I’m surprised that I haven’t seen anything about this yet on the Board. Here it is:
But the Engineer in me took one look at that and thought (no disrespect to anyone LGBTQ. Or to Lego, for that matter) “You’re not celebrating racial diversity. You’re celebrating the RMA Resistor Color Code:”
The colors are in exactly the same order as the ones used to designate the values of carbon film resistors, right down to starting with Black and Brown (in that order), going through the literal rainbow colors of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, then ignoring Indigo (as both the resistor color code AND the most common LGBTQ flags do) and going right to Violet. Even the next two colors – Light Blue and White – are close to the Resistor Code colors of Grey and White. Then it goes on to Pink, which has no corresponding version in the Resistor code.
Was this coincidence? or was the designer an electronics hobbyist who used these colors as what he or she saw as the natural progression?
The colors appear to match those of at least one LGBTIQ pride flag.
The LEGO folk seem to have split the colors in the triangular portion to either side of the “rainbow” portion, probably in a fashion that looks aesthetically pleasing. I think the similarity to resistor color codes are coincidental, although I’ll admit it’s somewhat uncanny.
I doubt that. Convergent evolution is caused by external forces driving things to find the same solution. But the colors not right in the rainbow could’ve been in any order in that set. That they were in the same order as the Resistor Code (with the same omission) suggests to me that the designer had that in mind, even if subconsciously.
I was thinking the same thing, although I wouldn’t exactly be shocked if there were significant overlap between “electronics hobbyist” and “lego set designer.” But it’s probably mostly just color theory - black and brown look better next to the warmer end of the spectrum, and light pink and blue at the colder end.
Yes - shared aesthetics is the driver. Similar ideas of what colours look good next to each other etc. Red->Brown->Black is a natural colour progression to me. The rainbow (minus indigo) is kind of a set order.The blue-white-pink makes for better contrast than either pink->blue->white, I think.
Anyway, this is a Lego set, it doesn’t need to be built in that order (I’m probably going to go for the more common pink->blue-white order when I get it)
Which, in terms of “convergent evolution”, probably explains why its not in the resistor code: it’s too easy to confuse with blue or purple.
It’s worth noting that the original design for the Pride flag had eight stripes - it included both indigo, and a hot pink stripe next to the red stripe. The hot pink stripe was removed because it was hard to source enough fabric in that color. The indigo stripe was later dropped as part of a design decision for the '79 San Francisco Pride Parade - they wanted a flag with an even number of stripes, so they could put half the colors on one side of the route, and the other half of the colors on the other side. For whatever reason, that version of the flag stuck around.
I find it creepy that they don’t have faces. All the other mini-figures have faces except the ghosts and given that it feels like a weird attempt at symbolism…
Indigo is a very dark blue, that stripe is the purple of violet.
Purple is intended to be a drag queen. With black I think they were going for a natural Black hair thing.
But yes, a little Tom of Finland nod would be nice. Well, I can always put a sailor hat on the white one…
I like how all the hairstyles are very stereotypical so we know which one is which. Like the black one is obviosuly black. The purple one is obviously drag queen and the red one is obviously soulless.
Which is another reason it doesn’t make much sense to be in the rainbow, as none of the colors are dark.
The theory I’m more familiar with is that Newton used “indigo” to refer to a wavelength we’d generally call “blue,” and used “blue” for a wavelength we’d generally call “cyan.”
And that how distinct the cyan band appears has a lot to do with whether or not people consider cyan and blue to be two completely different colors. Ultimately, the whole thing is a spectrum: there are no bands of any colors. A rainbow is just a gradient showing all the hues of light that humans can see.