9516 Jabba's Palace and Istanbul Mosque: LEGO officially reacts

24/01/2013 - 13:16 LEGO Star Wars

LEGO Star Wars 9516 Jabba's Palace

If you follow the blog, you have undoubtedly read my article about the incitement and discrimination lawsuit against LEGO  by representatives of the Turkish cultural community in Austria. 

If you haven't read this article which has earned me some rather insulting emails and caused many reactions here and elsewhere, do so before reading the information below.

LEGO therefore reacts today officially on its website to the accusations formulated by the representatives of the Turkish cultural community in Austria and provides answers to the problems of interpretation of the contents of the box set 9516 Jabba's Palace.

In essence, LEGO therefore asserts that:

- The representation of Jabba's Palace from set 9516 is not based on any existing building, and therefore is not inspired by the mosque Hagia Sophia from Istanbul.

- This palace is exclusively inspired by the building seen in Episode VI of the Star Wars saga.

- All products in the LEGO Star Wars range, including buildings and characters, are also exclusively taken from the universe developed in the various films of the Star Wars saga.

- LEGO regrets that the complainant misinterpreted the contents of the set. 

Below is the official response in English from LEGO:

"The LEGO Group's reaction to criticism of LEGO Star Wars product: “Jabba´s Palace”

The Austrian Turkish Cultural Community has criticized a LEGO Star Wars product for looking similar to a mosque in Istanbul. The product is however not based on any real building but on a fictional building from a scene in the movie Star Wars Episode VI.

All LEGO Star WarsTM products are based on the movies of the Star WarsTM saga created by Lucasfilm. Jabba's Palace appears in Star WarsTM Episode VI and appears in a famous scene on the planet Tatooine. The building is the palace of Jabba - a fictional movie character.

The picture shown above depicts the building from the movie scene. The LEGO designers try to reproduce all buildings, space ships and characters from the movies as close as possible when creating a new LEGO Star WarsTM product. 

This is done to allow both young and old Star WarsTM fans to act out the scenes from the movies at home. The LEGO Star WarsTM product Jabba´s palace does not reflect any non-fictional buildings, people, or the mentioned mosque.

The LEGO minifigures shown on the box and found inside the box (Jabba, Salacious Crumb, Bib Fortuna, Gamorreanic Guard, Oola, Han Solo, Princess Leia disguised as Boushh, Chewbacca and B'omarr Monk) are all modeled after fictional characters from the movie.

The LEGO Group regrets that the product has caused the members of the Turkish cultural community to interpret it wrongly, but point out that the design of the product only refers to the fictional content of the Star WarsTM saga."

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