Josh Sterns of Massachusetts was about to purchase some stickers for his son when he noticed the image of a hard-headed construction worker appearing to shout “HEY BABE”.
Sterns believed this message promoted street harassment and stereotyped construction workers.
He angrily blogged about his experience and the internet responded.
So much so that Senior Director of Lego Charlotte Simonsen contacted Sterns directly to apologise for the inappropriateness of their stickers.
“To communicate the LEGO experience to children we typically use humor and we are sorry that you were unhappy with the way a minifigure was portrayed here,” Simonsen wrote.
“This product was discontinued in the summer of 2010 and we have forwarded your comment to the LEGO licensing team for their future evaluation,” she added.
Image via Amazon
Sterns wasn’t happy with the response – it didn’t seem to address what he believed to be the underlying issue – so he wrote again.
This time he received a letter from the head of the LEGO Outbound Licensing Department Andrea Ryder.
She wrote: “I am truly sorry that you had a negative experience with one of our products. The product is no longer available and we would not approve such a product again.”
This made Stern happy, who never saw the humour in the “HEY BABE” sticker.
He noted that even though this particular sticker had been discontinued, the gender gap in LEGO still existed and it was hard to find specifically female LEGOs.
Others thought differently. One reviewer on Amazon wrote: “A little disappointed that they stopped at ‘Hey Babe’. Totally unrealistic, what happened to ‘Nice T*Ts!’ ‘How’s about you come help be calibrate my jackhammer’, ‘You want to see my nail gun?!’.
Another user wrote: “Seriously, get over it. There’s always someone ‘offended’ at something. There’s nothing wrong with the sticker. Today’s America is a weak, feminized version of what it once was.”
Either way, LEGO have apologised which either makes them very nice people or big licky licky brown noses, you decide.
