Like the Dodo, and those pointy-beaked flappy dinosaurs that killed everyone in Jurassic World, the Osprey is dead. At least LEGO’s version is. Following a petition by the German Peace Society, the new 1,636 piece set due for release in 2020 has been cancelled, on the grounds of it being a military vehicle (which we suppose it is), a category that LEGO have steadfastly tried to avoid in the past.

LEGO’s statement on the cancellation reads;

The LEGO Technic Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey was designed to highlight the important role the aircraft plays in search and rescue efforts. While the set clearly depicts how a rescue version of the plane might look, the aircraft is only used by the military.  We have a long-standing policy not to create sets which feature real military vehicles, so it has been decided not to proceed with the launch of this product.

We appreciate that some fans who were looking forward to this set may be disappointed, but we believe it’s important to ensure that we uphold our brand values. 

Which probably means if you managed to get hold of a LEGO Technic 42113 Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey set before the cancellation it’ll soon be worth at least $1 billion to those nerdy collectors who never take the bricks out of the box.

We’re not sure what we think about this one. We were rather surprised that LEGO released a military aircraft as a set (even one with no weapons), but we’re more surprised that they’ve now cancelled it, given the huge amount of work (and money) that will have gone into developing it for sale.

We guess we’ll stick to firing the machine guns on the 10262 Aston Martin DB5 007 set or the cannons on a LEGO pirate ship to get our LEGO violence fix instead.