A few months ago, this blog wrote about Greenpeace’s very clever efforts to persuade world-famous toymaker Lego to abandon its corporate sponsorship with world-infamous polluter and oil giant Shell. On Wednesday, Lego announced it would not renew the deal when its contract with Shell ends. “[A]s things currently stand we will not renew the co-promotion contract with Shell when the present contract ends,” writes Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, CEO of the LEGO Group, in a press release. Greenpeace estimates the contract ends in about 18 months. 

Front and center in Greenpeace’s campaign was a just-under-two-minute animated video of a bucolic all-Lego Arctic quickly drowning in oil, set to the tune “Everything is Awesome” from The Lego Movie.  The video was viewed more than 6.3 million times on YouTube. Other publicity-grabbing efforts include unfurling a banner reading "Save the Arctic" on Lego-replica Houses of Parliament as well as a staged hijacking of the Lego oil rig at Legoland Windsor in the U.K.

Shell remains a principal sponsor of a climate-change exhibit at London’s Science Museum. And its plans for drilling in Alaska’s Arctic continue apace: Technical issues – including the grounding of one of its drilling vessels -- prevented the oil colossus from drilling in 2013 and 2014, but in August Shell filed a revised offshore drilling plan with U.S. regulators, keeping open the possibility it will try to drill next summer.