Lego was not the first toy company to introduce plastic brick. In fact, it did not even start as a toy company at all. How did the idea of Lego brick begin? What made it so special? What did Lego have that other companies didn’t? And how has it managed to stay relevant for all these decades?
It starts with a carpenter from Denmark called Ole Kirk Christiansen who produced a lot of houses for farmers. Due to the Great Depression in 1930 he was forced to downsize his business, making smaller furniture: wooden ironing boards, wooden stepladders and wooden toys. Toys soon became his biggest seller and in 1934 he decides he was going to be a toy manufacturer. He took the first two letters of the Danish words “Leg Godt” (which mean “play well”) and put them together, creating the name Lego.
During the 40s, they started to have problems finding enough wood to maintain the production of wooden toys. So, Ole started to look for something else to supplement the production with. And that’s when he discovers plastic. He made a range of plastic toys but it wasn’t until 1949 when Ole released the Lego Brick.
Other companies had already been producing plastic bricks before Lego, but their colours were dull. Lego got inspired from modernist painter Mondrian and decided to use bright and vivid colours for their bricks.
However, all the bricks at this time were hollow, so you could not build much with the bricks. They would stack but would not stick. So, the founder of the company and his team started experimented, looking at ways to create better stability and make the bricks stick together with just the right “clutch power”.
And in 1958, Lego patented their design of the tubes underneath the brick. Because of the tubes, you can combine the bricks in so many ways. For example, with just six 8-studded Lego brick, you can create 950,103,765 different combinations.
Throughout the years, Lego went through many difficult situations. Expiration of the patent, competition, unsuccessful ideas… All of these almost led Lego to bankruptcy in several occasions. Fortunately, they managed to save the company thanks to a great management and marketing strategy, which made Lego the largest toy company worldwide.
But what made the Lego brick stand out? What makes it great design? It’s not just the vivid colours, or the original idea of the tubes to combine the bricks. It’s “the system”.
Lego introduced “the system” shortly after their release and has been the foundation for the company ever since. “The system”, where all the pieces followed the same guidelines and standards. The pieces from one set could be combined with the pieces from another set to create something completely new. Everything fits together. This allowed users infinite opportunities It changed the way of playing, the mentality of “Buy something, play with it, throw it away and buy something new”. You would never get tired because you could do so many new things with it. In fact, the Lego minifigures from the 1980s will still fit in the Lego sets made today. That is what makes the Lego brick so special in my opinion.
Lego is used by children and adults. “It lets kids exercise creativity and learn some fundamentals of engineering” says Sarah Jensen, researcher at the MIT. Engineers also use Lego to help prototype and model their ideas in a quick way. Thanks to Lego, millions of people around the world have been able to enjoy building toys that they were later able to play with. Most importantly, it encourages everyone to use their imagination, allowing them to shape their thoughts and make their ideas come to life. That’s the power of the Lego brick.