I reckon.

Here's what Badger [Official Spokesbadger] said:

"Manufactured controversy and faux outrage have been a staple of The Sun (the British equivalent of The New York Post in terms of their sensationalism:actual news ratio) for years. Note that they manage to incorrectly name every BrickArms figure they discuss, conflate BrickArms with the LEGO Group, and completely miss the fact all of the elements used to construct the Bandit figure, who I might add is clearly not meant to represent any real-life individual or group, are official TLG products.

Frankly, I believe The Sun has completely missed the point that all BrickArms products are meant to compliment LEGO product. LEGO itself produces weapon accessories, and like those accessories, BrickArms products are meant to help younger builders build in a way that helps them to process their reactions to the world around them and develop effective conflict-solving strategies. Also, the primary audience for BrickArms are older builders, who can differentiate between what they build and appropriate real-world actions and behaviors.

As always, the only worthwhile thing published by the Sun is on Page 3.

badger"

What's on page 3?

And good point about the video games/ movies/ etc. Besides the fact that this publication, may or may not be a stellar reporting source, maybe its because the Osama/ terrorist minifigs are based on a toy and not "rated" like movies/ VG's/ etc, that some folks feel the need to try to turn nothing into something.

What's on page 3?

This

That's just pathetic.

I totally agree with what Greivous said about war-related video games. Those actually show people dying, while this little minifig is a freaking plastic toy!

Like Badger said, they also didn't get any of the names right, plus they didn't include a statement from Brickarms.

Overall, a very shoddy article...

Well, apparently, The Sun isn't the only one with this article.

http://www.foxnews.com:80/story/0,2933,461647,00.html

I really feel bad for BrickArms now that it's on a trusted news site. We all pretty much know they meant no harm through this, but there are going to be those who see this and automatically think to not buy from them anymore

Well most newspeople are thrillseeking children IMO.

If Will ever makes a Bush minifig, now that would be bad taste..

Well, apparently, The Sun isn't the only one with this article.

http://www.foxnews.com:80/story/0,2933,461647,00.html

I really feel bad for BrickArms now that it's on a trusted news site. We all pretty much know they meant no harm through this, but there are going to be those who see this and automatically think to not buy from them anymore

Great. Atleast Fox posted Will's statement unlike The Sun.

I dont think anyone who has ordered BrickArms wont order them again because of this, Anyone who has ordered them will know...

Maybe this is a good way to get more customers? If everyone thinks its BS then they wont listen the news peoples.. But..Thats unlikely.

Im going to check my TV if its on.

If Will ever makes a Bush minifig, now that would be bad taste..

Very.

LOL is all I can really say

.

.

.

Na I'll say more

I actually have alot to say about this but I wont say much just incase we have any musilum fans here..

First, just like all of you I think that this article has poorer taste than the Lego.

Two, I actually think that this is good publicity for B.A. being that loyal fans like us will see this and not care and will keep buying them and some of the people that haven't seen brickarms before will think that it's pretty cool and will probs buy some Then you have a couple of people that will see this, gossip about it for a couple of days and then will never talk about it again so dont worry

And Badger is gonna make them anyway no matter what they say so the Sun can stick a Lego rocket luancher up their asss

Also, if the Sun is dumb enough to taste the lego to see if it has bad taste, then like, what the hell

This would never hurt BA's buisness. Everyone who already buys them (us T/AFOLs who put our support behind Will 110%) will keep buying them, and this will only spark more curiosity in the product and probably cause an increase in sales.

I still can't wrap my brain around this.

Silly season has begun!

Seriously, nothing to see here, move right along... It will all be forgotten in a few days.

It wouldn't surprise me also if the Sun is having a bit of tit-for-tat nastiness after the Daily Mail's successful promotion with the free little sets.

I have to say, in general the UK press do give a lot of attention to Lego compared to other countries. In the last few months there were articles about the Taj Mahal (biggest set ever!), pics of mocked-up celebrity minifigs, the promo sets... and if something's getting attention there will always be a little rough with the smooth.

I sense free advertisement. I also find the article redundant, in that the picture showed no form of glorifying terrorism, it simply shows a very real aspect of the world, and it cannot be ignored. Most people who buy these items are not children, either, like they seem to expect.

Well in my opinion this is a totally brain-less article .

First of all, the minifig looks extremely generic and it actually doesn´t look like a resamblance of any real character . Next, why they are saying Lego promote terrorism , I think they are missing many other things like videogames or movies like Grevious said, the TLC doesn´t release battle themed sets for the same reasons even if they could be UCS oriented for an adult audience. Megablocks release more war themed models and they don´t get attention of anyone. I think this is just a way to dirt a good toy´s brand name to make periodism and another way to dirt Brickarms .

Its mostly aimed at adults! But they do have a point... Many kids go there to look at the nice guns, it is glorifying terrorism in a way. However, it is not meant to glorify it, it is just to give Afols special guns for Mocs and such...

I don't believe I'm responding to this again...but this bothers me for some reason.

pr0visorak, how does Brickarms promote terrorism? Please, I would love to hear your explanation on this one? I'm not gonna get angry about this, I just can't believe you typed that!

If I use your logic, when a child looks at a Policeman and sees his pistol, is that officer promoting terrorism or violence?

What about when a child sees the guy down the road lighting his pile of leaves on fire to burn them (a common thing found in the Midwest and New England)? Does that mean a child passing by will have a future in arson?

2 words, Parental Involvement!

Nowadays, someone always has a burr in their megablocks, and unfortunately, if it might stir up some trouble, the media will always go after it. And just because FOX news had an article, don't sweat it poeple. Will just got some of the best advertising possible...word of mouth times a few thousand.

Nice responses Badger and Will!!!!

Wow, that's ridiculous. The Sun article really took that minifig out of context, and slapped on a pointless one-sided argument.

I may be wrong here, but when a terrorist minifig like that is labled on it's website as a "Bad Guy", doesn't that give the impression that terrorism is bad, not good?

And when the article talks about the small little minifigure being sold on a website only shop for 14 whole dollars, how can the article then deduce that the product is aimed at kids?

Sad to see poor reporting, again, from a majority of the news sources we are bombarded with daily.

Will, if you happen to read this you have my full and complete support. If in fact anything bad comes of this, meaning you suddenly are contacting lawyers to fight off the crazies, you also have financial support. All be it not much but I dang well will send what I can if it comes to that.

I was dissapointed to see LEGO UK throw BrickArms under the bus so to speak in the Sun article. Saying this

LEGO UK today issued a statement saying it is not associated with the toys being sold by BrickArms which have been customised without its knowledge or permission.

no knowledge? That is either a outright lie by LEGO UK, ignorance, or a false statement by the Sun. To not be aware of BrickArms and be a part of LEGO means your not paying attention to your customers.

Overall I am reminded of many local stories that went National and where bad publicity. All it ever did was help the business overall. People become curious, people who didn't know will suddenly want what is sold. My guess is BrickArms will see a swift increase in business. Also, the easiest way to show the media outlets that this is not a bad product is to buy more ourselves. Sales going up instead of down for Brickarms will give the message that we the public aren't concerned with their terrible reporting and approve of the product.

While my statement taken from the BrickArms Forums that was posted earlier in this thread are really all my feelings on the subject (note to younger members: feel free to blame me when your mother catches you browsing Page 3), I just wanted to give a big thanks to the many, many signs of support Will's gotten in this thread and emails sent directly to him. BrickArms products are clearly mean to enhance and compliment building and play, and Will does not endorse or promote any violent ideology through his fine minifig accessories.

And yes, sales were up yesterday. Really up. Hugely up. So up, Will needed to disable the shopping cart function to catch up on the huge volume of orders he received yesterday, the vast majority of which came from people new to BrickArms. This negative piece of yellow journalism might not be the sort of attention Will would have preferred bring people to BrickArms, but when they arrived, they liked what they saw and responded with orders!

badger

no knowledge? That is either a outright lie by LEGO UK, ignorance, or a false statement by the Sun. To not be aware of BrickArms and be a part of LEGO means your not paying attention to your customers.

Surely it just means you don’t know one section of your customers, I thought that Lego UK was only for distribution of sets in the UK and running the three Lego stores, please correct me if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t surprise me the head office wouldn’t know about BrickArms after all they’re a supplier with a small retail business not the creative side.

I’m also proud to say the ‘HMS Daily Mail’ has now steamed into battle with the story CLICK, I’m planning to phone a friend at the BBC and ask if they’re going to run it and add to the national Lego crisis in the UK.

Surely it just means you don’t know one section of your customers, I thought that Lego UK was only for distribution of sets in the UK and running the three Lego stores, please correct me if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t surprise me the head office wouldn’t know about BrickArms after all they’re a supplier with a small retail business not the creative side.

I’m also proud to say the ‘HMS Daily Mail’ has now steamed into battle with the story CLICK, I’m planning to phone a friend at the BBC and ask if they’re going to run it and add to the national Lego crisis in the UK.

I sure hope it means not knowing segments of your customers. That is why I wanted to point it out. The quote bothered me because for someone first reading about BrickArms and seeing that "LEGO UK" had no knowledge gives a impression to the uninformed that BrickArms is some kind of rogue company doing bad things.

My assumption is LEGO is fully aware of BrickArms on some level and are fine with it. They just need to play the media game and wash their hands of it so they receive no bad press.

Thank you for pointing out and expanding on my thoughts though, you wrote it in a much better way then I first did and made me clarify what I was thinking.

It's nice to see that in the Dailymail article the comments are in Brickarms favour. And the sales going up uncontrollably is hilarious!

Just out of interest, even though the articles claim the minifigs to have "sparked controversy", what action has actually been taken against BrickArms, if any?

I don't think anyone has done anything, mainly as Will done nothing wrong. Even though he’s accused of ‘glorifying terrorism’ there no way what he does gets anywhere near the actually offence under the Terrorism Act.

It’s just a normal moral panic because the Forest of Dean Lapland has been close and they need a new outage for a few days.

And yes, sales were up yesterday. Really up. Hugely up. So up, Will needed to disable the shopping cart function to catch up on the huge volume of orders he received yesterday, the vast majority of which came from people new to BrickArms. This negative piece of yellow journalism might not be the sort of attention Will would have preferred bring people to BrickArms, but when they arrived, they liked what they saw and responded with orders!

badger

Good to hear, Badger!

And I was gonna pick up a Mr. White too. Shoot; I'll keep my eyes peeled for when he restocks!

And yes, sales were up yesterday. Really up. Hugely up. So up, Will needed to disable the shopping cart function to catch up on the huge volume of orders he received yesterday, the vast majority of which came from people new to BrickArms. This negative piece of yellow journalism might not be the sort of attention Will would have preferred bring people to BrickArms, but when they arrived, they liked what they saw and responded with orders!

badger

That's awesome. I wonder if the Sun ever considered that printing that article would give Brickarms massive publicity...

I fail to see how this "promotes" terrorism... it's not glorifying anything. And it's also not generally being sold to children.

I think it's funny when parents freak out about violent toys and videogames and at the same time ignore violent movies, TV shows, and constant messages of how war is good from the modern media. IF YOUR KID SHOOTS UP HIS SCHOOL, IT'S BECAUSE OF YOUR PARENTING, NOT THE VIDEOGAMES HE PLAYED.

I also think it's ridiculous that parents will drop their kid off at a bloody war film, glorifying bloody deaths and violence, but they won't take their kids to a movie with sex in it, glorifying passion and love.

Shows how messed up our society is.

I fail to see how this "promotes" terrorism... it's not glorifying anything. And it's also not generally being sold to children.

I think it's funny when parents freak out about violent toys and videogames and at the same time ignore violent movies, TV shows, and constant messages of how war is good from the modern media. IF YOUR KID SHOOTS UP HIS SCHOOL, IT'S BECAUSE OF YOUR PARENTING, NOT THE VIDEOGAMES HE PLAYED.

I also think it's ridiculous that parents will drop their kid off at a bloody war film, glorifying bloody deaths and violence, but they won't take their kids to a movie with sex in it, glorifying passion and love.

Shows how messed up our society is.

You deserve a pat on the back for this.

I fail to see how this "promotes" terrorism... it's not glorifying anything. And it's also not generally being sold to children.

I think it's funny when parents freak out about violent toys and videogames and at the same time ignore violent movies, TV shows, and constant messages of how war is good from the modern media. IF YOUR KID SHOOTS UP HIS SCHOOL, IT'S BECAUSE OF YOUR PARENTING, NOT THE VIDEOGAMES HE PLAYED.

I also think it's ridiculous that parents will drop their kid off at a bloody war film, glorifying bloody deaths and violence, but they won't take their kids to a movie with sex in it, glorifying passion and love.

Shows how messed up our society is.

Amen.