Lego, a great invention

Lego started in 1932, being led by a man named Ole Kirk Kristiansen. Lego is an extremely popular brand and its name is known all around the world.  Lego produces 1 million bricks per hour and only 18 of those are discarded.  Lego is loved by everyone for their plastic, interlockable toys.

  At first, Lego only produced wooden toys, like pull-along-animals and wooden cars.  Lego’s motto in Dutch was Det- Bedste-Er-Ikke-For-Godt, which means the-best-is-not-for-good.  Ole was grateful for his workers.

In 1924, Ole’s sons were playing with matches [Not a good toy at all] when they accidently burned down his entire workshop.  Kirk built another workshop, renting out the extra space.

Then, Ole had a keen idea.  Why not make wooden bricks that could snap and cling to each-other?  Ole then invented the first Lego bricks.  That was when he noticed that the bricks had flaws, for they were whittled by hand.  They also did not snap together easily enough for Ole.  He had heard of England’s plastic injection machines.  So he purchased one and started creating plastic bricks, hoping they would pass muster.  His son helped him produce the first plastic Lego bricks.

Lego’s logo has changed a lot since 1934, when it was black with small streaks of white, to todays, the red background, white bubble letters and yellow stripe outlining the letters.  Lego Dupo’s logo changed also.  The original rabbit looked active and sporty, but the other looked cuter and relaxed.

Lego manufacturing is a complicated process.  The bricks start as small grains, as big as pieces of rice.  A vacuum is then sent over and it gobbles up the grains and carries them to capacious tanks, when, at their fullest, can hold 33 tons of plastic.  The plastic takes a journey through pipes to the molding machines.  The machines suck up the plastic and heat it at 455F, also squashing them between 28 and 165 tons of pressure.  Any leftover Legos or any that fall on the floor are recycled to reduce waste.  The bricks cool, are put on a conveyer belt and tumble into boxes, soon to be organized and packaged by hand.  The machine signals a robot to come over, stamping the boxes as he carries them away to be stored at the warehouse and later shipped to eager children worldwide.

You can tour the Lego factory in Billund, Denmark, or just tour it on You Tube.  They have each stage of manufacturing available for you to see.  You can even receive a Lego Factory brick to take home!  Lego also has a magazine you can subscribe to and many Legolands for you to explore and enjoy.  Lego’s name has become so wide-spread that they now have a website that you can play games on, order sets on and much more!  They also have an activity called Design by Me.  It allows you to design your own Lego set and have it shipped to you!

Lego minifigures are the most important part of sets. [Pirates, city, space, there are minifigures in all of those sets] The first minifigs were buildable families with spherical, yellow heads.  They were too big to fit into Lego sets.  So Lego designed minifigures that would be small and compact enough to fit.  The minifigs today have removable hair, heads, hands, body, pants and moveable legs and arms.  Whew, you could do a lot of mixing parts with those!

Did you know that some people design Lego sets as their jobs?!  Would you like that job?  That’s Nathan Sawaya’s job.  He once was a Lego employee, but now is living in New York and is an artistic Lego designer.  Who would not love to have that cool job?

There are also Lego stores that you can visit if you would like a new set or new bricks.  There are many colors to choose from*, and many designs.  They also sell a variety of key chains.

Through studying a company, you can learn their past, present and sometimes their plans for the future.  I look forward to learning about other companies, perhaps Playmobile or Crazerasers.

-Bella D. March 2, 2011

*Here you can even find customized pieces!