Who's yellow?

When monkeys first came out -- brown hands did not exist. Also, monkeys have skin tones. Elephants do not. The key here being that LEGO's original intention was for -all- actual skintones to be yellow.

Now, I'm setting down a ground-rule for this topic right here: If this thread degenerates into a flame-war on racism, skin colour, or any of the other nasty things that usually come up with a 'yellow is skin tone' topic, I will delete the topic immediately and issue 2-week suspensions on anyone involved in the problem. Cool? Cool. Carry on.

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MCN Moderator of Customization Tips, Techniques & Questions

Oh this one is easy!

What damien said about the monkey is right.

And for the starwars humanoid characters:

All new legofigs have the same colour as the character in the movie. So if a character has a skin tone (human or humanoid) the fig should be pink (or yellow if you prefer this)

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Well my point into this is that flesh tonned lego for people are strangers to me. Lego humans having yellow skin is sort of a tradition, we grew up with this colour! And if anyone thinks that, oohhp lego humans are yellow, that doesent make sense so why are humans yellow and elephants are grey like there supposed to be?  they and others should be yellow too! well then your just acting like a stareotype towards lego. because who really cares that much about how lego humans skin colour is off but elephants and monkeys arent. thats just the way it is. if you think other wise then let me ask you this. Okay what if you could have a fair solution where every animal and human were yellow... would you like that? NO.

By the way my lego elephant from ebay came Yay! do I hear mumakil?

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It takes more than death to kill a man.

Fair argument. I suppose it is just humans that have yellow skin in the Lego world. And monkeys, however that works out, although Damien's point more or less explained it.

But I still wonder about humanoid aliens with human skin colours from Star Wars (if it still had yellow figs), what colour they would they be? Their own, or yellow?

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Merkle

And I think the reasons all the movie based lego is now flesh tonned is well maybe the producers of harry potter and star wars ect wanted realistic lego maybe they dident want there movies lego to be yellow

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It takes more than death to kill a man.

TLG already stated why the licensed sets have flesh-tones. There was a lot of controversy over 'yellow' skintones for characters that are, in real life, black. To my recollection, it all started because someone suggested 'yellow' equates to caucasion (which it doesn't), which created problems for the Star Wars Lando figure, since the character is black. It all went downhill from there. LEGO just decided to avoid the entire situation by making licensed characters in realistic fleshtones. And that's the reason the fleshtones will ONLY be used for licensed sets.

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MCN Moderator of Customization Tips, Techniques & Questions

Good thing they dident make all sets flesh tonned. A saying says If its not broken dont fix it thats what this case is.

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It takes more than death to kill a man.

All minifigures should be yello, except Lando

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I cant put my real signature here so I had to write this

But doing that makes it seem as though yellow means caucasian, which it doesn't. I think that they sould have made Lando yellow, it wouldn't have been weird and we'd be fleshie free. Just my opinion. -Devin

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( < wakka wakka wakka wakka

Proud brother of a United States Marine

The decision made by Lego to include fleshies was a much thought of affair and was not made lightly. As Damien has earlier mentioned, Lando was a big factor in this decision.

That aside, I kinda like the fleshies, altho they should have kept it simple with just the light-flesh colour. NBA totally had me confused.

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~MCN Brick Talk Moderator~

Nick's MOC Page.

Why dident they just make white people yellow and black people black? sure it doesent make sense but who cares but instead majority of people thought lose-lose If Lando is black then white minifigs should be white! not yellow.

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It takes more than death to kill a man.

You're just not getting it lost lego. That is -exactly- the problem. If they made 'white people' yellow and black people black, that would imply that 'yellow' equates to 'caucasion' - and it DOESN'T. Yellow doesn't have any significance. It doesn't represent any race. That's the entire point, LEGO people have no 'real world' race. They're just yellow. All of them. From the 'Japanese' style Samurai and Ninja, to the 'Western' Knights, to the tribal 'Islanders' to the Mediterranean 'Pirates' -- everyone is yellow. Making black people 'black-skinned' minifigs would, in turn, mean that all LEGO people are caucasion. It would be considered racist, and rightly so.

If Lando had been black and everyone else was yellow, TLG would have been innundated with angry phone calls and e-mails. That is why they chose to represent real-world people (in this case - actors) with realistic flesh-tones. All of them, rather than just the 'black' ones. That way, yellow would remain NO race, and therefore would not be any kind of racial statement about the LEGO universe.

 

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MCN Moderator of Customization Tips, Techniques & Questions