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20 Interesting LEGO® Facts

20 Interesting LEGO® Facts

Growing up I had a large set of LEGO®  to play with but I had no idea the history behind this fun toy.  I was surprised at some of the information I found regarding both the history of the LEGO group as well as fun facts about LEGO. 

How LEGO came to Canada

1)  LEGO was founded in 1932 by a Danish carpenter named Ole Kirk Christiansen.

2) LEGO is from Danish words “leg godt” meaning “play well”. Unknown to Christiansen, lego also means “I put together” in Latin.

3) Christiansen did not invent the lego bricks, he was inspired by the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Building Brick designed y Hilary Page.  The LEGO group’s first bricks were almost exact copies and were named the Automatic Binding Bricks.  These were released in 1947.  

4)  In 1961, LEGO was awarded its first US patent for their “Toy Building Brick.” The design was for a hollow rectangular brick with studs on top and a round hollow tube on the bottom which allows for better locking ability.

5)  LEGO bricks made in 1958 are still compatible with, and can lock with LEGO bricks made today!

6) In 1968 the first LEGOland Park opened in Billund, Denmark.  The park attracted 625,000 visitors in its first year alone.

7)  In 1969 the LEGO Duplo system was launched.  The name Duplo comes from the Latin word duplus, which translates literally as double, meaning that a Duplo brick is exactly twice the dimension of a LEGO building brick.

8)  In 1978 LEGO mini-figures were first introduced.  There were seven different figures to start with.

9)  In August 1988, 38 children from 17 different countries took part in the first LEGO World Cup building contest, held in Billund. 

10)  In 1988 LEGO Canada was established. 
Source: Wikipedia

Fun LEGO Facts

1)  More than 400 million children and adults will play with LEGO bricks this year

2)  If you built a column of about 40,000,000,000 LEGO bricks, it would reach the moon

3)  Approximately seven LEGO sets are sold each second

4)  If all LEGO sets sold in a year were stacked on top of each other, they would fill a foot -ball field to a height of 77.8 m

5)  Laid end to end, the number of LEGO bricks sold in a year would reach more than five times round the world

6)  On average there are 62 LEGO bricks for every person on earth

7)  With a production of about 306 million tires a year, the LEGO Group is the world’slargest tire manufacturer

8)  There is 915 million ways to combine six LEGO bricks
 
9)  The world’s children spend 5 billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks
 
10)  Over 440 billion LEGO elements have been manufactured since 1949
 Source:  Company Profile

Anonymous

Thursday 21st of March 2013

Interesting artical on lego blocks, saved all of my son's lego then gave it to him when he turned 25yrs, he loved it!!

Hillary Gibson

Thursday 21st of March 2013

I loved LEGO as a child! I will definitely buy it for my kids when I have them. One thing I notice if I'm ever in the toy aisles is that LEGO doesn't really sell the brick sets on their own anymore. All I see are the play sets. The play sets are cool, but they come with instructions for something someone has already designed. What ever happened to letting children use their imaginations? I used to create all kinds of stuff out of LEGO. I think it was a great tool for helping develop my brain as a child. Space, art,colours, numbers, balance. Their is so much to learn! I hope the future will bring more block sets from LEGO. No instructions, just blocks and imagination.

Natalie

Monday 10th of February 2014

Hillary,if you go to the lego store, they have the "Pick a brick" section which is a wall where you can pick lose pieces with no instructions.

Torviewtoronto

Monday 18th of March 2013

lovely information

Victoria Ess

Sunday 17th of March 2013

Haha my partner is a huge LEGO fanatic also, Shari, and I was about the do the same thing (i.e., read them out loud to him!)

Victoria Ess

Sunday 17th of March 2013

Very cool facts!