Activists Offended by Least-Offensive Lego Set of All Time

Lego’s newest “Community People Set” is about as unoffensive as you get can, depicting black, white, Asian and Hispanic men and women in a variety of different occupations and stations in life. But this being the 21st Century, someone still found a reason to be offended.

Disability activists are angry that the set contains an old man in a wheelchair. The organization Toy Like Me, which advocates for toys that disabled children can relate to, argues that the old man helps stigmatize wheelchair use by conforming to the stereotype that only the elderly use them.

“Whilst we applaud Lego for including a wheelchair user, we are disappointed with the design of the wheelchair which is grey and medical in appearance and does not appear to have wheels that turn, as well as the choice of the elderly figure to use the chair in promotional images,” founder Rebeca Atkinson said on her blog.

A Change.org petition asking Lego to “positively represent disability in your toys” has meanwhile racked up more than 18,422 signatures. “Oh Lego, where are your basket balling wheelsters?” Atkinson writes. “Baseball playing Duplo folk with hearing aids? White cane using Lego Friends off to the gym? In fact, where is your positive disability representation at all?”

[Image via Lego]
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