Today, Legos advertised their products at Star Wars Celebration at a panel. We at SWAG77 are happy for Disney Lucasfilm Star Wars. It is a fun concept. And while there are shifts in their ad campaign, SWAG77, a little guy fan group, started a similar campaign in 2020. We created T-shirts, merch, fanfic stories, headcanon, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for a parody campaign for Grand Admiral Thrawn. We conceived the idea and organized the artwork for optimal presentation. For a small operation to function as a fan group, we monetize the activities that we feel would not infringe on any copyrights of intellectual property by fair use parody.
The character Thrawn is classified as a villain who would NEVER consider a beach for fun times during the summer. So we find it comedic that we would put a surfboard into Thrawn’s hands, and he learns how to surf as his “Zen” for stress relief.
We know Disney Lucasfilm Star Wars has iron-clad IP copyright rules and found ideas. That is why we did not seek to request permission to do what we did as a fan group. We would rather ask forgiveness on this issue.
But it is cheaper to circumvent our idea as well as other fans ideas and do it better than us with their powerful and huge resources. And we must say, the Legos campaign is done well. Better than any small guy side group barely managing to make it into black.
But our problem is the takedown notices to our 3rd party on demand providers, threats to servers holding our art and absolutely ZERO SMALL TOKEN OF APPRECIATIVE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA of what we did. At least use our initials. Would that be asking too much?
Star Wars fans and some workers have accused SWAG77 not attributing Fan Artists and ideas. As if we did not have a brain trust first and considered thinking of our proprietary ideas first. Hence, the merch monetization, the paywalls to access to our ideas, and now NFT minting. We are NOT competing and yes, based on law, we could be misconstrued that we are violating IP copyright. We are uninterested in fight back with lawyers for rightful claims because we recognize that is an uphill battle.
But Star Wars would be nothing without the creativity of all fans and if Disney Lucasfilm is going to skim ideas from the fans, then at least a group initialing acknowledgement at one siting would be nice. It can even be fine printed, but at least at minimum something otherwise, toxic fans who harass us over ideas tease us.
Since, I as the owner am in my 50s, the harassment is irrelevant to me. But what if this was a teen to 20-something that works very hard with a dream to be shot down by big corporation skimming ideas from them? For a fandom they love and devoted themselves to doing. It hurts.
So this is a plea. SOME minimal recognition and acknowledgement.
Here is the Disney Lucasfilm Star Wars Legos campaign:
SWAG77 Surfer!Thrawn
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