YSK that despite being outside of US jurisdiction, Lego has dropped diversity and inclusion terminology from its annual report

God I love Austin Powers.

https://youtu.be/zcUs5X9glCc

Took me a minute

As a Dane who's also a big fan of Thorfinn, I am vexed. VEXED, I tell you!

(Also, amused that the viking and the hippie are dating, given my username 😁)

😂

The Dutch. The Danes have enough having to speak Danish, no need to pile on them!

My response to this is always...Putin really needs to die

In the context of power and money, absolutely. Although the fascism is being generated beyond the US too: fossil fuel companies are considered to be the main proponents of disinformation to destroy social cohesion against minorities, for example.

While I’m 100% in favor of diversity and inclusion, I think there was a bit of a fever over it in corporate land over the last several years. I also don’t think it actually amounted to a whole lot. I’m not one of those people who got sick of hearing about it, or complained about it, but I’m also not sorry to see most of it go. It doesn’t mean discrimination is back on the menu. It’s hard to describe how much performative crap was happening. Just doing cartwheels to show how inclusive we are. We literally had sensitivity training that told us to stop using the phrase “long time no see,” because some might construe it as a mocking imitation of a Native American stereotype speech. I mean seriously, you can’t tell me it’s either THAT or FASCISM with nothing between.

The electrical college is truly a shocking way to run a country in the 21st century.

So there is no good or bad companies only whats in their interest at the moment.

That's absolutely not true. Just because a company doesn't "have morals" doesn't mean a company isn't immoral. No different than a psychopath not having morals, but us as society being able to judge them for that. You, as a consumer, have a choice on companies you interact with (somewhat, of course). Companies generally seek profit, so yes, capitalism is at fault it the core. But there are companies like:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LifeStraw

vs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_%28drinkware_company%29

Which one is more ethical?

These companies could have broken ties:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_collaboration_with_Nazi_Germany

That being said there's currently a pretty strong rise globally in support for nationalism / fascism / racism / anti-science / religious domination of government and media / genocide. So even companies that seem more local can immediately change their culture to adopt to a shift in power, belief, etc.

It could be currying favor with Trump. However I also think a lot of companies were only doing this inclusion stuff in the first place behavior it was fashionable or assumed to be a good thing. With that removed, they’re just dropping the pretense.

Omg 😂😂😂 ive been calling it the gold leaf house recently

Good news: their patent expired, and offbrand lego now fits on Lego, at a third of the price.

This isn't a great look, but calling Lego "evil" is a bit of a stretch. This was one report that has no bearing on how they run their company or how they interact with their customers.

They still support and promote diversity in their products, which is where it matters.

There are also great alternatives for LEGO compatible toy sets. Some of them are even higher quality than LEGO.

If my daughter wants more Lego, I'll just buy it second hand

That's where most of the sets my kids had came from.

It's a durable product that is easy to clean. Buying used is very low risk.

Damn. You’re right. I actually thought my title implied that connection, but I can see how it works the opposite way too. I’m not sure how to phrase it without editorialising too much / posting opinion as fact. I’m open to suggestions.

Most companies with specific dei reporting in my country started because of political pressure via us investors to begin with.

HR is a scam - if you've an issue go to your union rep instead, that's why we have them. If you live in a country w/o them, get some.

LEGO: No guns

STAR WARS: These are blasters

LEGO: OK. Give us the money.

I think they've reached the point of being a huge corporation where they no longer have any morals beyond whatever makes them money. They sell pride sets when acceptance is profitable, and now they're cool with giving JK Rowling money to hurt trans people if it means they'll see a few bucks from it.

That's what they are doing. I am amazed that no one from outside has yet pointed finger and warned about Heritage Foundation's attempt to influence Europe. They want to see the world burn, literally.

money is fungible

😂

I am not trying to invalidate your comment, but saying that is like trying to boycott goods and services from China.

Capitalism was a failed experiment that should have ended in the 1920s but it served certain people well to keep it going, so they popped it up, rather than letting it die. So now we have this stupid hybrid system where it's capitalism, but only until capitalism fails. Then suddenly it's socialism time, but only for businesses, until they feel like they can cope again.

It's megacorporations that rule law and decide, we are since years back in a hyper capitalist suicid extinction event. Those who do the bidding of any megacorp today are cells of a demonic post human entity and wish upon humanity death. Surely somehow we can wake people back, land on Earth again, travel and eat without carbon dioxide so that the taiga can avoid being set ablaze in a few years and our doom sealed to forever. We have to stop avoiding the speciecide class war culture that decides fantastic and impossible idioms that you must follow, like eat milk and meat to grow or that you must give up your values to a hypnosis machine or several, or maybe if only you give the firm more than the required wake hours so that you can buy a fucking insane metal monstrosity to travel inside that weighs several tonnes, because it is safer apparently to accelerate a several ton air conditioning human payload missile to hundreds of kilometers per hour and then measure how many second that took as the variable that should stimulated your geniala slightly more, than to travel together with strangers coated in god knows what pathogens? We cannot help but form a mass psychosis ever since media trained zealots are allowed to serve children corporate propaganda on a regular basis. No lobbyists that serve nature, or humanity are allowed in the death chambers high command. Only the most vile homicide designers on the planet are psycopathic and dominant enough to work actively on the slaughter of our entire species yet nobody rise from the sofa to stop them as if that was the plan all along; to just lobotomize the cattle so the machine gets it easier with the grinding of swaths of human collectives, cultures being unmade and live on as bonemeal for the ultimate end of their offspring, no say in life or death equal.

While this is true of public companies privately held companies have more flexibility.

If the Kristiansens wanted to they could direct the firm to be more inclusive. In this case it's not "the company" making the choice, it's the Kristiansen family and you can point directly to their need for money.

And I think a big part of the problem is the psychology of group behaviour compared to individual behaviour. We can be far less moral in groups, by compartmentalising morality onto “someone else” in the group. I’m not sure that any other system can help us address that aspect of group psychology.

As if I could afford any to begin with.

K’nex appear to be owned by “Basic Fun!”, a U.S. company. Unlike LEGO I can’t find any social obligations that they’ve committed to in the past. https://www.basicfun.com/about/

The wizard lego is very disappointing, and goes completely against their other inclusive language. As for pricing, I'm not sure since quality is top tier. But I suppose the profits will tell us just how much room they have to lower their prices.

I was about to ask what you meants with wizard lego.. but I assume you mean that they make Harry Potter ones?

well their patent dropped so you can buy "lego" pieces from china. If you are not a rich collector just go and buy 10k pieces from china for 20 bucks. Your kids won't mind.

Or 3d print them, it works too but it's more expensive

Is it actually an Irish company, or just one of those Irish companies in the same way Apple is an Irish company?

You’re right: https://diversity.com/post/accenture-dei-rollback-2025

It’s a similar timeline too (~2025). I honestly think it’s very pathetic of them to stoop so low for the “Yankee dollar” (or any other trade relationship).

Noah's Ark

I think that would be cool.

It’s a 180° u-turn on their statements just a year or two ago. The timing is interesting from that point of view. USA is also their largest market. And while LEGO is a privately held company, they likely have US investors too. In other words, I don’t see any other motivation for the shift than the political climate in the U.S.

China doesn't have DIE

So that's how they have such a large population!

I’m actually pretty clueless about them, which is why this article surprised me so much. It sounds like they at least say the right things about diversity and fairness, but I have no idea what to think https://omnitalk.blog/2025/04/18/lego-quietly-scales-back-dei-language-in-latest-report-while-maintaining-gender-metrics/

I do want to learn though. Being an ethical consumer is one of the few things we can really do to contribute to society.

The problem with France s approach (as I understand it) is that by not recording ethnicity data, employers have free rein to discriminate if the persons background becomes known to them during the hiring process. Discrimination is rife because of this and they lack sufficient data and regulations to tackle it.

Studies have been carried out which send crafted resumes of different ethnicities to employers to assess callback rates. https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/discrimination-hiring-and-anonymous-cvs-france-cv-anonymes

I hope you’re right about US fascism. But while the U.S. President is an impulsive man child, his puppeteers are a lot smarter and more committed. We also have greater wealth inequality compared to WWII giving these guys a bigger advantage this time.

One issue is, while there's a light at the end of the tunnel, many won't be able to reach it.

Other is that DEI also includes education material for HR, and in my country (Hungary), where it's frowned upon by the state, often ableist and racist pieces of shits manage to get there. Someone acts a bit like an autistic person? They probably only got there where they are thanks to their mom sleeping with teachers and such, otherwise they likely have some severe intellectual disability and cant even count to ten. Someone has a darker skin? First they're dumb, second they steal. And any counter to it is bad, because it's a human right to have an opinion on something, even if it's wrong, and even if said people act out on that wrong opinion. If they're cishet white christian men with an able body that's all. Everyone else have to follow those opinions, even if they're wrong, because those men built "western civilization".

Shoes indoors are certainly stupid. I don't even bring my work shoes home due to the types of places I walk through during a shift. No shoes in my American home.