HOW A DANISH CARPENTER CONQUERED THE WORLD’S TOYSHOPS

Lego is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, which is based in Billund, Denmark.

The company’s flagship product, Lego, consists of colourful, interlocking plastic bricks accompanying an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and other parts.

As every little boy and girl (and mum and dad) knows, Lego pieces can be assembled and connected to construct objects, vehicles, buildings and working robots. The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949.

Since then it has become a global brand, with six Legoland amusement parks now in existence.

As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.

In February 2015, Lego replaced Ferrari as Brand Finance’s “world’s most powerful brand”.

The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958), a carpenter from Billund, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called Lego, derived from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means “play well”.

In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys and two years later began producing an early version of the interlocking bricks.

The bricks, originally manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of the traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time.

The modern Lego brick design was patented on January 28, 1958.

The Bricks Britannia exhibition, to open at Easter, will feature models of Pullman carriages and street scenes