The Lego brand debuted in August 1932, in a small town called Billund in Denmark. A local carpenter named Ole Kirk Christiansen, who at the time was building houses for farmers, found himself facing a severe financial crisis due to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Determined to overcome the crisis, he turned his home into his company and began producing small furniture items and then wooden toys, including the famous wheeled duck depicted below. “Billund Carpentry” was not a very appealing name for a toy company, so in 1934, the brand Lego was born from the first two letters of the words “Leg Godt,” which in Danish means “play well.” Helping children play well became the philosophy.
A golden era began for the company, and Denmark finally had domestic toy lines to place on store shelves, as most toys were of German production. When Germany invaded Denmark during the war, the appeal of German toys declined for obvious reasons. Most toys were made of metal, which was needed for war purposes at the time, creating a vast market space for Danish wooden toys. Lego, therefore, experienced significant expansion from the outset. After the war, Lego’s sales increased substantially, so much so that they could not find enough wood to meet the ever-growing demand.
In 1942, the company caught fire, and given the production was entirely based on wood, this halted sales for a period. It was at that moment that the first plastic molding machines began to emerge, and Ole quickly bought one. In 1949, after years of planning, the first Lego model was launched on the market, called “Automatic Binding Bricks.”
The competition was already present, for example, in the UK there were “Self-Locking Building Bricks,” but like the paintings of Mondrian from which they took inspiration, the bright colors of Lego bricks made them stand out significantly from all others.
The name of the bricks was soon changed by Ole and his son Godtfred, who had become part of the company, to “Lego Mursten,” which in Danish means “Lego Brick.” In 1955, the first Lego Town was released.
With this first line, the company began to understand the flaws that the bricks presented: the main issue was that the bricks were hollow inside and did not lock together well. They realized that greater stability was needed, and in July 1958, after several years of study, the most important moment in Lego history arrived: the officialization of the patent filed by Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, concerning the cylinders inserted into the lower cavity of the bricks, resulting in the brick as we know it today. In the years that followed, patents were gradually obtained for every shape of Lego brick.
Unfortunately, in the same year, the founder Ole Kirk Christiansen passed away. That year, he literally gave his life for his company and future generations.
The golden rule to follow in the Lego house was one: The System. The system says that all Lego elements fit together, can be used in multiple ways, and every element can perfectly interlock with another. Interestingly, thanks to these patents, there are about 950,103,765 different combinations for interlocking Lego pieces today.
In the mid-1950s, Lego began printing its logo on the bricks, and today, over 60 years later, Lego strictly follows The System, and the bricks have remained faithful to what they were at the beginning. What other major toy brand can boast of selling the same products for over sixty years and still being among the market leaders?
In 1957, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, Ole’s third son, officially became the company’s CEO and took over after his father’s death. Lego was in strong expansion, and after another major fire broke out in the woodworking department in 1960, they decided to permanently cease wooden toy production. This move was enabled by the solid sales of plastic bricks.
In those years, Lego had about 450 employees, and by 1961, it was selling 57 different product lines in 11 countries. Soon after, they obtained the license for the United States, entrusting production to a company that didn’t exactly deal with toys but with suitcases: Samsonite. This was possible because the president of Samsonite, while on vacation in Denmark, saw Lego in a store and fell in love with it.
Business struggled to take off in the USA, but not in the rest of the world: by the 1960s, Lego was selling its products in 42 different countries.
The brand exploded to such an extent that Godtfred had to come up with an idea to keep fans away from the factories, and this idea is called Legoland! The famous chain of Lego-branded amusement parks, which today has 10 locations worldwide, was first opened in 1968 in Billund, Denmark.
In the 1970s, the American license belonging to Samsonite expired, and Lego took direct control of sales in the USA. Toys reminiscent of war were heavily demonized, so Lego cleverly decided to promote peace and promised the public that it would never produce toys that could in any way refer to weapons.
This choice was very difficult to maintain, considering the variety of combinations that could lead to building a weapon or a tank with Lego bricks. Choices were made, such as making the castle in the Lego Castle series yellow so that children wouldn’t be inclined to build tanks with the gray pieces. Unfortunately, this choice had to be reversed as the yellow color reduced the sales of the Lego Castle set.
In the 1970s, Lego boasted 1% of the entire Danish export, and annual sales were about 300 million dollars.
Kjeld Kirk Christiansen, Godtfred’s son, took over in 1979 and immediately had an intuition that no one had yet had: Lego Mini Figures, the Lego characters we all know, of which there are over 10 billion in about 8,000 different models! The Mini Figures, excluding hair, are exactly four bricks tall and fit perfectly into The System. The only problem was that the small characters were too large for the vehicles released up to that point, so from then on, vehicle proportions were modified to ensure the Mini Figures fit perfectly.
Together with the Lego Castle line, the “Lego Space” set released in 1978 represents the most iconic set in the Lego house: these two sets had an incredible impact on the brand’s expansion.
Billund, once a small town of about 200 inhabitants, became home to thousands of people who went to work at Lego every day.
Hard times came when, towards the end of the 1980s, Lego lost its exclusive patent because it expired, and the competition quickly mobilized. Mega Brand and Mega Bloks are just a few examples.
Around 1987, Kjeld saw a program called “The Talking Turtle,” presented by an MIT professor named Seymour Papert, who taught a programming language he conceived, called “Logo.” With this language, one could program physical devices via software and move them in space.
A collaboration soon began with Professor Papert, who, together with Lego, developed “Lego TC Logo,” where TC stands for “Technical Control.” With this software, it was possible to program models from the “Lego Technic” line to turn them into real small programmed robots.
The product was initially intended only for schools, which significantly slowed down the sales of the models, and the brand did not have a great impact.
The competition had become so strong (the competitor bricks were almost identical) that Lego began to take a heavy toll in 1998, the year it went into loss for the first time and had to lay off about a thousand people, or a third of its workforce.
Unfortunately, the simple brick no longer seemed to be enough, and the advent of console gaming took over during those years, with Microsoft Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo leading the way.
Lego began thinking about alternatives to stay afloat, and by revisiting the Lego TC Logo brand, created the “Lego Mindstorms” line: defined as thinking bricks, Mindstorms were often targeted by science and computer science students, who enjoyed hacking the devices and software with more advanced programming languages that allowed the models to do more things.
As expected, Lego’s initial reaction was to sue these people, who in turn defended themselves by saying it was not their intention to damage Lego products, but rather to find new ways to improve them.
Lego decided to encourage these behaviors, funding schools and institutes to organize robotics competitions among students using the Mindstorms line.
One of Lego’s most brilliant moves in 1999 was acquiring the rights to Star Wars. The only ethical dilemma was that the Star Wars sets would include weapons and vehicles that could be criticized for being reminiscent of war rather than appreciated for their reference to the imaginative universe of Star Wars.
The ethical dilemma was quickly resolved once market forecasts for sales were made, and potential earnings were illustrated.
The special elements of the Star Wars sets were few, as Lego wanted to show children that many things could be created with the existing pieces, and so it was.
In 1999, Star Wars “The Phantom Menace” was released, and Lego Star Wars items were hard to find due to high demand, with store shelves often empty in their place.
In 2000, this demand was met, but unfortunately, a year had already passed since the film’s release, and Lego Star Wars were no longer selling, so they had to be sold off, bringing Lego to the brink of bankruptcy.
A series of failed recovery attempts followed, such as the “Jack Stone” line, a superhero designed to attract children who didn’t like Lego. The company hit rock bottom.
There was an attempt at a TV series called “Galidor,” but that also led nowhere and was a total disaster.
A series of attempts not in line with The System brought the company to the brink of total ruin.
Between the 1990s and 2000s, Lego was in the dark, and executives began to seriously fear for the company’s future.
With nothing left to lose, Soren Holm, the creative head of the “7-16 years old” sector, had the idea of “Lego Voodoo Heads,” models with interchangeable bone heads. The idea was good but somewhat rudimentary and not in line with the system at all.
Christian Faber, an outsider who at that time had a brain tumor, was tasked with creating an entire world around the Voodoo Heads.
Not only were the Lego Voodoo Heads adapted to the system, but a whole story was created around the “Boneheads of Voodoo Island,” with places and characters with a solid background.
The Voodoo Heads became the famous “Lego Bionicle” line, and not only were models created: the line was a resounding success, and books, cartoons, and video games were even produced around them. For the first time, thanks to their various interchangeable masks, Legos became real collectible items.
Faber recovered from the tumor thanks to therapy, and this project saved the company.
In 2004, unexpectedly, marked the beginning of the apocalypse for Lego: The Bionicle, deviating from the traditional brick Legos, had run their course, and even though Lego managed to acquire the rights to Harry Potter in 2001, between 2003 and the first half of 2004, neither Star Wars nor Harry Potter released a film.
Consequently, sales began to plummet as Lego no longer had any line that brought in significant revenue.
This resulted in a loss of about 220 million, with a heavy impact, and Lego was at serious risk of bankruptcy. The company was considering liquidating Lego and selling off assets: Mattel was proposed to take over the company, and Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen resigned from his role as CEO after long consideration. He decided to rely on someone to save his family’s work.
Fortunately, he found the right person: Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, then 34, with his right-hand man and finance expert Jesper Ovesen.
The two analyzed the data and noticed that things were really bad: the company continued to lose money and was close to total collapse.
A year after his resignation as CEO, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen decided to make another huge sacrifice by selling Legoland. This was a severe blow for him, but it was the only solution.
Legoland was sold for about 456 million dollars.
Ovesen and Knudstorp decided to start making changes to the company: part of the operations (about a third) was moved from Billund to the Czech Republic, while production for North America was moved to Mexico.
They made meticulous moves like reducing the colors and shapes produced and simplifying the logistics and manufacturing process: this was the most significant change within the company.
The company was rebuilt little by little from its solid foundations, bringing The System back to the center of the process.
From the company’s reboot, the first major success was the fire truck model: Mads Nipper, head of marketing, gathered 600 employees and, holding the failed “Jack Stone” line fire truck, said that with that, they had hit rock bottom and that it should never happen again.
The fire truck and the “Lego City” line brought prosperity back to the company, each model perfectly harmonized with The System, and the models were easy to build. Lego City still sells a lot today and boasts over 1,400 models in its repertoire.
All this by focusing on simplicity, gradually moving to more complex models like ports, airplanes, and ships to make Lego cities increasingly full of different models.
In the following years, Lego began forging partnerships and creating collaborations with movies, video games, music, or major brands to create models that reproduce our favorite films or characters.
But it was thanks to a personal invention that Lego gave a significant boost to the rise it was experiencing: “Lego Ninjago” was an irresistible line thanks to the MiniFigures and the animated series that now has eight seasons.
The company began to have incredible profits, and around 2006, revenues rose by 105%, and Lego reached figures like one billion dollars in sales in the USA.
However, a significant problem remained: Legos appealed only to boys.
After four years of studies, the idea was to develop the “Lego Friends” line specifically for the young female audience, all perfectly in line with The System. These sets were a huge success and immediately won over young girls.
In 2014, Lego was the largest toy company in the world, and in the same year, the “The Lego Movie” hit theaters and was a huge success.
Today, our beloved bricks have entered many fields and support many projects, such as the “First Lego League” born from the collaboration between First and Lego Education. The First Lego League is an event created around the Mindstorms line, a phenomenon that brings together young people from all over the world (starting as early as 4 years old), making them engage in the exploration, construction, and programming of small robots built using the Mindstorms line.
In Billund, the Lego House was inaugurated in 2017 (https://legohouse.com/en-gb/), an interactive place called “the house of the brick.” The focal point is the tree of creativity, a gigantic tree built with Lego that tells the whole journey this incredible company has made since 1932, starting from a wooden duck to the present day.
The Lego House, covering 12,000 m² and featuring 25 million Lego bricks, Lego waterfalls, giant animals and plants, offers experiences for children and adults of all ages who want to develop creatively and explore the endless possibilities of learning through play thanks to Lego bricks.
These creative bricks have entered the artistic world, with entire immersive experiences, giant constructions, and reproductions of monuments and real places built entirely with Legos.
Thanks to the development of lines like Lego Architecture or the Botanical Collection and the moves of recent years such as the creation of iconic sets like the reproduction of the Back to the Future DeLorean, the Ghostbusters’ car, Spider-Man’s Daily Bugle, Lego Marvel, Disney, Rivendell from The Lord of the Rings, collectible sets like the Grand Piano that plays automatically, and many more, Lego has managed to capture all age groups, bringing us back in time and making us relive memories tied to these symbolic objects and places.
Legos have taught us how, brick by brick, we can build our future, always putting ourselves first.
Lego’s story is one of resilience and innovation. Through its determination and commitment to excellence, Lego has overcome challenges and emerged stronger than ever. Today, it continues to inspire the creativity and imagination of millions of people worldwide, demonstrating the power of play as a means of learning and creative expression, fundamental parts of human growth.
Thanks to The System, any Lego produced from the 1950s to today is combinable piece by piece.