But was that as a result of a lawsuit - or an agreement outside of court, to avoid a lawsut (and possible bad PR resulting from it) in the first place? 
didn’t expect to have this topic talked about again because someone misread my post what I talked about the Inika commercial. still hitting myself in the face out of embarrassment because of that.
Wikipedia also only mentions a letter of complaint sent by several Maori tribes that kind of “banded together” on this issue. Even though it seems like that letter was written by a lawyer, a letter of complaint is obviously on a much less severe level than an actual lawsuit, or threat thereof.
Today somebody would probably just have accused Lego of cultural appropriation on Twitter - and possibly not even someone who is Maori him- or herself.
In either case, Lego may just have wanted to avoid any possible bad PR because of this issue? The other sources I found also mention that Lego initially rejected the Maori claim, and only started “negotiations” with the representatives after some bad publicity…
Offended snowflakes on Twitter do accuse Lego of cultural appropiation and use this as an argument for why Lego wouldn’t bring Bionicle back… completely ignoring the fact that current Ninjago wave is heavily based on the Maori/Polynesian culture.
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Just me, but at least with bionicle they were good guys and clearly non evil villain’s. But I haven’t seen ninjago the island so my argument may be null and void.
IIRC, this isn’t actually true.
From what I remember, a parent in the UK simply raised a complaint with the advertising authority because the Inika ad distressed her kid during the ad break of a pre-school programming block (where the ad’s content could seem scary to younger viewers and Lego’s target market for Bionicle wouldn’t be watching anyways).
I’m not certain on the specifics, but they definitely didn’t sue anyone.
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