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Lego Ends Shell Partnership Under Greenpeace Pressure
jones_supa writes Since 1960s, we have been seeing the oil company Shell logo being featured in some Lego sets, and Legos being distributed at petrol stations in 26 countries. This marketing partnership is coming to an end, after coming under sustained pressure from Greenpeace. The environmental campaign, protesting about the oil giant's plans to drill in the Arctic, came with a YouTube video that depicted pristine Arctic, built from 120 kg of Lego, being covered in oil. CEO of Lego, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, wants to leave the dispute between Greenpeace and Shell, and the toy company is getting out of the way.
Because Legos are made out of pixie dust, not oil.
How can they be "getting out of the way"? There are only two choices, a) stick with Shell and snub Greenpeace, or b) dump Shell and please Greenpeace. There is no middle ground where they can please both.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
This just in: LEGO are made from refined petroleum products. OMFG NO. The horror.
...to religious bullying.
Tesla Supercharger stations from now on?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
That was what they had on special Lego blocks, when I was a boy...
I think yanks called 'er Exxon, by then.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
LEGO isn't just "getting out the way" they are specifically cutting ties with Shell because of political pressure. In this case I agree with their decision, with Intel (and their dropping of Gamastura) I disagreed. But regardless of what I think, these companies need to own up to the implications of their decisions.
Once you are already involved there is simply no choice available to you that does not take a side. Thus the only option is to take the side that is in line with your previous PR on the subject.
I am not a scientist, but isn't it rather hard to get out of the way of greenpeace's problem with oil when your product is made from petroleum?
Please always refer to our products as “LEGO bricks or toys” and not “LEGOS.” By doing so, you will be helping to protect and preserve a brand of which we are very proud, and that stands for quality the world over”
Righton Lego,,
congrats on stepping up and not stepping aside for profit..
I came here to say the same thing. It's surprising how angry it makes me to hear idiots fart all over this simple grammatical concept. I want to just let it go... but I can't.
I'm pretty sure nobody at LEGO or the producers of the movie signed off on any of that!
AC comments get piped to
As a former owner of Royal Dutch Shell shares, I'm not that surprised.
The sooner you talk about the real threats to climate change, and to the Arctic in particular, which are, in order, China use of coal, China use of oil, and Canada (Alberta) use of tar sands, the better. All of the growth since 2000 has been those. India and the US, the 2nd and 3rd contributors (2014 UN data), have not grown their total use of any of those (coal, oil, tar sands).
Focus on the grasping giant first. The others are manageable.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
they are as bad as PETA. Lego are children's toys, leave your goddamn petty politics out of them.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
greenpeace isn't all good either they're often misguided and destructive.
having shell logos on lego gas stations hardly seems that evil, if you are building a lego town you need a lego gas station, might as well be someones gas station
Yes, pulling a marketing relationship with a group clearly is the best way to stay out of an argument. I mean, no one read into Intel dropping ads from Gamasutra as anything other than Intel not wanting to be involved with Gamergate! Intel certainly didn't have to then issue a press release stating that they're "not misogynists" afterwards! (Not that I understand what that has to do with Gamergate at all, but I guess if you disagree with an article written by a woman, you're defined to be a misogynist.)
Anyway, I suspect that this effort by LEGO not to get involved in Greenpeace's campaign against oil companies to go exactly as well for them as Intel's attempt to stay out of Gamergate went for them.
Greenpeace has strayed so far from their roots. They are nothing but a bunch of greedy charlatans now.
Pussies.
Perhaps you're so mad and can't let it go because you have too many legos shoved up your ass. Just a possibility....
Using LEGO as a mass noun conflicts with ordinary English usage, and the company itself doesn't want you to use it that way, so what reasons could you possibly have?
If you're not worried about trademark dilution, say you play with legos, like the rest of us do.
Only when the farmer finishes collecting all the straws in his field.
Just means Octan has an energy monopoly for all those LEGO cars, trucks and planes now
Provide print at home sticker collections including every major oil company's logo.
Or y'know one of you guys could. Not sure if there are any standardized Avery (or whoever) printable sticker sheets, but if so, make some template pages that match up to them with all the logos on them for kids to sticker on their LEGO bricks. It'd be a hilarious way to stick it to Greenpeace, especially if lego keeps selling those same kits minus the logo :)
Save the planet, kill yourself
http://www.churchofeuthanasia.org/catalog/stpky.html
For me, Greenpeace lost all credibility in the 1980's when one by one the founding scientist left in disgust, the last one left in the early 90's when Greenpeace were using a mountain of pseudo-science to attack the use of chlorine in drinking water (arguably the most effective public health measure of the 20th century). Basically the leadership was taken over by political types and they lost their scientific roots. However I am grateful for the fact they put an end to nuking pacific islands in my neighbourhood, and wish them the best of luck in their efforts to kill the coal industry before it kills us.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I expect huge grants to greenpeace from russia.
It's unclear who gets to drill the arctic oil. Americans will half operation if greenpeace chains themselves to the drilling equipment. Russia will drop the fuckers to the sea or throw them to jail if they do the same.
say you play with legos, like the rest of us do
Must be an American thing, here in Oz your average John-o and Steve-o play with their leg-o, great for keeping them occupied while dad nicks down to the bottle-o.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
LEGO Brick collectors are now hoarding all Shell branded bricks. Prices for said bricks are now sky rocketing as collectibles.
With French commandos in civilian clothes
True. But in addition LEGO should not put corporate logos (other than their own) on childrens toys.
Lego is headquartered in Billund, Denmark, and the oil company is Royal Dutch Shell. Different companies coming from different countries. The only benefit to Lego is the availability of Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) from Shell to make plastic bricks (and I don't know if Lego gets that much of a deal on product).
Ugh I hate green peace so much.
They are a bunch of basically evil people who want to impose their own opinions on everyone. I detest them.
What gets me is their opposition to GMO crops. I actually work in the field of crop improvement, and the stuff Greenpeace says and does put them right up there with anti-vaxxers in my opinion. They will protest biofortified or insect resistant crops in developing countries (just look at the Bt brinjal on Golden Rice controversies, both non-corporate by the way), then pat themselves in the back when the research gets blocked/destroyed, meanwhile farmers go back to spraying shitloads of pesticides and clearing more land to make up for the lost yields and children suffer malnutrition. They're just a bunch of scientifically illiterate book burning thugs using environmentalism to cover their naturalistic superstitions.
Don't forget Brent Spar: when they occupied the platform and took some measurements, it turned out Shell was actually right, so they fudged the numbers rather than admit their mistake. Greenpeace is not about the environment any more, even though many of its individual members and employees may still be. This often happens to such organisations: at some point it's no longer about the founders' goals, but about membership, money, and influence. Greenpeace is no exception: today they are a marketing firm with themselves as sole customer.
I am sure they will offer up some excuse about Shell greenwashing its image, or brainwashing our kids about the blessings of fossil fuels, but the stark truth is that this does nothing for the environment. This announcement comes in time for GP to further their real goals: they have been out of the news for a bit and they needed a win and some publicity. Well played.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Simply ending a decades-long relationship with a planet-killing KKKorporation is not enough.
Really? Shell is a planet-killing KKKorporation? Last I remember they were just a company providing people the products they demand. Like me who bought their stuff every week for the past 10 years. There's lots of things killing the planet, but it sure as heck isn't corporations. /Takes another sip of coffee made from beans shipped around the world in large boats.
So make it a Tesla supercharger station? You can even force kids to nag their parents to buy them a set of new electric Lego cars.
Lego got pissed off at the UK treasury who had used Lego minifigures as part of the UK campaign against Scotland's independence from the UK, see Scottish independence: Lego dropped from Treasury Buzzfeed
Lego, at the time, said they were politically neutral and would not allow their brand to be associated with any political stance.
Why drag Lego into it? Why the hell are you being such a bag of d-cks?
Note that Greenpeace did apologise for their mistake over the content of Brent Spar. The measurement was made incorrectly and they owned up to it. However, the objection was never solely due to the amount of oil remaining in the tanks.
It's come to something when people have to try to re-write history to make them look bad.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
A total conversion to biodiesel would require every square foot of land area on the planet given over for oilseed production.
A total conversion to biodiesel would require only a small percentage of our available desert land given over for algae production. We can use seawater pumped inland with thermal solar. The land in which we are interested is low-lying and predominantly unused. The process produces not only biofuel feedstock with high oil content, but also fertilizer and salt. It requires only minimal initial outlay and utilizes technolgies proven by the USDoE (i.e. "with our tax dollars) in the 1980s.
In other words, everything you said which was not a lie was irrelevant.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
For some reason, that is the term used for Lego bricks on Slashdot. I've never heard or read it anywhere else.
Yes, but at that stage enormous amounts of money had already been wasted. They would have owned up to it if they had repaid damages.
...eco-terrorist whiners...
Speakers, not corporate lawyers, determine language use, even if corporations wish it were otherwise.
Lego are children's toys, leave your goddamn advertisements and product placements out of them.
Am I the only one hung up on the Lego CEO's name? Seriously, wtf is this madness? "Jørgen Vig Knudstorp"?
Bitching bout Greenpeace is my hobby, you insensitive clod!
Damned you greenpeace... this is why no-one likes you
That's Danish. In English, it's legos
I try to be a normal guy, but these special interest groups that keep terrorising companies needs to stop. Perhaps it is time to start the same to those that give any money to Greenpeace. I wonder how they would like it if say their lifeblood (cash) was suddenly under constant attack, and they had to focus on defending that as opposed to doing the work they want to do. They say they have 2.9 million people who give them money. Perhaps it is time to show the top donors... well how about all their donor and then companies can start to decide if they want to employee people like that.
Crazy world.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
Sure, just like there are not 2 Fords in the parking lot, but 2 Ford automobiles, and not 3 Pepsis on the table, but 3 Pepsi drinks, and not 4 Dells in the marketing department, but 4 Dell computers.
Speakers, not corporate lawyers, determine language use, even if corporations wish it were otherwise.
True, but they have a deeper worry here. They don't want their trademark to become a generic (and thus subject to being lost) so they have to make sure it's used properly at all times. While they can't change the way people talk they can have some influence over how folks write.
Plenty of trademarks have become genericized, Kleenex is a great example. Here's a good list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Making that list is a mixed blessing. It means that you've owned a market to the point that people equate any product in the market to your own. On the other hand, you can lose control of such a trademark.
Companies like LEGO don't want that to happen.
Do you have ESP?
They owned up to it AFTER the campaign was already over and AFTER the Brent Spar was salvaged. It cost them nothing to say "oops" at that time, and they only did it because they were getting smeared in the scientific press for playing fast and loose with the facts. Had it not come out that they lied, they'd have never admitted the mistakes.
Seriously slashdot, now we're arguing semantics over LEGOs? Jesus Christ, this is just sad.
Lots of people oppose GMO crops, like for instance most of Europe. There is no need for them, the wisdom of using them is in serious question, and the ethics of making developing countries reliant on commercial GM seeds are extremely problematic. Golden rice is a fucking joke. You can give people vitamin A at almost zero cost already, and you don't risk overdosing entire populations with it by inserting it into their staple fucking food. The whole thing is just a GM industry troll, like when oil companies pretend to care for the environment.
Perhaps it is time to show the top donors... well how about all their donor
People give money to Greenpeace because they know "all about them".
and then companies can start to decide if they want to employee people like that.
Not too big on freedom of speech, eh?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sure, I know why companies want to control the use of language. But in the end, speakers, not corporate lawyers, determine language use. And most speakers don't really feel a strong obligation to protect the trademark of some multimillion dollar company. There aren't usually outraged comments when someone says kleenex or xerox or google or any of zillions of other trademarks "inappropriately", so why the outrage about using "lego" to refer to the brick instead of the company that makes the brick? It seems oddly inconsistent.
As it happens, I just rewatched "Gandhi" this morning. Quite possibly the greatest movie of all time. Anyway, I think he's earned a correct spelling.
That video is a nice, well-produced piece of propaganda. It's a shame that Lego management is willing to help limit what concepts kids should be allowed to think about. Just thinking of the kids, of course, with no alterior motive.
Regardless, a workaround would be to print little company labels that can be affixed to your kids' toys. Not only Shell logos, but include some Gazprom or Sinopec logos, as well. Give your kids a variety and let them choose what occupations and nationalities should be represented.
Greenpeace does not oppose GMO crops. Greenpeace has concerns about the co-existence of GM and non-GM crops and calls for more precautionary research and monitoring of GMO's before widespread adoption. It might be helpful to search out their position papers on these things. A quick google gave me this, for example: http://www.greenpeace.org/eu-u...
Outfits like Greenpeace and PETA don't want to save the Earth, nor do they love animals. They want to destroy humanity, and they hate people.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
This is a great idea, it makes the whole engine room smell *DELICIOUS*.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
This campaign seems to me to pointless and idiotic. I saw the propaganda video that Greenpeace produced, with is heavy handed at best, and I am at a total loss over what they hoped to achieve. Ok, so they bullied a toy company into dropping a partnership with an oil company, but to what end? Now Lego models will never have oil company logos in the sticker sheets?
Greenpeace, you have truly won a landmark victory here....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
o.O Americans are the ones directing the fake wrath of groanpeace. Why would they chain themselves to the murrican drilling equipment when they are funded by the same murricans?
On the other hand groanpeace always seems to find other companies at fault for environmental damage. They do get oh-so-shocked when they get treated like the criminals they are though. Its awfully cute.
I have to say I was seriously hoping that their silly little expedition into russian territory would end up with their ship getting sunk. Then again russians aren't that dumb, they just confiscated it instead. (Why waste something when you can just take it away?)
And has a nice bowl of Ramens for dinner.
Frankly, I think GreenPeace is BROKEN...
Can anyone tell me how much LESS CO2 will be emitted into our atmosphere, ie, due to GP's pressuring Lego to stop with these marketing tasks?!?
So, what should GreenPeace be doing INSTEAD, in our opinion...?
Well, here are some ideas, off the top of my head:
1. call for enegy-intensive Fusion R&D to STOP, ie, UNTIL all of its energy needs are met with zero-emission "Nuclear 2.0" energy (ie, from Molten Salt Reactor (MSRs), preferably Energy from Thorium from Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs)
2. Openly DEBATE whether or not an Anti-Nuclear policy (by environmental groups) still makes any sense, ie, in light of proven FEATURE of "Nuclear 2.0" ...ie, the new / old Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) technologies, which seem to already be in the pipeline.
(See YouTube video "Nuclear in Alberta..." on Dr David Le Blanc's company's expectation that smaller, transportable MSRs will
be both Approved (for use in Canada) & Operational (at least providing process heat... WITHIN 6 - 8 YEARS).
Old nukes need replacements, we know MSRs are the safer alternative nuke designs & a growing number of knowledgeable people are already supporting work to help bring "Nuclear 2.0" into existence & practical use.
Oil-rich Norway has created a Thorium Research Lab.
China & India have committed to constructing prototype "Nuclear 2.0" reactors.
Taiwan seems to be aiming for a [Thorium-based] heat engine.
PS If "Nuclear 2.0" ISN'T (for you) the way to go forward, what is & why? Thanks.
Greenpeace does not oppose GMO crops
They destroy research and lie about lifesaving GMOs. What do you call the destruction of scientific research? There's a reason I referred to the as book burning thugs. These people actually think destroying basic research is a good thing.
Greenpeace has concerns about the co-existence of GM and non-GM crops
No they don't. Thousands of varieties of crops co-exist just fine with the proper seed saving techniques. A transgene does not change that. To give an example in some GMO crops, yellow flesh is dominant over red flesh in papaya, and yellow kernels are dominant over white in corn, yet there is still white corn and red papaya. Why is it then that these varieties can co-exist? Proper seed saving techniques. The transgenes operate on the exact same principles, it's just that no one makes a fuss until genetic engineering is involved and Greenpeace relies on you not understanding the basics principles and understanding the background context of seed saving to spread that excuse. They are lying to you.
calls for more precautionary research and monitoring of GMO's before widespread adoption.
The precautionary principle is idiocy. It says that unless you can prove something will not happen, you do nothing. Imagine if I tried to ban vaccines or wifi on the same principles, demanding that someone prove they will not, through a currently unknown mechanism, cause autism in X+1 years, demanding that you prove a negative. How foolish would it be to say that? Why does that suddenly make sense once GMOs are involved? This precautionary principle excuse is the agricultural equivalent of Russell's teapot. I suggest you read Carl Sagan's Dragon in my Garage analogy to understand why the precautionary principle is completely irrational. GMOs are extensively studied. A rational risk assessment would say there is nothing wrong with using them.
It might be helpful to search out their position papers on these things
Okay. Here they say, quote: "We continue to work with governments to get rid of genetic engineering once and for all." Here they say: "Greenpeace has been an advocate for keeping Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s) out of our food supply and encouraging consumers to only buy foods that are GMO-free." They use lots of fearmongering imagery. That's not anti-GMO? The hell it isn't. Greenpeace is one of the biggest anti-GMO organizations out there, they've got no science to back them, and their work has helped hold my field back by at least a decade and a half, as well as contributed to hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation, and climate change.
Wow, I don't often explicitly admit to being sarcastic, but this particular post had attracted so much sincere hate from both responders and moderators, that I had to come clean... I would've thought, the term "KKKorporation" was a give-away, but no...
But then, of course, I have no proof, all of the hatred observed is really sincere either. Oh, well...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
That'll cost them big bucks too, as suggested by... http://www.newser.com/story/19...