The Lego “Community People Set” tried to get every possible race, disability, and distinction depicted in the set, but activists have still found a reason to protest, calling it offensive for having the token wheelchair piece be of an elderly man.
Toy Like Me is an organization that advocates for toys that children with disabilities can relate to and the fact that Lego’s newest set shows an old man in the wheelchair caused them to start a Change.org petition to let the big bad people at Lego know that kids can be in wheelchairs too.
“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,” Toy Like Me founder Rebeca Atkinson explained on her blog.
Presumably, Toy Like Me and their like-minded activists believe that children in wheelchairs or with other disabilities will take one look at the old man Lego and throw it away because they are unable to “relate” to the toy and will forever see themselves as the pariah of their peers.
This is all because of the old man in a “grey and medical” looking wheelchair Lego because, as Atkinson also states in her blog, the popular brand “carries massive cultural sway.”
She suggests that “scant representation of disability in children’s industries” has portrayed three stereotypes over time, leaving disabled children to believe that the only people like them are either elderly, evil, or sickly.
No word yet from the AARP on how the Lego is offending elderly people who are not in a wheelchair, but with this kind of precedence it’s anyone’s game on who can claim they’re most offended.
(h/t Mediaite)
