Today, LEGO has released their press release on what happened with the Jabba’s Palace criticism. We reported yesterday that LEGO will stop production in 2014 but not because of the issue at hand but because of the normal shelf life of different LEGO sets. LEGO has clarified that in their press release seen below.

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 Wars products are based on the movies of the Star Wars saga created by Lucasfilm. Jabba’s Palace appears in Star Wars 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 Wars product.

This is done to allow both young and old Star Wars fans to act out the scenes from the movies at home. The LEGO Star Wars 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 interprete it wrongly, but point out that the design of the product only refers to the fictional content of the Star Wars saga.

A few media have reported that the product is being discontinued due to the mentioned criticism. This is, however, not correct.

As a normal process products in the LEGO Star Wars assortment usually have a life-cycle of one to three years after which they leave the assortment and may be renewed after some years. The LEGO Star Wars product Jabba’s Palace 9516 was planned from the beginning to be in the assortment only until the end of 2013 as new exciting models from the Star Wars universe will follow.

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