Lego – Only the Best is Good Enough

The Lego group originates from the workshop of a Danish carpenter, Ole Kirk Christiansen, who began making wooden toys in 1932.The name Lego (from the Danish “play-well”) appears in 1934. Christiansen expanded its production to plastic toys in 1947 and the famous interlocking bricks were born in 1949. From this invention, the whole Lego concept was born, and the brand has since known a permanent expansion. 

Thousands of different sets were released, all of which were very appealing for boys of all generations : town and city, space, robots, pirates, trains, Vikings, castle, dinosaurs, undersea exploration and wild west.

But Lego tried to target more than just boys, so along with releasing new sets for boys, they created new lines of products, all using the same construction concepts :

-         -   Duplo, created in 1969, is a range of simple blocks which measure twice the width, height and depth of standard Lego blocks. This line, dedicated to children from 1 to 5 years old, includes a farm, a zoo and many other sets based on animals.

-          - Belville and Clikit are lines dedicated to young girls, using the same bricks as standard Lego sets but with girly colors. The line offer girly sets such as a horse-riding club, a princess castle...

-          - Bionicle (now Hero factory) and Lego Technics make it possible for Lego to target teenagers. These more complex sets include motors, gears, lights, cameras and many mechanics tools that can be used with Lego components to build motorized vehicles for example.

Technical expertise has become more and more important for Lego. Along with creating play sets for children, they launched many scientific projects using Lego bricks and technical materials. We could quote the program Lego Bricks in Space which include experiments made in the International SpaceStation to know how Lego models react in microgravity ; but Lego main activity regarding the scientific experimentation is the robot conception and building. They developed Robot sets that can be programmed through the use of Windows or Apple softwares. These robots are used for both scientific experiments and Lego fans entertainment : robot tournaments are organized by Lego every year, such as the Junior First Lego League that gathered in 2010 12,882 students in the United States and Canada.

Building a substantial universe around the bricks sets has been one of Lego’s main goals for a very long time. They widen their activities to the production of movies and video games, the creation of theme parks etc. In order to be closer to their customers, they also created amazing retails stores in which one can find almost any kind of brick, set or figure he is looking for. 

Lego Store in New York City