Is Greenpeace taking on Shell with LEGO?

“Everything is awesome, everything is cool when you are part of a team,” so says the now famous song ingrained in our brains by the indelible ink of the LEGO movie. Capitalizing on that, Greenpeace has put out an ad that uses LEGO to tell Shell, the mega oil company, it’s time to stop dumping oil in the Arctic.

The tagline for the ad: “Shell is polluting our kid’s imagination”. So what’s that got do with LEGO? Greenpeace reckons it is time LEGO ended its partnership with the company.

“We love LEGO. You love LEGO. Everyone loves LEGO,” says Greenpeace. “But when LEGO’s halo effect is being used to sell propaganda to children, especially by an unethical corporation who are busy destroying the natural world our children will inherit, we have to do something.”

The goes through a series of scenes set in the Arctic, with its natural inhabitants (made up of characters from the LEGO Movie) getting on with their lives in perfect harmony — in fact everything is pretty awesome. Then the scene goes dark, literally, as oil is split all over their perfect world, leaving the inhabitant sad and drowning in oil. Everything dramatically becomes less awesome.

“Children’s imaginations are an unspoilt wilderness. Help us stop Shell polluting them by telling LEGO to stop selling Shell-branded bricks and kits today,” the environmental organisation says.

So, of course, there is a petition to go with the ad.

Update: The original ad has been removed from YouTube following a copyright claim by Warner Brothers, after it had received over 3-million views. The clip is still available on Vimeo: