10 Fun Things You Didn't Know About LEGO
- Monday 27th May 2019
We’ve all got different childhood memories; experiences, people and places. But, there’s one commonality in most of our minds: LEGO®. If you spent hours and hours building with these bricktastic blocks – you’re not alone. Constructing creations and bringing our imagination to life was a national pastime. But, there’s more to these bricks than meets the eye. As one of the most popular toys in a host of households, kids and adults alike love LEGO; maybe it’s about time you get to know these little bricks a bit better. Here are 10 fun facts you might not know about LEGO.
- Founded by Ole Kirk Christiansen, these colourful bricks get their internationally recognisable name ‘LEGO’ by appropriating the first two letters of the Danish words LEG GODT, which means ‘play well.’ Working as a carpenter, Christiansen used to make toys from leftover wood; his kids loved them, so he began producing them to sell.
- In 1932 in Billund, Denmark, the LEGO Group started. By 1949, LEGO blocks still didn’t resemble those of today; the actual interlocking bricks weren’t manufactured until 1959.
- Due to their famous universal system, no matter when the bricks were manufactured, they still fit seamlessly with today’s LEGO. Even DUPLO® bricks connect with regular bricks as they’re precisely twice the size on each length, so 8 times the volume.
- For LEGO to become the worldwide success it is, the moulds used to make the bricks have to be flawless. Because there’s no room for error, the bricks are accurate to within a two-thousandth of a millimetre.
- It’s no surprise that back in the year 2000, LEGO was hailed as the ‘Toy of the Century’ by the British Association of Toy Retailers. To earn this epic title, the modest LEGO brick had to beat the good old Teddy Bear, as well as Barbie.
- There’s much contention as to which LEGO tower takes the title of the world’s tallest. With LEGO enthusiasts always aiming sky-high, the tower that stretched 34.76 metres into the sky above the Hungarian capital, Budapest, was certified by the Guinness World Records as the world’s tallest.
- It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about a single block, or a pile of one hundred bricks – The plural of LEGO is LEGO, not LEGOs. And speaking of multiple blocks, the largest commercially produced LEGO set is the LEGO® STAR WARS Ultimate Collectors Series Millennium Falcon.
- In 2011, LEGO went into space as part of the ‘LEGO Bricks in Space’ program. Astronauts took 13 LEGO sets to the International Space Station so they could find out how the bricks behave in microgravity.
- This will blow your mind – using only six, eight-stud LEGO bricks, you can create a whopping 915,103,765 combinations!
- If LEGO Minifigures were people, they’d be the world's largest population! Over four billion of them have been created since 1978. And because LEGO is much-loved around the world, incredibly, there are, on average 80 LEGO® bricks for every single person on our planet! That’s a whole lotta blocks!
For such little blocks, they’ve got a big history and a huge reach. And with all the new toy trends that come and go, LEGO has stood the test of time; continuing to earn diehard fans all over the world.
Visit LEGOLAND® Discovery Centre Melbourne today!
