Did Lego Pull Products Featuring Police and Rescue Workers?

No.

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On Thursday, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale accused the Lego Group of “erasing cops” by pulling products that feature police, along with the White House set.

Similar claims were made by other Twitter users, including DeAnna Lorraine, a Republican who ran in the top-two primary election for the seat currently held by Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

https://twitter.com/DeAnna4Congress/status/1268330773561532418
https://twitter.com/theepictheymer/status/1268299640828506114

The basis for these claims is an article—linked to in several of the tweets—from The Toy Book, a toy industry trade magazine, about an email the Lego Group sent to affiliate marketers on Tuesday. The email asked for products featuring police and other emergency response services “to be removed from sites and any marketing ASAP.” As Parscale mentioned in his tweet, Lego’s White House play set was also included in the list of products.

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  • Avatar photo
    Jeremiah

    I can totally see a screenshot of a article on police brutality with a LEGO City ad beside it going viral. As a business it is totally understandable to make your best attempt at avoiding it.

    LEGO will not remove the City sets from the lineup, for those who don't know City is the best selling LEGO series.

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    Nick H

    So... they didn't pull the products featuring police and first responders. They just asked all their affiliates to pull the marketing for those products ASAP and remove any references to their existence.

    Yeah, I'm not sure that's much better. Marketing matters, and they way they pulled it speaks volumes.

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      Philbnichols

      'pull the marketing' from you, 'paused' from LEGO. Significant difference. Still a question to be answered, but mischaracterization is what this site (The Dispatch), and especially this article series, intentionally pushes back against.

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  • Mason Hall

    Thanks for an informative article! I had been wondering about this.

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    Kevin Johnson

    This is hilarious and shows the huge problem with “fact checking.” Which “facts” are checked determines the message sent about who is being honest about which point. This was a terrible item to choose, in my opinion, because what you disproved does not, in my view, change the basic point. The company acted under the assumption that first responders are (or are seen to be at this moment especially) as a group suspect (at minimum) or oppressors (as the protest narrative claims.) The company acted very politically since it felt showing first responder figures would be “upsetting” or offensive at this moment. They are, sadly, correct. The current atmosphere, calling for defunding police, etc., takes real concerns about racist stereotypes and uses them to condemn first responders. Shame on the company and, sorry to say to my heroes at The Dispatch, shame on you for picking this one.

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  • Breck Dumas

    This fact check is correct in calling out the false claims that LEGO stopped selling police-themed toys.

    It's worth noting that LEGO was full of baloney themselves in claiming they stopped the promotion of all products for "#BlackOutTuesday" when, in fact, their email to affiliates clearly showed they only pulled the plug on marketing products associated with law enforcement and firefighting, plus "The White House" set.

    One of their PR people emailed me to make sure I knew the items were still for sale, but made no mention of why they were no longer promoted. I thought that was something else, frankly.

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    Not Jonah Goldberg

    I appreciate where the LEGO company is coming from. I don’t think the advertising change is meant to send a message but, instead, just a company purposely avoiding being political. I feel like conservatives should understand a company trying to stay in their lane and just make toys.

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    Jake

    This is a bit silly on both sides.

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    1. Mary Stine

      Not only silly, but uninformed. My friends in editing and marketing have been telling me for decades about all the complaints, threats and criticism they get constantly for even the slightest issues. The Dispatch deserves to have a great cartoonist, but that person would need the hide of a rhinoceros and a bullet proof chamber to work in.

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    Colin L.

    The fact check doesn't make me feel much better about the message they were sending.

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    CynthiaW

    I agree with other commentators. The action of the Lego corporation is not quite what the tweets were saying, but it is still conveying the idea that the whole concept of police is "insensitive."

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