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When did the flesh colors start and why? It seems yellow heads are here to stay too?

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    I remember back in the old LEGO Club days, there was a guy called Redini who would answer questions by club members. One of them asked a similar question, except phrased more simply: "Why are LEGO people yellow?" While the old LEGO Club site is nowhere to be found, forum posts from the same era quote his relevant answer verbatim... not sure if I should bother quoting it as an answer here since it was answered way before more minifig head colors appeared.
    – LegoSonicBoy
    Commented Dec 24, 2011 at 17:25

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To answer the first part of the question, the Company Profile presentation (deep, direct link) states:

When the minifigure first appeared, it was decided that its face should have only one colour: yellow. And that its facial features should be happy and neutral . The figure would have no sex, race or role – these would be determined by the child’s imagination and play.

It then explains when and why they added colour for their licensed figures

With licensed products such as LEGO® Star Wars™ and LEGO® Harry Potter™ the figure began appearing in specific roles, and with LEGO Basketball in 2003 it took on authentic skin colours. In 2004 the LEGO minifigure assumed an even wider range of skin colours when it was decided that the figures in licensed products should resemble the original characters as closely as possible. One result was that the figures in LEGO Harry Potter™ changed from yellow to a more authentic skin colour.

The first ones I remember seeing were indeed some of the NBA League characters as part of the Basketball theme in 2003, followed by the Star Wars products and then the Harry Potter sets in 2004.

Lando Calrissian was one of the first to appear in the correct skin tone, amongst yellow Han and Leia:

Bespin Cloud City Box Art

Followed later by pink characters for the rest. The first Star Wars set in 2004 with flesh-toned figures was the Millennium Falcon. By 2005 the transition for Star Wars was complete and all sets used flesh-toned figures.

In terms of other colours, LEGO had already created various monster and alien figures with different coloured heads ranging from blues and greys through to transparent and even transparent neon orange.

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    Clarification: non-human and monstrous minifigs had non-yellow heads long before the flesh-toned heads, however, they usually aren't Caucasian-skin-peach-toned.
    – Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
    Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 18:46
  • @Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Updated ;)
    – Zhaph - Ben Duguid ♦
    Commented Dec 21, 2015 at 12:33
  • The answer is very good, but at its level of detail, one somehow also expects a citation related to the fact that yellow is kept as the default skin colour in non-licensed sets. After all, the other decisions from the original minifigs quotation have been revised in the meantime (gender already a long time ago, first by clothes and hairstyles, then by printed heads with red lips; and the bit about a neutral or happy facial expression stopped being completely true when the two-sided heads with a "panicked" expression were introduced).
    – O. R. Mapper
    Commented Jan 31, 2019 at 20:14
  • Cheers, if you have a citation beyond what was in the company profile clearly states (as quoted) "it was decided that the figures in licensed products..."
    – Zhaph - Ben Duguid ♦
    Commented Jan 31, 2019 at 22:09
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The Cult Of Lego book (ISBN: 978-1-59327-391-0) had an a whole page about the change in minifigure skin colour:

Page 59, sentence 2: Originally, the LEGO Group sought to leave racial and gender differences to the imagination of builders by using a stylised, generic face with outfits to differentiate roles.

Page 59, sentence 4: The most noticeable feature of the majority of mini-figs is
their ostensibly "race-neutral" yellow coloration. The paradigm lasted until 2003, when LEGO Sports' Basketball theme was released, featuring minifigs based on real-life NBA players. The LEGO Group decided that expecting kids to appreciate figures that didn't really resemble the stars they represented was a losing proposition.

Since the NBA figures were released in 2003, beige and brown skin tones have been used only in licensed sets to portray characters. Traditional LEGO themes like Police and Firefighters continue to use a yellow flesh colour.

The distinction between skin tones makes it easy to identify a beige or brown minifigure as part of a licensed set. Licensed sets tend to be based on film and television themes.

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Licenced Themes, use skin tone heads since they are based on something. Themes that LEGO Made themselves, such as Creator have yellow heads.

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I think the flesh colored ones are reserved for Minifigures made in an actual characters' likeness, and the yellow is reserved for generic figures.

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  • This answer doesn't seem to add anything beyond what other answers have already stated.
    – Robert Columbia
    Commented May 24, 2019 at 20:40
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The yellow head was originally used to represent all races and both genders. Later, yellow heads were used to represent non-licensed minifigures, and flesh coloured minifigures were used to represent licensed minifigures, such as Batman, or Indiana Jones, but flesh coloured minifigures weren't used until around 2003

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Flesh colored is used for licensed brands, such as Star Wars and Jurassic World.

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    This answer doesn't seem to add anything beyond what other answers have already stated.
    – zovits
    Commented Sep 4, 2019 at 10:50

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