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Dear LEGO® Fans!
Below you will find an open letter to the LEGO Company’s CEO. The Intention of
the letter is the urgend wish to get back our SYSTEM grey back.
I will post this letter 2 times: the second posting is meant to put your name
under it. I beg you to use that thread only to subscribe the letter. If you want
to discuss it, please do that in this thread.
The background behind the releasing of this letter has been a very good
discussion with „community development“ member Jan Beyer of the LEGO Company
while we have been at the annual LEGO® fan meeting in Frechen/Germany.
To work for our needs within the company, Jan needs an input from the outside.
This could be for example an open letter. Lots of friends around and me have
discussed extensive how to write such a letter and what to put into it. I will
not give names here and it is without any importance, that I am the one who
posts this now. This has to deal with facts not with names....
Now the letter has been published at 1000steine.de and the translation is ready
to be published here at lugnet. Our aims while we wrote this letter have been
the following: winning as many peoplte to sign it. Making clear our point of
view for a none-insider. Most important is the fact, that we prefer the old
colours against the new ones. The reasons why this is true are less
important.... In case this letter gets a certain (big!) amount of signatures,
Jan has promised to do everything possible to forward it to the CEO.
One argument in the letter I myself think to be very important is the fact, that
a change back to old grey would not be so cost intensive. Right now there are
still hundreds of parts manufactured in old grey. All pre-2004 sets, which sell
well are still be rereleased in old colours. This means everything is there to
produce old-grey. Stock of granulate, machines, all kind of infrastructure
within the production facility. The killer argument about thecosts of a change
back are not the full truth, since the change has not be finished at all.
Enough of my humble introduction: this is the letter!
Kind Regards,
Reinhard "Ben" Beneke
*************************************************************************
_________________________________________________________ February 2005
To Mr. Jørgen Vig Knudstorp
CEO of LEGO Company
Billund
Denmark
Dear Mr. Knudstorp,
we are writing to you, the highest authority of LEGO Company, in order to
express a matter of utmost importance for our community. We, the signatories of
this letter, form the group of Adult Fans Of LEGO® (AFOLs). Some of us have
children who play with LEGO® toys but most of us build models with LEGO® bricks
ourselves. Until recently, we have been the biggest fans of your products. Now,
however, our enthusiasm for your products has been put extremely at risk because
we are calling a decision into question that was made by the LEGO Company which
is of great importance for us.
The issue that has stirred up anger over the past year, is the fact that within
LEGO Company a wrong decision has been taken, namely the break of a tradition
which had existed for the past 40 years - the continuity of the
SYSTEM colours.
New tones e.g. grey, dark-grey and brown, as well as some other, less important
tones have been added to the product range at the beginning of year 2004. This
measure has caused great offence through the fact that long-established colours
were abandoned at the same time and are now no longer used in new sets. From
this decision, countless problems for collections and self-created models occur.
These problems have been discussed in detail at www.Lugnet.com. You can find
extracts of these discussions at the end of this letter.
Through the change of the colours we find ourselves extremely restricted in
exercising our hobby as we are used to and thus are even more annoyed about this
- in our eyes - unnecessary and quite badly thought-out decision. This topic has
been troubling us for more than one year now and has lead to strong negative
emotional reactions.
The relationship of LEGO Company to its fans has never been as good as today,
the same holds true for the model palette. The possibilities we, the AFOLs, have
today - be it the buying opportunities or the participation in
product development - are simply incredible ("Bulk-order", "S@H",
"pick-a-brick-wall", "My Own Creation", "Community development team"). We had
never thought all this possible just a few years ago. And we are extremely
grateful for all these opportunities, but unfortunately these praiseworthy
achievements turn into almost nothing through the decision of stopping the
production of the important colours. Even the most beautiful set that is
achievable on the market now is completely useless for us as source for building
an own model of it as our partly huge brick collections are full of bricks of
the old colours which do not match with the new colours.
We found out that LEGO Company still produces sets which were introduced before
2004 and which accordingly contain the "old" SYSTEM colours. At present,
production machines run parallel and produce the same elements in both colour
shades (old and new). We are therefore of the opinion, the time would be right
to stop the further application of the new colours now since these are widely
not accepted among customers. We agree with the decision to limit the colour
palette to prevent it from growing to infinity. We find that the time is right
to stop the production of the new colours and to reactivate the production of
the old colours. It would cause LEGO company no trouble at all since all
resources are available until today: production machines, stocks and granulate.
By the discontinuation of the new unloved colours, resources would be set free.
Through the measure of taking back the colour change, you would earn our
greatest respect which would be mirrored clearly in our purchase behaviour and
our picture we have of the brand LEGO!
We call upon you, Mr. Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, to take action now!
Give us back our SYSTEM of grey, dark-grey and brown!
Signature (age), place (state), approximate annual budget before 2004,
approximate budget for 2004, (optional data)
LEGO®-Fan xy (33), city, (state), much money in 2003, less money in 2004
APPENDIX (some statements from the LUGNET-discussions):
Main arguments against the colour change:
"weakening of the LEGO® SYSTEM through such a drastic alteration is bad"
"incompatibility of warm, old, and cold new colours"
"restricted use of the new colours because of incompatibility"
"new part shapes are not available in old colours, old part shapes are not
available in new colours"
"new colours are too similar to the ones of cheap competitors (Megabloks)"
"old colours appear yellowish beside the new (bluish) colours - this makes them
look worn"
"unnecessary alteration, as the questioning of teen LEGO®-Fans has shown"
Minor but still serious problems:
"sorting"
"hard to see differences at bad light"
"contradictory communication about the purpose of the changeover"
"it seems that LEGO Company itself is not convinced about the change towards
bluish colours as it does not promote it in public"
"rejection of the new grey because it appears to look military-like"
"exactly the clearness of the new colours is their disadvantage: steel-grey is
not suitable for building rocks, reddish brown is not suitable for most shades
of rust and wood"
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