LEGO has been loved by children and adults alike for generations. It might be a household name, but how much do you really know about these iconic building bricks? As the Danish company celebrates its 90th birthday, read on to discover 27 fascinating facts about one of the world's favourite toys – and the super-rich family behind it. All information in this gallery is collected and interpreted by its authors and does not represent the opinion of the LEGO Group.
LEGO was technically founded on 10 August 1932, but the toy company as we know it today wasn't christened until two years later.
Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891-1958), a carpenter from the farming village of Bilund in Denmark, was trying to earn a living making wooden goods. Christiansen produced miniature versions of his products as design aids. These miniatures inspired him to start making wooden toys in 1932.
In 1934 Christiansen named his company LEGO, an elision of the Danish phrase "leg godt," which means "play well." The word can also be translated loosely from the Latin word meaning "I put together."
In 1947, Christiansen purchased his first-ever injection moulding equipment from a representative of Windsor Ltd in the UK. It cost 30,000 DK (the equivalent of $4.6k/£3.8k in today’s money), which was more than twice the previous year’s toy sales profits. LEGO expanded and began producing plastic toys.
To demonstrate the machine’s capabilities, Christiansen was sent sample plastic parts from various moulds. Among these were samples of a toy brick made by Injection Moulders Ltd of London, one of which was British toy creator Hilary Fisher Page’s Kiddicraft brick.
Christiansen and his son Godtfred Kirk took inspiration from toys such as the Interlocking Building Cube and the Self-Locking Building Brick, both of which were patented in the UK in the 1940s, to create the early styles of the LEGO brick we know today.
LEGO launched its first plastic bricks, Automatic Binding Brick sets known as "Gaveæske" (gift sets), in 1949. There were three sizes available: small, medium and large. Although the company had been named LEGO for over a decade, it wasn't until 1953 that these bricks were officially renamed LEGO bricks.
The LEGO group has been a family-owned business for three generations. Founder Ole Kirk Christiansen was succeeded by his son Godtfred Kirk, who for the next 20 years continued the developmental growth of the LEGO Group and started launching its products in other countries. His son Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen (pictured right) took over leadership in 1979 and oversaw the LEGO Group's development into a global brand.
LEGO brick manufacturing happens at different locations around the world. Moulding is done in Billund in Denmark, Nyíregyháza in Hungary, and Monterrey in Mexico – where the business has just opened a new warehouse, moulding hall, and processing facility to expand its operations. Brick decorations and packaging takes place at plants in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico, and Kladno in the Czech Republic.
After starting life in a Danish workshop, LEGO is now available in stores in around 130 countries around the world. However, the business has complied with global sanctions against Russia by suspending shipments of its products to the Russian Federation, a policy that was announced at the start of March after the outbreak of war in Ukraine.
Astonishingly, for every one million pieces of LEGO made, only 18 are rejected. LEGO Group’s production process sees 15 billion components made every year, which means that 1.7 million items are made every hour. LEGO also creates 306 million tiny rubber tires a year. That makes LEGO the world’s number-one tire manufacturer!
When he was 12, Shubham Banerjee from California created a functional Braille printer using his $350 (£240) LEGO MINSTORMS EV3 after he saw a flier asking for donations to help the blind. His prototype is a fraction of the cost of other Braille printers, which are usually purchased at around $2,000 (£1,374) online.
LEGO may have just celebrated its 90th birthday on 10 August, but the toy didn't really become a global phenomenon until 1999. This was partly driven by the success of its new Star Wars line, which arguably changed the fortunes of LEGO forever...
By the 2015 festive season, demand for LEGO was so high that the toy giant was struggling to keep up. This was despite the fact the company had invested a whopping 2.8 billion DKK ($388.6m/£317.2m) in its infrastructure earlier that year.
Big (and little) kids all over the world would love the opportunity to design LEGO sets all day long. As well as getting the chance to work and play, LEGO staff earn decent salaries too. According to data from Indeed.com, average salaries at LEGO range from $14.30 (£11.67) an hour for retail staff to $56,578 (£46.2k) a year for store managers. Meanwhile, the heads of marketing and creative play reportedly earn $110,020 (£90k) a year.
The biggest models LEGO has ever produced are set 10189, which contains 5,922 elements to make a scale model of the Taj Mahal, and 10179 from its Star Wars range, which contains 5,195 elements to build a replica of the Millennium Falcon. These sets were launched in 2008 and 2007 respectively.
Staff numbers have steadily increased as LEGO's popularity has grown. In 2015, 13,974 workers worldwide were employed by the company and this number has risen to over 18,000 in 2022, according to the LEGO website.
According to figures from PlaygroundEquipment.com, LEGO was the world's second-best performing toy company in 2020, recording revenues of $6.99 billion (£5.7bn). Only Bratz manufacturer MGA Entertainment reported higher earnings, with $9.15 billion (£7.5bn). This means LEGO outperformed fellow toy giants Hasbro, Fisher-Price, Playmobil, and Mattel.
There are now 10 LEGOLAND parks across the world. As well as the original park in Denmark, you can find them in Malaysia, Windsor in England, Florida and California in the US, Germany, South Korea and Dubai. In 2005, US private-equity firm Blackstone Group bought the LEGOLAND theme parks in Denmark, England and Germany, and the 176-room hotel in Denmark for $459.2 million (£315.5m).
Theme park constructions are always pricey, but the California LEGOLAND resort cost a staggering $161.8 million (£111.1m) to build.
The LEGO Movie, released in 2014, was a worldwide success, but how much money really went into the "Everything Is Awesome" film?
The filmmakers’ budget was estimated at $60 million (£40.9m). However, the opening weekend alone raked in over $69 million (£47m) in the US and another whopping $11.57 million (£7.88m) in the UK. Overall, it took a worldwide gross of $468 million (£319m).
According to Warner Bros. Pictures, there are a total of 3,863,484 unique LEGO bricks seen in the movie. The studio said that if it was to recreate the entire film only using LEGO pieces it would need 15,080,330. So, if each LEGO piece cost $0.10 per piece that would mean 15 million pieces and a bill of $1.5m (£1m).
In 2000, the British Association of Toy Retailers named LEGO the Toy of the Century, beating the teddy bear and iconic Barbie doll.
LEGO Group rejected Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s request for a bulk order of bricks in October 2018. Ai said his request was declined as his exhibition was thought to be too political. However, Kirk Kristiansen said an employee had misinterpreted company policy on political neutrality and said it was an "internal mistake." LEGO later said customers need to be aware that they don't endorse works shown in public.
In 2019, despite the previous year's difficulties, Ai successfully unveiled a series of LEGO portraits of missing Mexican students at an art gallery in Mexico City. The works featured around one million bricks and depicted the faces of 43 college pupils who had been kidnapped and were never found.
Heading one of the globe's top toy companies certainly has its perks. Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, former president and CEO of the LEGO Group, has an estimated net worth of $7.7 billion (£6.4bn) and is said to be the third-richest Dane in the world. He has three children who share in the family fortune, including his youngest daughter Agnete Kirk Thinggaard who represented Denmark in dressage at the 2016 Olympics.
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