Greenpeace Continues Attack on Shell and Lego Partnership

Greenpeace creates a protest scene with LEGO figures at the Bell Tower in Beijing. Greenpeace is urging Lego to cut ties with Shell and help 'Save the Arctic.

Greenpeace has put kids at the heart of its ongoing campaign against the Lego and Shell affiliation.

The organisation has launched a new video in the campaign which stars three young children.

The video is accompanied by a global competition asking LEGO fans to build something out of LEGO which will help save the Arctic from Shell.

The video, made by UK creative agency PGA, is designed to appeal to children and parents. In it, three children describe an imaginary day out in the Arctic including riding a polar bear and sledding down a glacier. At one point an Antarctic penguin makes an unexpected appearance. The children’s imaginings are brought to life in LEGO using CGI graphics.

The three girls, Robin Gilbert, age six, Chen Mingzhu, age seven and Florencia Simms, age seven, speak English, Mandarin and Spanish respectively. These are the three most spoken languages in the world.

Sara Ayech, Arctic campaigner at Greenpeace, said: “LEGO’s promotional deal with Shell is really damaging, because it helps Shell pretend it’s a caring, family friendly company. In reality, it’s not. Shell wants to drill in the Arctic. But a spill there would be impossible to clean up and the only reason they can even drill in the Arctic is because climate change is melting the ice. That’s something that threatens all kids around the world.

“Children and parents are LEGO’s core customer base, and the fate of the Arctic is important to them. We’re hoping this video and competition will inspire a whirlwind of creativity and action among young LEGO fans that LEGO just won’t be able to ignore.”

More than 700,000 people have already signed a petition urging LEGO to end its deal with Shell. Greenpeace attempted to deliver the petition to LEGO twice, and both times LEGO refused to accept it.

Since 2012, Shell’s Arctic program has suffered a series of dangerous incidents and setbacks. The company was fined by the US government for twice breaking air pollution rules in the Arctic, it grounded a drilling rig on the Alaskan coast, and has come under fire from both the US Coastguard and senior administration officials.

In that same period 16 million [1] Shell-branded LEGO sets were sold or given away at petrol stations in 33 countries [2], making it one of the largest promotional lines LEGO has ever produced [3].

The first campaign video, ‘LEGO: Everything is Not Awesome’ was released on 8July 2014, and has been watched over five million times so far.

Image via Greenpeace website.

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