The building block is one of the most popular toys in the worldCOPENHAGEN: Lego’s colourful bricks that have inspired kids’ imaginations worldwide celebrated their 50th anniversary Monday after resisting fierce competition from high-tech computer games that nearly brought the company down a few years ago.
On January 28, 1958, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen submitted a patent for the interlocking and studded plastic brick that can now be found in almost every child’s toy box.
The simple building block has become one of the most well-known and popular toys in the world.
The key to its success? “The Lego brick doesn’t age with time and continues to fascinate because it allows children, and others, to develop their creativity, imagination and curiosity and let it wander free,” said Charlotte Simonsen, a spokeswoman at Lego’s headquarters in the western Danish town of Billund.
The family company Lego, whose name comes from the first two letters of the Danish words “Leg godt” or “play well” in English, was founded before the invention of the famous block, by Ole Kristiansen in 1932.
The company’s iconic toy allows an infinite number of assembly combinations. With just two bricks there are 24 different combinations, and with six there are 915 million possibilities, according to Lego.
A half-century after its creation, more than 400 million children and adults play each year with the bricks, spending five billion hours a year putting them together and pulling them apart. The bricks made today can still interlock with those made in the first batch in 1958, note avid Lego fans. And make no mistake about it, Lego bricks are not just child’s play — they also capture the imagination of adults.
South Korean adventurer Heo Young-Ho, who climbed Mount Everest in 1987, left a Lego toy behind in the snow after his ascent. “I’ve kept a box in the attic with Lego from my childhood.
They never go out of style and they box is full of memories of long hours spent building things with my friends,” said 21-year-old Alexander.
Primo, Quatro, Duplo, Toolo, Technic, Mindstorm... New Lego bricks have been developed throughout the years to suit the needs of babies and adolescents, the pieces’ perfect fit making piracy difficult.
After its planetary success, Lego experienced a severe crisis at the end of the 1990s, hit hard by fierce competition from interactive electronic and computer games which brought the Danish company to its knees for the first time in its history.
Named “Toy of the Century” in 1999 by US business magazine Fortune, Lego suffered through a dark period that last several years that risked relegating the plastic brick to the history books.
The company had diversified into theme parks and branded products, including clothing, books, watches and multimedia games, but reported millions of dollars in losses in 1998, 2000, 2003 and 2004.
Some experts were quick to eulogise the colourful brick, including educationalist and toy researcher Torben Hangaard Rasmussen.
