50 years of Lego

[Kinny Riddle]

http://www.time.com/time/world/artic...707379,00.html

Lego Celebrates 50 Years of Building

For devotees, Monday sees the 50th anniversary of an event in Copenhagen that transformed toys and revolutionized childhood itself.

It was at 1:58 p.m. on January 28, 1958, that then-Lego head Godtfred Kirk Christiansen filed a patent for the iconic plastic brick with its stud and hole design. Since then, the company has made a staggering 400 billion Lego elements, or 62 bricks for every person on the planet. And if stacked on top of one another, the pieces would form 10 towers reaching all the way from the Earth to the Moon.

But Lego's legacy lies less in numbers than in its creative influence. The colorful bricks have littered playroom floors for generations of families. But they have also spurred ingenuity among children that few toys can claim before and since. The company has always emphasized the importance of free-form play, and Lego's popularity can be attributed to the amount of imagination children use to build with the bricks.

The Lego company was founded in 1932 by Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen, a carpenter from Billund who had a sideline in wooden toys. He named the company after an amalgamation of the Danish phrase 'leg godt', which means "play well".

The basic eight-stud red Lego brick was first sold in Denmark in 1949. But it took a further nine years for Ole Kirk's son, Godtfred Kirk, to file the patent for the versatile "Automatic Binding Brick" with its interlocking 2x4 studs. The plastic bricks are part of a unique system: tiny tubes inside give the knobs on top of other blocks more places to grip. They hold together well but can be taken apart easily by a child. And consistency has been key: the bricks produced today have the same bumps and holes, and can still interlock with those produced back in 1958. Fifty years on and the Lego Group is the world's fifth largest toymaker in terms of sales, after Mattel, Hasbro, Bandai and MGA Entertainment.

Over the years, the Lego group has built up the brand. It developed the larger Duplo series in the 1960s for younger children who had trouble handling the original tiny Lego bricks (Duplo is still going strong too). In 1968, the company opened its first Legoland theme parks, near its Billund birthplace. Parks in Windsor, England, Carlsbad, California and Günzburg, Germany followed, each using around 50 million bricks to create replicas of monuments and landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, Mount Rushmore, and the Sydney Opera House. Each park receives around 1.4 million visitors per year.

But over the past decade, the group has struggled to keep pace with changing toy trends: the basic plastic bricks find it particularly tough to compete with games consoles like XBox and PlayStation to attract kids' attention. After years of eroding sales, the company posted its first ever losses in 1998.

Radical remedies were needed to restore the brick's reputation. Tie-ins helped: the company's link-up with Star Wars revived the brand, and even led to its own video games: Lego Star Wars II sold 1.1 million units in its first week of release in 2006. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em it would seem.

In recent years, a series of brutal job cuts, asset sales and cost- cutting measures have pruned the company down. Staff numbers have fallen from 6,000 in 2004 to some 4,500 today. The Legoland parks were sold in 2005 to Merlin Entertainments, part of the Blackstone private equity group which owns Madame Tussauds and Sea Life. And critically, distribution, packaging and production has been outsourced to Eastern Europe and Mexico. As a result, the Lego Group turned a $374 million loss in 2004 into a $281 million profit in 2006.

The group itself is only planning low-key celebrations of the patent anniversary: a special-edition of its 1950s-style Town Plan set with three gold bricks, and a worldwide building contest with a grand final at Legoland Billund. And for most Google users Monday — itself a website which keeps building and growing in size — the homepage spelling of the company name in Lego blocks will come across as just another of the web giant's quirks. But for the millions who grew up on the brick — and the millions more still fitting them together — that lunchtime visit to the patent's office proved priceless.

I'm sure most of you who browsed using Google must have noticed even they are celebrating the 50 years since the famous toy bricks were first patented by the Danish company. The anniversary was this Monday the 27th December.

Before PC games really took off, I used to obsess over Lego, and was always no. 1 in my Xmas to get list. The biggest set I ever had was an airport. Though lately, these newer Lego airports just look so much better.

As a brat, I used to dream of building a Lego-scale version of some of the biggest airports in the world, where they could fit all those Lego men inside. Though doing that'll probably cost a fortune.

I used to remember having a hospital, but once I left it in the living and went outside, only to come back to find my baby brother has got it dismantled. Oh, the horror!

To survive the advent of PC games and the internet is an achievement in itself. It's even got popular themes tied with popular titles like Star Wars, Harry Potter and Ferrari. (Perhaps it's time I get that Millennium Falcon)

Anyone else here with memories of these bricks? Good and bad, all are welcome.

[Risaa]

I never was able to have any sets of my own because my parents felt that I should only have "girl toys" (dolls and books, basically). Everytime I would go to my grandparents' house, I looked forward to their huge case of LEGOs. Everyone thought I was so weird for playing with "boy toys" but I'd end up building mansions and things like that.

...Even now when I see LEGOs in stores I feel an urge to get a set. I'll probably get a big tub of them when I officially move out.

Forgot to add, under bad memories? Few things hurt more than walking in the dark and stepping on a LEGO brick.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Haha, I was wondering why Google was appearing in lego bricks. I should've guessed.

[Spectacular_Insanity]

Yay! I have so many Star Wars legos it's tough to count.

I have the BIG sets, like the Star Destroyer and Death Star. I got both done in 3 days flat.

[iamtetsuo]

http://www.brikwars.com/

The best use for Legos ever.

[GomuBlade]

Ah, yes, I played a lot with those things when I was a kid.
I remember building an entire amusement park once (not Legoland). Took me maybe 5-6 hours to finish, I ran out of bricks D:
I even built a rollercoaster, though it kept falling apart so I had to reinforce it several times before it could stand on its own. But it still broke when playing with it

Building was always the most fun part, then I played around with it for maybe an hour or two just to leave it there untouched for weeks.

As for bad memories... I didn't have much free space in my room so that park made it next to impossible to walk in my room. And smart as I am, I placed the rollercoaster next to my bed so I kept breaking it almost every time I got up from the bed
And as Risaa said; Stepping on those darn bricks can hurt like hell.

[Dhomochevsky]

I mainly had lots of lego tech and space stuff.
The tech parts were most important, because they leave you much more freedom to build in all 3 dimensions and you can even built things with moving parts.
The space parts (M-Tron) were for the looks with lots of neon colored transparent details.


What I never liked about Lego,where the big parts, that were one purpose only.
For example the rail tracks, parts of buildings for the airport, or other special big parts. The space branch had lots of them. I usually thought, they shouldve used small standard parts to build those things. From what I see in stores, those special parts are used even more in todays Lego sets. A very bad move, I think.

Bad memories? My fingers always hurting and my nails broken from trying to disassemble my old constructions to salvage important parts. Those little black tech connectors could be REALLY hard to get out of their holes.

[Aoie_Emesai]

I remember having pieces from a bunch of different ones. I wanna buy myself a bunch of sets like Knex ^^

[Kensuke]

I had a lot of legos, and I remember building little towns (with those electric lego trains), Space Shuttles with working cargo bay doors, Viper fighters from Battlestar Galactica (old series of course, this was 1980's ). And I do mean actually building them from old pieces by myself, not using any ready-to-assemble models you can buy from shops.

So, a lot of warm memories.

[Kristen]

Heh. My brother always used to make me play Legos. Though, we really didn't use legos to build, but rather to kind of roleplay. It was funny, thinking back on it now. We used to always fight over things we called "Energies" and "Power Ups" (Those little caps with pictures on it. 2 block ones were Energies, 4 block ones were Power Ups. )
I had a little boat that I built, which sailed to a fun little castle that I built.

[UzumakiW]

Awsome! I loved playing Legos when I was little. I'd spend hours building a bunch of sets. I had so many great sets, like the diver one, the ninja one, a space one, and a bunch of others. I personallylike the older sets from when I was playing with them better than the new ones out.

[Irenicus]

I miss my awesome glorious pirate ship! >_<

and my Medieval castle, and my underwater submarine base, and my random lego pieces ranging from tropical tribal people and their alligators to a bunch of Royal Navy marines...

I remembered how I used to look at those leaflets with Lego sets in them and wished I had them all. Lulz. Sweet memories. Curiously enough I've never been able to get into the more 'modern' and 'relevant' Lego pieces, including Star Wars and the like. I'd lie if I say that I didn't feel betrayed by Lego itself moving on before I did.

So, happy birthday Lego!

[Spectacular_Insanity]

Originally Posted by iamtetsuo

http://www.brikwars.com/

The best use for Legos ever.

LMAO. BRILLIANT.

[Robotnik]

Legos are awesome.

I got some of the original "classic space" sets when I was a kid; still have them packed away somewhere. The bigger space ship designs were really cool, with crew compartments and cargo bays that opened and closed and vehicle ramps that could be raised and lowered. Ah, the memories... I remember pretending the garden outside was an alien planet, and having the Lego ship crash-land there. Then I went in for dinner and it rained, and I spent most of the next morning looking for all the parts in the mud.

As a teen and an adult, I still collected random small sets over the years, mostly space stuff (out of nostalgia), Rock Raiders (sort of a grittier space setting), and some random "adventurers" stuff because of that Indiana Jones vibe. And now of course, there's Exo-Force, which combines mecha and Legos, an instant hit for me. And last year, my brother built me a working Lego "transformer" style robot - how freaking cool is that!

My kid plays with Legos too of course; one year he got most of the Harry Potter sets as presents. I helped him build them, of course.

Someone upthread commented on how the new sets seem to have more "single-use" parts (ship hulls, curved translucent parts, etc that have limited other uses); true, but not many of the new sets are like that, and IMO MegaBloks are consistently a far worse offender on that issue.

Years ago, at a point when I was really getting into making original Lego creations, I remember finding out there was a Lego competition where the winner would get a shot at being a "master builder" at Legoland California. Sometimes I still think I should have ditched work that day and tried out...

[Jinto]

Originally Posted by Dhomochevsky

I mainly had lots of lego tech and space stuff.
The tech parts were most important, because they leave you much more freedom to build in all 3 dimensions and you can even built things with moving parts.
The space parts (M-Tron) were for the looks with lots of neon colored transparent details.


What I never liked about Lego,where the big parts, that were one purpose only.
For example the rail tracks, parts of buildings for the airport, or other special big parts. The space branch had lots of them. I usually thought, they shouldve used small standard parts to build those things. From what I see in stores, those special parts are used even more in todays Lego sets. A very bad move, I think.

Bad memories? My fingers always hurting and my nails broken from trying to disassemble my old constructions to salvage important parts. Those little black tech connectors could be REALLY hard to get out of their holes.

I prefered the Blacktron and Tech sets too.
I build different vehciles, weapons, space ships... when I grew out of it, the last things I build were ultra robust space ships - they had to look cool and not to break easily when falling down ( yeah I liked crash testing a lot ). There the structural elements of the tech sets played a very important role, because one can use those bricks with the many holes in the side as cross bracing. Lego bricks will only disengage in one direction, so securing the construction with a cross bracing makes the construction very robust.