Not just another brick in the wall
At 50, Lego is still going strong despite high-tech toys
Lego's colourful bricks that have inspired children's imaginations worldwide celebrated their 50th anniversary this week after resisting fierce competition from high-tech computer games that nearly brought the company down a few years ago.
On January 28, 1958, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen submitted a patent for the interlocking and studded plastic brick that can now be found in almost every child's toy box. The simple building block has become one of the most well-known and popular toys in the world. The key to its success?
"The Lego brick doesn't age with time and continues to fascinate because it allows children, and others, to develop their creativity, imagination and curiosity and let it wander free," says Charlotte Simonsen, a spokesman at Lego's headquarters in the western Danish town of Billund.
The family company Lego, whose name comes from the first two letters of the Danish words leg godt or "play well" in English, was founded before the invention of the famous block, by Ole Kristiansen in 1932.
The company's iconic toy allows an infinite number of assembly combinations. With just two bricks there are 24 different combinations, and with six there are 915 million possibilities, according to Lego.
A half-century after its creation, more than 400 million children and adults play each year with the bricks, spending five billion hours a year putting them together and pulling them apart. The bricks made today can still interlock with those made in the first batch in 1958, note avid Lego fans.
And make no mistake about it, Lego bricks are not just child's play - they also capture the imagination of adults.
Primo, Quatro, Duplo, Toolo, Technic, Mindstorm... new Lego bricks have been developed throughout the years to suit the needs of babies and adolescents, the pieces' perfect fit making piracy difficult.
After its planetary success, Lego experienced a severe crisis at the end of the 1990s, hit hard by fierce competition from interactive electronic and computer games which brought the Danish company to its knees for the first time in its history.
Named Toy of the Century in 1999 by US business magazine Fortune, Lego suffered through a dark period that risked relegating the plastic brick to the history books.
The company had diversified into theme parks and branded products, including clothing, books, watches and multimedia games, but reported millions of dollars in losses in 1998, 2000, 2003 and 2004.
Some experts were quick to eulogise the colourful brick, including educationalist and toy researcher Torben Hangaard Rasmussen.
"Lego bricks belong to the industrial era when children liked to build things, playing wannabe engineers. Nowadays, the most popular toys are inspired by the virtual world," he said in 2004.
Then, at the height of Lego's crisis, owner and chief executive officer Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen tried to get a hold on the situation and save the family business from bankruptcy, injecting more than 800 million kroner (€107 million) of his personal fortune into the business.
Several months later he resigned as chief executive, handing over the reins to 35-year-old Joergen Vig Knudstorp, who brought a breath of fresh air to the company. Determined to bring the company back to financial stability, he proceeded to lay off staff, focus on core operations and close down production sites.
The company began to prosper again, and in 2006 it posted sales of 7.8 billion kroner (€1.04 billion) in 130 countries and a 1.4 billion kroner net profit.
Seven boxes of Lego are sold every second around the world, and 19 billion components are produced each year - enough to wrap around the earth's circumference five times.
How Lego bricks are made
During the moulding process, the plastic is heated in 232°C until its consistency is about that of dough. It is then injected into the moulds at a pressure of 25-150 tonnes, depending on which element is being produced. It takes seven seconds to cool and eject new elements. The moulds used in production are accurate to within two-thousandth of a millimetre (0.0002mm), and the accuracy of the moulding process means that only 18 elements in every million produced fail to meet the company's high quality standard.
Fun Lego facts
• More than 400 million children and adults play with Lego bricks every year.
• Lego products are on sale in more than 130 countries.
• If you build a column of about 40,000,000,000 Lego bricks, it would reach the moon.
• Approximately 19 billion Lego elements are made every year in Billund - equivalent to approximately two million elements an hour or 36,000 a minute.
• If all Lego sets sold in a year were stacked on top of each other, they would fill a football field to a height of 77.8 metres.
• On average, there are 62 Lego bricks for every person on earth.
• The eight robots and 15 automatic cranes that work in the Lego warehouse in Billund can shift 660 crates of bricks in and out every hour.
• Approximately 400 billion Lego elements have been manufactured since 1949.
On January 28, 1958, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen submitted a patent for the interlocking and studded plastic brick that can now be found in almost every child's toy box. The simple building block has become one of the most well-known and popular toys in the world. The key to its success?
"The Lego brick doesn't age with time and continues to fascinate because it allows children, and others, to develop their creativity, imagination and curiosity and let it wander free," says Charlotte Simonsen, a spokesman at Lego's headquarters in the western Danish town of Billund.
The family company Lego, whose name comes from the first two letters of the Danish words leg godt or "play well" in English, was founded before the invention of the famous block, by Ole Kristiansen in 1932.
The company's iconic toy allows an infinite number of assembly combinations. With just two bricks there are 24 different combinations, and with six there are 915 million possibilities, according to Lego.
A half-century after its creation, more than 400 million children and adults play each year with the bricks, spending five billion hours a year putting them together and pulling them apart. The bricks made today can still interlock with those made in the first batch in 1958, note avid Lego fans.
And make no mistake about it, Lego bricks are not just child's play - they also capture the imagination of adults.
Primo, Quatro, Duplo, Toolo, Technic, Mindstorm... new Lego bricks have been developed throughout the years to suit the needs of babies and adolescents, the pieces' perfect fit making piracy difficult.
After its planetary success, Lego experienced a severe crisis at the end of the 1990s, hit hard by fierce competition from interactive electronic and computer games which brought the Danish company to its knees for the first time in its history.
Named Toy of the Century in 1999 by US business magazine Fortune, Lego suffered through a dark period that risked relegating the plastic brick to the history books.
The company had diversified into theme parks and branded products, including clothing, books, watches and multimedia games, but reported millions of dollars in losses in 1998, 2000, 2003 and 2004.
Some experts were quick to eulogise the colourful brick, including educationalist and toy researcher Torben Hangaard Rasmussen.
"Lego bricks belong to the industrial era when children liked to build things, playing wannabe engineers. Nowadays, the most popular toys are inspired by the virtual world," he said in 2004.
Then, at the height of Lego's crisis, owner and chief executive officer Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen tried to get a hold on the situation and save the family business from bankruptcy, injecting more than 800 million kroner (€107 million) of his personal fortune into the business.
Several months later he resigned as chief executive, handing over the reins to 35-year-old Joergen Vig Knudstorp, who brought a breath of fresh air to the company. Determined to bring the company back to financial stability, he proceeded to lay off staff, focus on core operations and close down production sites.
The company began to prosper again, and in 2006 it posted sales of 7.8 billion kroner (€1.04 billion) in 130 countries and a 1.4 billion kroner net profit.
Seven boxes of Lego are sold every second around the world, and 19 billion components are produced each year - enough to wrap around the earth's circumference five times.
How Lego bricks are made
During the moulding process, the plastic is heated in 232°C until its consistency is about that of dough. It is then injected into the moulds at a pressure of 25-150 tonnes, depending on which element is being produced. It takes seven seconds to cool and eject new elements. The moulds used in production are accurate to within two-thousandth of a millimetre (0.0002mm), and the accuracy of the moulding process means that only 18 elements in every million produced fail to meet the company's high quality standard.
Fun Lego facts
• More than 400 million children and adults play with Lego bricks every year.
• Lego products are on sale in more than 130 countries.
• If you build a column of about 40,000,000,000 Lego bricks, it would reach the moon.
• Approximately 19 billion Lego elements are made every year in Billund - equivalent to approximately two million elements an hour or 36,000 a minute.
• If all Lego sets sold in a year were stacked on top of each other, they would fill a football field to a height of 77.8 metres.
• On average, there are 62 Lego bricks for every person on earth.
• The eight robots and 15 automatic cranes that work in the Lego warehouse in Billund can shift 660 crates of bricks in and out every hour.
• Approximately 400 billion Lego elements have been manufactured since 1949.