Why Everything You Know About LEGO Websites Is Wrong
De Wikifliping
Lego bricks. Creativity. Childhood. They go together like Mickey Mouse and Disney, wizards and Harry Potter. LEGO Harry Potter has been a part of childhood for more than three generations. Nearly everybody under 50 has played with one of these building blocks of imagination. There's absolutely no telling how many engineers and scientists were spawned by these plastic building blocks.
Lego is synonymous with plastic toy bricks that can be quickly changed into buildings, space ships, cars, boats, trains and a myriad of other toys. The key is the fact that the child gets to assemble the toy from the basic building blocks. Each toy can be assembled, disassembled and reassembled in enough new shapes and forms to tickle the imagination and stretch the youngster's creativity.
Today, Lego will be much more that the simple blocks invented in 1949. It's toys, theme parks, movies, and CDs. Lego building blocks as well as other products are distributed all over the world. These tiny plastic bricks as well as the company they have built, are a phenomenon with a success as remarkable as Mickey Mouse.
Where did Lego come from and how did it get to be such a vital tool for childhood creativity?
Our story begins in Billund, Denmark. It's 1932. Master carpenter and joiner Ole Kirk Kristiansen opened a brand new business. His little company makes stepladders, ironing boards and wooden toys. He has just six employees. Nobody could have imagined, but Lego and also the little building blocks of imagination had just been born.
Two years later, Kristiansen adopted the name Lego as a brand name for his toys. The name is derived from the Danish words "leg godt," which mean "play well." Ironically, he later discovered that Lego in Latin means "I put together." Lego has truly come to mean "put together" and "play well" in practically every language. At the moment, all the company's toys were being made from wood.
In 1942, the Lego factory burned to the ground. Kristiansen rebuilt.
In 1947, the Lego Company became the very first company in Denmark to buy an injection-molding machine. It began making plastic toy dolls as well as other toys. The famous bricks were yet to be invented.
It was not until 1949 that the Lego company introduced the Automatic Binding Brick, a little plastic brick, some with four studs and some with eight. In the present day, the company was producing about 200 different plastic toys. The Automatic Binding Brick was sold exclusively in Denmark.
By 1950, plastic toys became half of the company's business. Ole Kirk's son, Godtfred Kirk, who had worked in the company since age 12, was appointed junior vice president at age 30.
In 1954, Godtfred Kirk made a trip to England to meet with a purchasing agent. The purchasing agent told Kristiansen that he thought the Automatic Binding Bricks lacked an idea and system. Godtfred returned to Denmark. The Lego System was developed.
The following year, Godtfred introduced the Lego System at a toy fair in Germany. It was the first time it was introduced outside of Denmark. The end result were disappointing. Kristiansen did not give up. Later that year, the Lego System Play was developed. It was an improved system for the Lego bricks. The Lego System Play was exported to Sweden, where it sold well.
In 1959, Lego bricks and also the Lego System were introduced in Great Britain, France, and Belgium.
It was not until 1961 that Lego bricks were first marketed in the United States of America and Canada. They were an immediate hit and distribution across the globe continued. Through the end of that decade, 843 people in Billund worked for the Lego company. The first Legoland film was produced. In 1969, the DUPLO system for children under age five was introduced.
By 1970, there have been almost 1,000 employees at the plant in Billund.
In 1980, the Educational Products Department was established. The DUPLO Rabbit logo was introduced as well as a survey indicated that 70 percent of all Western European families with children under age 14 had Lego within their home.
As 1990 unfolded, the Lego Group had become among the world's 10 largest toy manufacturers and also the only toy company of that size in Europe. The others were in Japan as well as the USA More than one million people visited the LEGOLAND theme park and Godtfred Kirk Kristiansen celebrated his 70th birthday. Lego Publishing was renamed Lego Licensing as well as the LEGOLAND Band issued an LP.
With the beginning of the new century, LEGO keeps increasing. It has also continued to remain a family owned company. These days, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, the grandson of Ole Kirk, runs the company.
Lego bricks are more than just building blocks. They are learning toys. They build on favorite themes and children's stories and permit the child to exercise his or her own imagination and creativity. Offshoots of the basic brick include such toys as Lego Robotics, Star Wars Lego, Harry Potter Legos and several other building toys and kids' games. It's truly amazing what a few bricks and a full measure of imagination will produce.
