Lego is a line of construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colorful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, minifigures and various other parts. Lego bricks can be assembled and connected in many ways, to construct such objects as vehicles, buildings, and even working robots. Anything constructed can then be taken apart again, and the pieces used to make other objects. The toys were originally designed in the 1940s in Europe and have achieved an international appeal, with an extensive subculture that supports Lego movies, games, competitions, and four Lego-themed amusement parks.
Early history
Main article: History of LegoSee also: Lego timelineThe Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen, a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called Lego. It expanded to producing plastic toys in 1940. In 1949, Lego began producing the now famous interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks". These bricks were based largely on the design of Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, which were released in the United Kingdom in 1947. Lego modified the design of the Kiddiecraft brick after examining a sample given to it by a British supplier of an injection-moulding machine that Lego had purchased. The first Lego bricks, manufactured from cellulose acetate, were developed in the spirit of traditional wooden blocks that could be stacked upon one another; but these plastic bricks could be locked together. They had several round studs on top, and a hollow rectangular bottom. The blocks snapped together, but not so tightly that they required extraordinary effort to be separated.
The company name Lego was coined by Christiansen from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means "play well". The name could also be interpreted as "I put together" and "I assemble" in Latin, though this would be a somewhat forced application of the general sense "I collect; I gather; I learn"; the word is most used in the derived sense "I read".
The Lego Group's motto is Kun det bedste er godt nok, which means "Only the best is good enough". This motto was created by Ole Kirk to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly. The motto is still used within the company today.
The use of plastic for toy manufacture was not highly regarded by retailers and consumers of the time. Many of the Lego Group's shipments were returned, after poor sales; it was thought that plastic toys could never replace wooden ones.
By 1954, Christiansen's son, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, had become the junior managing director of the Lego Group. It was his conversation with an overseas buyer that struck the idea of a toy system. Godtfred saw the immense potential in Lego bricks to become a system for creative play, but the bricks still had some problems from a technical standpoint: their locking ability was limited, and they were not very versatile. In 1958, the modern brick design was developed; and it took another five years to find the right material for it. The modern Lego brick was patented on January 28, 1958; and bricks from that year are still compatible with current bricks.
Design
Lego pieces of all varieties are a part of a universal system. Despite variation in the design and purpose of individual pieces over the years, each remains compatible in some way with existing pieces. Lego bricks from 1958 still interlock with those made in 2009, and Lego sets for young children are compatible with those made for teenagers.
Bricks, beams, axles, mini figures, and all other parts in the Lego system are manufactured to an exacting degree of precision. When snapped together, pieces must have just the right amount of strength and flexibility mixed together to stick together. They must stay together until pulled apart. They cannot be too easy to pull apart, or the resulting constructions would be unstable; they also cannot be too difficult to pull apart, since the disassembly of one creation in order to build another is part of the Lego appeal. In order for pieces to have just the right "clutch power", Lego elements are manufactured within a tolerance of 2 µm.
Primary concept and development work takes place at the Billund headquarters, where the company employs approximately 120 designers. The company also has smaller design offices in the UK, Spain, Germany, and Japan, which are tasked with developing products aimed specifically at these markets. The average development period for a new product is around twelve months, in three stages. The first stage is to identify market trends and developments, including contact by the designers directly with the market; some are stationed in toy shops close to holiday periods, while others interview children. The second stage is the design and development of the product based upon the results of the first stage. As of September 2008 the design teams use 3D modeling software such as Rhinoceros 3D to generate CAD drawings from initial design sketches. The designs are then prototyped using an in-house stereolithography machine. These are presented to the entire project team for comment and for testing by parents and children during the "validation" process. Designs may then be altered in accordance with the results from the focus groups. Virtual models of completed Lego products are built concurrently with the writing of the user instructions. Completed CAD models are also used in the wider organization, such as for marketing and packaging.
Manufacture
Since 1963, Lego pieces have been manufactured from a strong, resilient plastic known as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). As of September 2008, the engineers use the NX CAD/CAM/CAE PLM software suite to model the elements. The software allows the parts to be optimized by way of mold flow and stress analysis. Prototype molds are sometimes built before the design is committed to mass production. The ABS plastic is heated to 232 °C (450 °F) until at a dough-like consistency. It is then injected into the molds at pressures between 25 and 150 tons, and takes approximately 7 seconds to cool. The molds are permitted a tolerance of up to two thousandths of a millimeter (2×10 −6 m), to ensure the bricks remain connected. Human inspectors check the output of the molds, to eliminate significant variations in color or thickness. Worn-out molds are encased in the foundations of buildings to prevent them from falling into competitors' hands. According to the Lego Group, about eighteen bricks out of every million fail to meet the standard required. Lego factories recycle all but about 1 percent of their plastic waste from the manufacturing process every year. If the plastic can't be re-used in Lego bricks, it's processed and sold to industries that can make use of it.
Manufacturing of Lego bricks occurs at a number of locations around the world. Molding is done at one of two plants in Denmark and Czech Republic. Brick decorations and packaging is done at plants in Denmark, the United States, Mexico and the Czech Republic. The Lego company estimates that in the course of five decades it has sold some 400 billion Lego blocks. Annual production of Lego bricks averages approximately 20 billion (2×10 10 ) per year, or about 600 pieces per second. To put this in context, if all the Lego bricks ever produced were to be divided equally among a world population of six billion, each person would have 62 Lego bricks.
In 2007, Lego Group announced a restructuring of the current production setup including the outsourcing of some of the production work to Flextronics, a Singaporean electronics company. Lego Group plans to close the production facility in Enfield, Connecticut and outsource this work to the Flextronics factory in Mexico. Flextronics will also oversee the factory in Kladno, Czech Republic. The Czech facilities would also be expanded due to the planned closing of the Swiss factory in Baar, which mostly manufactured TECHNIC parts. On February 19, 2008, Lego announced that the Lego Group would instead take over operations of the Kladno factory from March 1, 2008. On July 1, 2008, Lego announced their intent to take over plants in Mexico and Hungary and "phase out the existing outsourcing agreement with Flextronics during 2009." In late 2008 and early 2009, many Lego minifigures were built from an inferior quality plastic, and were prone to frequent cracking and splitting.
Today
Building products
Since it began producing plastic bricks, the Lego Group has released thousands of sets themed around a variety of topics, like the new "Atlantis". Other Examples include, but aren't limited to, town and city, space, robots, pirates, vikings, castles, dinosaurs, holiday locations, scuba diving and undersea exploration, the wild west, the Arctic, airports and miners. Many li
Childrens Wooden Toys - Dolls Houses, Puppets & Educational Toys ...
Rattles and Teethers; Baby Mobiles; Building Blocks; Wooden Toys ... toys from suppliers such as alex bath toys, le toy van dolls houses, plan toys, haba wooden toys, fiesta crafts ...
Wooden Toy Wheels & Other Unfinished Wood Wheels
Wooden Toy Wheels & Other Unfinished ... match when working with wooden toy parts to craft that perfect toy car, train, or toy trucks. Whether painting or staining, building ...
Building Blocks - Wooden building blocks, haba marble run
... educational toys, puppets, wooden toys, wooden building blocks, haba marble runs and dolls houses from fantasticals toy shop. ... Arts And Crafts Childrens Furniture Cards and Wrap Gift ...
Wooden toy, Wooden toy Manufacturers & Suppliers
Alibaba - Wooden toy: Wooden toy Manufacturers ... block toys, wooden educational toy, wooden building block toy) ... Wooden toy, Educational toy,Children toy, Wooden puzzle,Craft, ...
Traditional wooden toy building blocks.
Traditional wooden toys. Building Blocks that are a great size for little fingers. Traditional wooden toys from Knot Toys. UK postage is FREE.
Yunhe Xinqi Craft Factory - Wooden toys, wooden games, educational ...
Yunhe Xinqi Craft Factory (Xinyuan International ... wooden puzzle toy,jigsaw puzzle,education toy ... intelligent series,chess,wooden puzzle,building block,jigsaw puzzle,wooden ...
China Wooden Toy Manufacturers & Suppliers
China Wooden Toy products list, competitive Wooden Toy ... wooden block toys, wooden educational toy, wooden building block toy ... in manufacturing wooden toys , wooden gift , wooden craft and ...
Wooden toy, wooden puzzles, montessori toys, wholesale wooden toys ...
China manufacturer and wholesale of wooden toys. We use natural wood to produce high quality wooden toy, wooden puzzles ... wooden craft
Stacking Building Train - Wooden Toy - Educational Learning Toys
Stacking Building Train - Wooden Toy Stacking Wooden Train Toy is a perfect educational wooden toy ... Apparel & Clothing | Arts & Crafts | Automotive | Babies & Kids | Books ...
Plans for Wooden Toys -- Wooden Toy Plans
Toy plans and patterns for making wooden toys with your woodworking skills -- patterns and plans for hundreds of wooden toys.