Could Lego be the answer to cutting children’s screen time?
As health chiefs agree that time at screens needs to be limited, maybe Lego is the solution, says Nick Harding
The plate on the door reads “Cleaning”, yet the security pad in the wall requires top-level clearance. Inside, everything is white and one wall is lined with symmetrical drawers on the fronts of which are attached coloured plastic bricks. A man sits at the white worktop opposite dressed in black, except for yellow trainers. Plastic bricks dance in his fingers and the sound they make as they are fitted together is the soundtrack to a million childhoods.
This is the Lego inner sanctum. The man at the desk is brick Svengali Stuart Harris, the senior designer behind one of the most ambitious Lego creations ever built. He is responsible for the Tree of Creativity, a 15.5m model tree made of 6.3million bricks, which would take 12 years for one person to build. He is also behind most of the “big builds” in Lego House, a 26,000 sq ft homage to the world’s favourite plastic brick system located in Billund, Denmark, where Lego was first created by the family firm that still runs the business.
Harris’s other masterpieces include three life-size Lego dinosaurs, a waterfall made of Lego, a series of huge Lego islands populated by thousands of mini-figures and a Lego dog urinating Lego on a Lego lamppost. “Asking me to choose a favourite is like asking a parent to choose their favourite child, it’s impossible,” he says. “Each one took brick, sweat and tears.”
But these are the creations that have made the affable Brit a god among the millions of Lego fans worldwide. Harris counts himself among them; it was his favourite toy as a child and as an adult, one wall in his house is covered with a huge Union Flag made of Lego bricks. He says he even thinks in rectangles.
“I find myself looking at things and working out how they would fit together. When I was little my mum said to me: ‘Maybe you’ll grow up and work for them.’ The concept that adults worked for Lego blew my mind.”
Today, of course, children are more likely to be addicted to their screens than bricks. This week Prof Dame Sally Davies, the country’s chief medical officer, issued the first official advice on screen time – urging parents to ban smartphones from mealtimes and leave them outside bedrooms at night.
The company saw sales drop for the first time in a decade in 2017, yet reports stable growth and a modest rise in sales for the first half of 2018, which suggests Lego is fighting back. The Lego Movie 2 comes out this weekend and will give sales another boost, and Lego has been smart enough to give some of their offerings a digital edge.
Marius Lang, head of marketing, says: “As a company we have to look at how play patterns evolve and how play is being reinvented and see how we can use digital to enhance and augment the physical experience.”
‘When I was little, the concept that adults worked for Lego blew my mind’
One example is the Lego Movie Maker, which lets you build scenery and a set that you can film on a smartphone. There is also Lego Boost, a robot you make from Lego and code to perform actions, and the online Lego World. “A lot of children who love Minecraft also love playing with Lego. We do our part to provide digital experiences but they have to be in child-safe places,” says Lang.
Fundamentally, though, as Harris explains, “The brick always comes first. We amplify the experience with digital, but the brick is king.” His path to Lego greatness began when he studied product design in Bromley. He joined the company in 1993 as a master builder at Legoland Windsor, before moving to Legoland California and then Denmark in 2008. Along with five colleagues, he was chosen to start designing Lego House in 2013 and he’s now one of Lego’s most recognisable human faces.
“I get strangers coming up to me to talk about Lego,” he says, adding that fans queue at events from Oregon to Shanghai to have him sign their boxed sets. “Which then remain unopened or go on ebay,” he jokes. Originals – such as the Millennium Falcon – can fetch thousands among Lego fans.
This weekend, parents taking their children to see The Lego Movie 2 will probably find them begging for one of the 19 new building sets inspired by the film, including the £280 Welcome to Apocalypseburg, which could one day rank as a collectors’ item.
It was designed by another team of Lego superstar designers just as feted as Harris, but etiquette appears to decree that no professional designer takes sole credit for any particular set.
Is there any end to their creativity? Will we see a Lego Trump, or a Lego Corbyn? Not officially, it seems, but that doesn’t mean never say never.
“The great thing about Lego is that it’s a creative medium,” he adds, “so you can use it for whatever form of self-expression you want.”