Lego has ditched a long-standing partnership with Shell, after a Greenpeace video used its toys to illustrate an Arctic oil spill.
The decision comes after the slick parody video by the environmental group went viral online, garnering more than 5 million YouTube hits, over the oil giant's plan to drill in the Arctic.
Using Lego blocks, the video starts by showing animals in pristine snowy wilderness before moving on to a scene of heavy machinery drilling for oil.
To gentle background music a Shell branded road tanker and petrol station are brought into view - before it zooms in on a pin-striped businessman smoking a cigar on a Shell offshore drilling rig.
A crude oil slick then starts spreading before the Arctic 'drowns' in a black morass.
The video ends with two captions: "Shell is polluting our kids' imaginations.
"Tell Lego to end its partnership with Shell".
Lego products are currently sold at Shell petrol stations in more than two dozen countries, in a deal estimated at £68m.
In response to the campaign Lego CEO Jorgen Vig Knudstorp said the current deal with the Anglo-Dutch Shell, negotiated in 2011, would not be renewed.
"We want to clarify that as things currently stand we will not renew the co-promotion contract with Shell when the present contract ends," the company said in a statement.
"A co-promotion like the one with Shell is one of many ways we are able to bring Lego bricks into the hands of more children and deliver on our promise of creative play."
Lego, the world's biggest toy manufacturer, added: "The Greenpeace campaign uses the Lego brand to target Shell.
"As we have stated before, we firmly believe Greenpeace ought to have a direct conversation with Shell.
"The Lego brand, and everyone who enjoys creative play, should never have become part of Greenpeace's dispute with Shell."
The oil company would not be drawn into the exact business dealings it has with the Danish toy firm.
A Shell spokesman told Sky News: "Our latest co-promotion with Lego has been a great success and will continue to be as we roll it out in more countries across the world.
"We don't comment on contractual matters."
Greenpeace said that within the last three months Lego was swamped with more than 1 million complaints.
Its Arctic campaigner Ian Duff said: "This is a major blow to Shell. It desperately needs partners like Lego to help give it respectability and repair the major brand damage it suffered after its last Arctic misadventure.
"Lego's withdrawal from a 50-year relationship with Shell clearly shows that strategy will not work."
Greenpeace previously targeted Lego's US-rival Mattel, over Asian pulp and paper used as packaging for its Barbie dolls.
Founded in the interwar period, wood-based Lego was replaced by plastic components around 1947. Petroleum by-products are used as feedstock for plastics and as an energy source in their manufacture.
Naomi Klein, author of global warming book This Changes Everything, told Sky News Business Presenter Ian King that the capitulation by Lego is part of a wider trend.
"A lot has to do with carbon bubble research showing these companies have five times more carbon in their reserves than our atmosphere can safely absorb," Ms Klein said.
"Since that research has come out it has been a game-changer and this is one more sign of that."
:: Naomi Klein will be interviewed by Ian King Live, tonight at 6.30pm.
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