No more (licensed) light flesh / flesh / dark flesh parts on bricklink!

CCC

OK, it's a clickable title, they are not banning licensed figures and so on. But they have ended the use of the terms light flesh / flesh / medium dark flesh and dark flesh. Instead these are now variations of nougat. Other official Lego colour names have not been adopted.

So no more fleshie minifigures, they are now nougaty instead!

It will be interesting to see if BL changing their colour names will change the use of the well established terms in AFOL circles. 

omnium

I reckon it would be easier for LEGO to change their names ;)

CCC

This wasn't prompted by name convention harmony, it was about getting rid of the historically eurocentric view of what colour 'flesh' is.

Oldfan

I'm glad they made the decision to use official LEGO color names.  I was not looking forward to having three different names for the same color (old BL, new BL, and LEGO)...

klinton

This is fine. It actually always kind of annoyed me, the use of 'flesh', as Lego 'flesh' tone is yellow. Real people come in all sorts of colours and singling out one shade as proper 'flesh' just seemed a bit obtuse.

RogerKirk

It's a good change. Using the word flesh' for a specific colour is inaccurate anyway, suggesting there is a single skin colour that is 'normal' while other skin colours are variations of 'normal'. The name also does not make sense if the colours are used for a brick, plate or other pieces that don't get used in minifigures.

BrickByBrick

I mean using medium dark flesh bricks in the gingerbread house isn't wrong....

SumoLego

I wonder if the PC crowd has had a committee meeting about how to properly identify skin tones.  All things considered, we are all part of the flesh community, and there is a general breadth of tones unique to humanity.  (It should be a circle, so we can all hold hands, but I'm not sure the science of melanin works that way.)

Maybe LEGO is ahead of the curve by identifying nougat as the 'neutral' tone.

I'm happy that's solved.

madforLEGO

I just wish LEGO would make 'flesh' hips so I can get a 'flesh' monochrome figure completed

560Heliport

^ Evidently LEGO minifigs are not nudists!

madforLEGO

560Heliport said:

^ Evidently LEGO minifigs are not nudists!

..They just need to make a set with mannequins

Brainslugged

The trouble is.... whenever I hear nougat, I think this:

CCC

Oldfan said:

I'm glad they made the decision to use official LEGO color names.  I was not looking forward to having three different names for the same color (old BL, new BL, and LEGO)...

They are not quite the same on LEGO and BL for these ones. They just replaced flesh with nougat so the variants do not match.

madforLEGO said:

I just wish LEGO would make 'flesh' hips so I can get a 'flesh' monochrome figure completed

I am still hoping for light flesh / light nougat too.

CCC

And they made another change to be closer to LEGO's names.

https://www.bricklink.com/catalogReqList.asp?nID=&viewDate=Y&viewType=E&viewStatus=A&viewAction=C

So a couple of colours have had two name changes in two days.

TheOriginalSimonB

madforLEGO said:

I just wish LEGO would make 'flesh' hips so I can get a 'flesh' monochrome figure completed

Try this:

https://www.firestartoys.com/Shop/Minifigure-Parts/Minifigure-Plain-Legs/46073-LEGO-Mini-Figure-Legs-~-Light-Flesh.html 

Bobflip

This colour name change makes sense. I can understand the initial usage to differentiate yellow heads and 'realistic' heads, but to kinda say 'this is the colour that flesh should be' is a bit odd.

I just hope they don't change tan to brick yellow on there! Then again, that's also a flesh related term, so who knows what'll happen...

CCC

Bobflip said:

This colour name change makes sense. I can understand the initial usage to differentiate yellow heads and 'realistic' heads, but to kinda say 'this is the colour that flesh should be' is a bit odd.

I don't think that it was ever the case that BL was saying flesh is meant to be this colour, more that it was reflecting the colours that LEGO introduced for flesh for licensed figures. I think the real problem here was that LEGO tends to make brown skinned licensed figures using the existing colour (BL's) "reddish brown", which is also used for lots of other parts. Whereas flesh and light flesh tend to be used only for (white) skintones.

If LEGO had mainly used BL's dark flesh for brown skinned figures, or had another colour that was mainly used for this, then BL colour names could have been light flesh, flesh, medium dark flesh, dark flesh, or similar, covering the whole spectrum of realistic skintones. If all colours used for realistic skintones had a name of "something flesh", then it does not appear to be racist as no colour is omitted from the flesh spectrum. Whereas the situation until a few days ago only had names for lighter flesh colours and not darker ones. And as to doesn't seem right to rename "reddish brown" as "dark flesh" or "very dark flesh" (or whatever), as it is used for so much more than brown skin, they had the situation that brown skin for licensed characters was called "reddish brown" rather than named as a variation shade of flesh.

It'll take some getting used to, and it was a pain to have to update saved searches but now it is done it is done. It will be interesting to see if they continue and do the rest of the colours, or if these get left as their more meaningful everyday names.