Lego said today that it will terminate all of its promotions and ads in the Daily Mail, just days after consumers and anti-hate advocacy groups urged the world’s biggest toy company to stop doing business with the controversial British tabloid.
A week ago, Lego fan Bob Jones sent a Facebook message to the Danish company, saying he was disheartened by its advertising in the Daily Mail, a tabloid known for its racist and xenophobic headlines. He specifically cited Mail headline that attacked a judge, who ruled British parliament must approve the Brexit vote, for being “openly gay.” Lego had been offering free giveaways in the tabloid.
“It genuinely bothers me,” Jones wrote, “that a great progressive company like yours supports this ‘news’ paper, helping increase its circulation.” Jones also wrote that his six-year-old son is obsessed with Legos, but that even he “understands what [the Daily Mail] print is wrong.” You can read Jones’s entire post here.
Lego first responded to Jones with a noncommittal statement, writing, “We continuingly evaluate and develop our partnerships and approach to those, in order to ensure that we are present on the best possible platforms for reaching children and parents.”
But today, after hundreds more comments echoed Jones’s sentiment, Lego changed its tone.
“Hi Bob! Our agreement with The Daily Mail has finished and we have no plans to run any promotional activity with the newspaper in the foreseeable future,” the company announced on Facebook.
Stop Funding Hate, a British anti-hate group that sprung up shortly after the Brexit vote, and now lobbies companies to stop doing business with British tabloids, also pressured Lego to cut ties with the Daily Mail. Lego confirmed to the group on Twitter that it would no longer advertise in the tabloid.
In 2014, Lego dropped its partnership with the oil company Shell, after coming under pressure from Greenpeace.