A couple of days ago, there were some Street Fighter 2 minifigures posted by Julian Fong, aka levork, that showed up on Kotaku. The 16 minfigure project was a year and a half in the making for Julian. He submitted his project to LEGO CUUSOO to see if it could get 10000 supporters. Unfortunately, the project did not even get off the launching pad. Back in March, LEGO CUUSOO started refining projects that are submitted which means LEGO weeds out projects that are deemed inappropriate for children.
Your project refers to a brand or licensed property that contains content or themes that do not fit the LEGO Group’s standards for appropriate content. For details, please see the Acceptable Project Content section of the Project Guidelines and House Rules (lego.cuusoo.com/guidelines).
LEGO CUUSOO will not accept a project submission based on this brand or licensed property. Decisions about how a property fits our standards are made at the sole discretion of the LEGO Group.Remember that LEGO is a toy company, so we’re careful to only produce products we deem appropriate for children. Projects related to the below topics are not allowed. We will decide how a project fits these standards at our discretion.
* Politics and political symbols
* Religious references including symbols, buildings, or people
* Sex, drugs, or smoking
* Alcohol in any present day situation
* Swearing
* Death, killing, blood, terrorism, or torture
* First-person shooter video games
* Warfare or war vehicles in any modern or present-day situation
* Racism, bullying, or cruelty to real life animals
Although I along with many other fans would’ve liked to some official Street Fighter minifigures, it just wasn’t meant to be. It seems that LEGO is sticking closely with their new guidelines about the projects that come through LEGO CUUSOO. Keep in mind there have been many other “violent” LEGO themes in the past including Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc. Julian gave an update on his Flickr photo after the rejection:
While I respect their decision – we are talking about a fighting game, after all – I can’t help but think LEGO’s applying their own rules about licensed property inconsistently. The Lord of the Rings movies are incredibly violent and involve a lot of on-screen death. The only thing that comes close to restricting Street Fighter 2 is “blood”, and that got toned out completely in the home ports – Nintendo was notoriously uptight about it in the SNES version.
While there have been some fairly violent-themed sets in the past, LEGO already had licensing deals with Lucasfilm Ltd. and Warner Brothers before CUUSOO even began. There’s no reason for LEGO to alter their deals with their respective parties. Although the guidelines didn’t list violence as a no-no in their explanation to Julian, the house rules do state “any kind of content containing realistic or extreme violence, or content intended to shock or disgust.” LEGO might’ve came down swiftly on their decision but rules are rules.
At the end of the day, Julian no doubt did an amazing job with the minifigures and has us fans drooling for them and for more characters. Hopefully these minifigs can get produced on the secondary custom market. Check out more of Julian’s work on his photostream.
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