black people are treated in this country. To every cop/black interaction ends in death/assault. Very few actually do. And there’s a gigantic list of circumstances that lead to why some end up going that route in most cases.

They have actually done countless studies that prove systemic racism in policing and sentencing in the USA.

It's very weird to pretend that because not every black person is murdered by cops, there isn't a trend that you can study. It's just like thinking global warming is a hoax because it's cold today.

12 minutes ago, Vindicare said:

Virtue signaling is just that, nobody can claim ownership over the phrase. That black square is a great example of virtue signaling. Posting a black square with no substance is virtue signaling. “Look how great of an ally I am” is exactly what that is when there’s nothing behind it. There was no suggestions or solutions on what people can do. Just a black square. Sure, there’s symbolism there, but it’s ultimately meaningless without action.

Isn't that what you're doing right now? A bunch of words with no action?

12 minutes ago, Vindicare said:

I appreciate you assuming/attempting to paint me as a white supremacist based on a two word phrase...

It has been a 100% accurate method in my experience. Both on facebook and reddit. I see that phrase, I look at the user's comment history. In 100% of cases I find bigotry and racism.

Edited June 4, 2020 by danth

[The Island Chronicles]

Update: Look at this tweet guys. We were all freaking out over nothing. That's a relief because I was kinda hoping to see the elite police that was leaked on Instagram. 

 

Edited June 4, 2020 by Brandon Pea

[Vindicare]

29 minutes ago, danth said:

They have actually done countless studies that prove systemic racism in policing and sentencing in the USA.

It's very weird to pretend that because not every black person is murdered by cops, there isn't a trend that you can study. It's just like thinking global warming is a hoax because it's cold today.

Isn't that what you're doing right now? A bunch of words with no action?

It has been a 100% accurate method in my experience. Both on facebook and reddit. I see that phrase, I look at the user's comment history. In 100% of cases I find bigotry and racism.

It’s equally weird to think that every black person is murdered by a cop. I never said anything about our justice system. That’s two different things. 

I don’t virtue signal. If I cared enough to be in streets or make a spectacle online, then there would be action behind it. Have you heard of what these protestors plan to do going forward? Are they going to demand accountability from their local leaders? Hold cops responsible when and reports come in? Are they going to work with the police to better the relationship & lessen the divide? Or is them being in the streets enough, & the real work is left to someone else? 

Oh well, if you saw it on Facebook & reddit...then it must be true across the board. 

To touch on your previous comment that I forget to address. Your “a few broken windows” mischaracterization of the riots. Is Dave Underwood just a broken window? What about David Dorn? Or the 4 St. Louis cops shot? Or the countless others who were beat? The sports bar in Minneapolis owned by Korboi Balla that was burnt down? Everything he had was in that bar. 

[Peppermint_M]

Ok. This is going over the lines that we set for the forum. 

Now that the *issue* of the thread: aka an end to Emergency Service themes, is solved I am going to lock the thread. 

Please feel free to take your sketchy arguments to another platform.