When did LEGO stop using yellow?
It was through partnerships with movie franchises like Star Wars and Harry Potter that Minifigures of different sizes and skin tones began to be produced – in 2002, the Yoda Minifigure was the first with short legs and, from 2004 onwards, all licensed LEGO Minifigures no longer had yellow faces. There are now flesh-colored LEGO® Minifigures in certain sets to add authenticity and encourage equality. Despite the recent trend of introducing different colors, the majority of minifigures will remain yellow for nostalgia’s sake.
What rare LEGO pieces were washed up?
The octopus is one of nearly 5m Lego pieces that fell into the sea in 1997 when a storm hit a cargo ship 20 miles off Land’s End, Cornwall. While 352,000 pairs of flippers, 97,500 scuba tanks, and 92,400 swords went overboard, the octopuses are considered the most prized finds as only 4,200 were onboard. His father Vytautas said an octopus was not easy to find. We were not expecting to find it at all because it’s very rare, he told the PA Media agency. Among the other lost Lego pieces were 352,000 pairs of flippers, 97,500 scuba tanks and 92,400 swords.
Why did LEGO choose yellow skin?
When LEGO introduced its now-iconic minifigures in 1975, the company made a clear, purposeful choice: yellow. Not because it mimics real skin tones, but because it doesn’t. Yellow was meant to avoid representing any specific race or ethnicity. The palette has evolved, grown and shrunk over the decades. When Lego started manufacturing bricks, it started small, colorwise. These were very basic colors,” said Signe Weise, a corporate historian at Lego. The original brick colors, according to Weise, were red, yellow, blue, white and transparent.