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Lego

Lego is a brand of plastic construction toys manufactured by The Lego Group, a company based out of Billund, Denmark. Lego was originally founded in 1932, and today the product consists of large varieties of colorful interlocking bricks, other mechanisms such as gears, and figurines called minifigures. Lego bricks are designed to be interlocked with their stud design that allows the bricks to hold together relatively sturdily, but also easily deconstructed even by a child. This means Lego bricks can be combined in an uncountable number of ways and thus the primary focus of the product is to encourage creativity, particularly to help children learn through use of creativity.

Lego has had a sizable impact on the culture of the countries where sale and use of Lego is prominent, namely the United States, and has also largely impacted many forms of media, primarily in the form of Video Games, however Lego has also appeared in Board games and Television and Film. Lego has over the years become a very successful company and has also received a large amount of praise, namely being named "Toy of the Century" by Fortune magazine in 2000.

History

Lego was originally founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Kristiansen. His philosophy was that play was absolutely vital to a child's growth and development, and that creative expression through play will enrich a child's life. With this in mind, he originally made toys at his Lego company out of wood. He named the toys after a combination of the danish words "Leg Godt", which translates to "play well". At the time, Kristiansen did not even realize that this also, rather fittingly, translates to "i put together" in Latin. In the beginning of the Lego company, the famous modern day Lego brick was not yet created, rather the company made other construction toys, mostly made out of wood. The first toy created by the Lego company was a wooden duck construction toy.

Another of Kristiansen's mottos was "Only the best is good enough".

In 1949 the "automatic binding brick" design is created and added to the toys that Lego creates. This design was the forerunner to the modern day Lego brick, and its design has remained Mostly the same save a few minor changes to the specifics of the design over the years. These are dubbed the name Lego bricks in 1953, and that same year the application to trademark the name was made, and it was granted the following year. In 1955 the "Lego system of play" is created, which included 28 sets and 8 vehicles. This is also the first year where exports begin occurring. It wasn't until 1957 that the Lego interlocking principle was invented, the beginning of the modern day Lego bricks.

In 1959 the company begins to expand. In this year Lego France, Belgium, and Sweden are established, as well as Britain Lego Ltd. These were the first main additions to the company, though it continued to expand over the years to a multitude of countries across the world. The Lego company now also uses highly automated machinery, so automated that one man was able to operate two machines simultaneously. In 1961 the first production and sale of Lego in america begins with Samsonite corp. On top of this expansion, Legoland in Billund opens its doors in 1969, which attracts 3000 visitors on the first day, and 625,000 in the first season.

In 1978 the famous Lego minifigures were created. These were small Lego characters with movable arms and legs that became a staple of Lego, and a staple of many Lego sets. This was very important to the development of Lego sets as most required the inclusion of characters, most notably licensed sets, whose characters are very important. At 4 million minifigures created, these little characters technically count as the world's largest population group.

In 1999, Lego Mindstorm was released. This was an interesting and somewhat significant step as the world of electronics was incorporated into the now famous toy. Mindstorm has had a significant impact on robotics and has also led to interesting and progressive inventions such as the Lego prosthetic arm.

Structure

Lego bricks all have a basic design of a block with small studs on one side, and tubes on the other that created snug holes for the studs to fit into, allowing the bricks to interlock. This design allows the bricks to be combined in ways that allow for ceative construction of just about anything the user can imagine. Two blocks can be combined a total of 24 different ways, and just six can be combined in just over 915 million unique ways. Although through its history Lego has sold a variety of other toys (primarily in it's early years), and the design of the famous Lego brick has changed slightly this brick has been the primary product of the Lego group since it was designed.

Another structure of Lego bricks that uses the same design are the DUPLO blocks. These are Lego bricks of the same design but are marketed towards children under 5. DUPLO blocks are much larger, twice as long, wide, and tall as normal Lego blocks. This size increase serves two purposes to enable the fun of Lego to be brought to under 5s. First, their smaller and less coordinated hands are able to easily manipulate the larger blocks, and as an added bonus, the larger blocks are much less of a choking hazard for them.

Lego was also sold as more than simple collections of the basic Lego bricks. Lego also releases many themed sets based on many things, some even including licensed titles from movies and video games. Thousands of sets have been released over the years with a wide variety of themes. Some sets based on movies have been very popular such as Indiana Jones, and Harry Potter but some concern about how these sets undermine the point of Lego as they are less conducive to expressing creativity, as the exact construction of the set is already determined for the user. Lego has expressed a desire to not rely on these precreated and licensed sets, wanting to rely on success from their traditional Lego.

A particularly progressive Lego set that has been created was the Lego Mindstorm, a programmable brick that is usable in creation of robotics. One incredible use of this set was the development of Lego prosthetics. A Danish experimental toy research department has been using Mindstorm to develop potential Lego prosthetic arms. This creation allows children with this particular disability to not only have a useful prosthetic limb that can also be a fun experience. This creation allows children to create any arm extention limited only by their imagination, and what they can find in a box of Lego bricks. The creation of a fully customizable and programable prosthetic limb is a perfect fit for creative children with a major disability, as shown by this video.

Services

Website

The lego website is a very extensive resource for Lego. While having the expected resources such as online catalogs and ordering capabilities there is a thriving community on the website. It encourages almost social media like interaction between Lego fans with the "My Lego Network" functionality. This system has options such as Lego builds, community message boards, videos, articles, and even Lego themed games available to users. Badges and trophies can also be earned by users through both actions taken on the site as well as building in real life with Lego.

Lego Land

Lego land is a Lego theme park with all the expected commodities of theme parks, such as rides and shops. There are currently 7 Lego land locations globally, one in the hometown of Lego; Billund, Denmark, one in England, Germany, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as two in the USA, both Florida and California. On top of this there are numerous smaller locations known as Lego Discovery Centers. The Lego land theme park has slowly progressed over the years, the first one having opened in 1968, and some not having opened until very recently, such as the Florida location, opened in 2011.

Stores

Lego retail store locations are stocked with large amounts, as well as large varieties of Lego products, as expected. They also have a unique feature in retail stores in which customers can select Lego pieces from a wall of parts, allowing them to select the parts they want to build whatever they want. Lego stores also have a very interesting opening ritual where a professional gets some help, usually from kids to build a massive Lego creation of some kind on opening week. For example, the Polo Park Shopping Centre in Winnipeg has an 8 foot tall Yoda model made entirely out of Lego. In total, there are 125 Lego retail store locations globally. The united states by far has the most with 80 store locations. On top of this there are 13 in the UK, 11 in Germany, 10 in Canada, 6 in France, 2 in Austria, and 1 in Belgium, Sweden, and Denmark.

Related Products (Antecedents)

Video Games

There are a large number of Lego video games, including a few early games such as Lego Creator, branching out later into a plethora of licensed games. The most popular and well known of these titles undoubtedly is the Lego Star Wars series, however there are a number of others including games based on Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Batman, and even Marvel superheroes. Recently, a video game based on the Lego Movie was created due to the movie's popularity.

Board Games

In 2009 a few Lego themed board games were designed by Cephas Howard and Reiner Knizia. These board games were very true to the general concept of Lego: construction and creativity. In these games both the characters and the board are made out of Lego, and they have a very unique mechanic to Board Games, the ability to play with the game, meaning fun things such as changing the rules as well as the board. One early in development example of this idea was a simple "Climb the Mountain" game, where players raced eachother to the top of a Lego mountain. The ability to change the board and push other players off the mountain made it a very interesting and unique board game. Some examples of final games that were released are "Minotaurs" a labyrinth path finding game, "Creationary" which as the name suggests is similar to pictionary but with building with Lego rather than simple drawing, and "Ramses Pyramid" similar to the mountain climbing game where players collect gems and make their way up a customizable pyramid.

Film and TV

Lego has had a less significant impact on the Film and Television form of media than on others (such as video games). However, in 2011 a computer generated animated series based on the "Lego Ninjago" sets began, with the development of a feature film based on the same announced in 2013. In 2014 The Lego Movie was released. It was a feature film based on lego toys and had a number of particularly well known and successful actors and actresses as the voices for the movie, such as Christ Pratt, Will Arnett, Morgan Freeman, Alison Brie, Will Ferrell, and Nick Offerman. The Lego Movie was met with critical success, and was a very popular movie, so much so that a Video Game was created by demand due to the popularity of The Lego Movie.

Numbers

Interesting statistics and other numerical facts about the Lego brand.

The global workforce of the Lego Group consists of approximately 7000 people.
Originally, it was believed that 6 bricks could be combined 102,981,500 unique ways, however the math actually indicated this number is closer to 915 million unique combinations.
Approximately 19 million Lego units are made in Billund a year. This is equivalent to 2 million per hour and 36,000 per second.
On average, there exist 62 Lego Bricks per person on planet earth.
Since its creation, the Lego set "BIONICLE" has had more BIONICLE "beings" born than the total population of France and Britain combined.
The machines that create Lego bricks have a tolerance of about 0.002 millimeters
Since 1949 an estimated 440 billion Lego units have been created

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