Brick by brick, one man laid the foundations of multi-billion dollar toy
The company motto is “Only the best is good enough” but perhaps it should be “Everything is awesome”.
On January 28, 1958, Danish company Lego filed a patent for the design of its new toy and learning tool.
Simple plastic building blocks which fit together in a variety of ways might not have seemed revolutionary but the idea has helped – fittingly – build an unlikely success story.
The idea was borne from the mind of Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Kristiansen. He moved from traditional woodwork to forging a career making wooden toys such as yo-yos, pull-along animals and trucks.
His career was mixed up to the point where he decided to focus on creating children’s toys, later saying: “Not until the day when I said to myself, ‘You must make a choice between carpentry and toys’ did I find the real answer.”
He used the Danish phrase “leg godt” meaning “play well” to create the name of his modest business, Lego.
Ole ensured his wooden creations were of the highest standard, using birch wood from Danish forests, sealed and primed before being varnished three times.
Despite their obvious quality, Ole struggled due to the poverty in rural Denmark and he ended up exchanging his toys for food in order to survive.
In 1947, Lego became the first company in the country to buy a plastic moulding machine, which was so expensive it cost two years’ profit.
Ole’s son championed the idea of using the machine to create building bricks. The idea for Lego was eventually patented two months before Ole’s death, aged just 66.
Had he lived he would have seen how Lego became not just the biggest toy manufacturer in the world, but also a powerful brand.
The idea behind the bricks was to create a toy which was not only fun to play with but also encouraged creativity and aided learning. That’s the reason they’re often found in schools to this day.
And if you were to take a standard Lego set now and add blocks created in 1958 the bricks would fit together. The design of the blocks, with their distinctive studs, has never changed.
There’s also a surprising amount of precision in the toys. The machines which create them are accurate to 10 micrometres, which is about a hundredth of a millimetre. In other words, it’s incredibly accurate for a children’s toy, and part of the reason the blocks hold together so perfectly.
The building bricks became a global success and were quickly followed a decade later by the Duplo range, which were bricks aimed at younger children.
In 1978, the distinctive mini figures were added to playsets, and have become stars in their own right.
The company has produced more than 600 billion Lego parts since 1958 and is now a multi-billion dollar business.
Basic Lego sets can now be augmented with characters, vehicles and buildings based on movies and TV series such as Harry Potter, Star Wars and even Friends.
Characters based on the brand’s figures starred in the The Lego Movie, which was a blockbuster hit in 2014 and it has had a sequel and two spin-offs.
The Lego Movie even produced a catchy hit single, called Everything Is Awesome.
For the Danish toy brand which continues to build and build, it really is.