by Sarah Herman
A Million Little
Bricks
A Million Little
Bricks
THE UNOFFICIAL
ILLUSTRATED
HISTORY OF
THE LEGO
PHENOMENON
Sarah Herman
Copyright © 2012 by Sarah Herman
First published under the title Building a History in Great Britain in 2012 by Remember When, an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-62087-054-9
Printed in China
LEGO®, the LEGO logo, the Brick and Knob configurations and the Minifigure are registered trademarks of the LEGO Group which does not sponsor, authorize, or endorse this book.
For Ian—because you love me enough to let me
build your Unitron Monorail (set 6991).
Contents
Acknowledgments
In the Beginning . . .
Chapter 1 1891–1953: Bricks and Mortar
Chapter 2 1954–1977: Systematic Success
Chapter 3 1978–1988: The Golden Age
Chapter 4 1989–1999: It’s a LEGO World
Chapter 5 2000–2011: Foundations for the Future
Chapter 6 Building Outside the Box
Bibliography
Photo Credits
Index
Acknowledgments
While writing a book often feels like a solo voyage, there are many people who have helped me along on my LEGO adventure. Thank you to Jens Nygaard Knudsen, Nathan Sawaya, Kenneth Brown, and Joe Meno for sharing your thoughts; Wayne Hussey and everyone at BrickCon 2009 for making me feel so welcome; Troels Witter for helping me out and speaking Danish; Jordan “Sir Nadroj” Schwartz for the building tips and general all-around awesomeness; Dad (OBE)—your nautical wisdom knows no bounds; Fiona Shoop for your initial guidance and ideas; Doctor Lee Jones for the LEGO gifts and being a true gentleman; Alex Eylar for all the amazing MOCs you built for the cover—shame we couldn’t use them all; Isabel Atherton for being the loveliest agent ever; and all my wonderful friends and family who put up with me droning on about LEGO stuff.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
In this book, LEGO sets are usually referred to by name and set number. The set number often follows the name of the set, or a reference to it, in parentheses. As sets sold in different parts of the world sometimes have completely different names, I have endeavored, where possible, to include the set number to avoid any confusion and to make clear which sets are being referred to. Predominantly names featured in U.K. catalog are used for more recent LEGO sets, but some U.S. names also appear. The main references used to clarify set names and numbers were LEGO Collector: Collector’s Guide (Fantasia Verlag GmbH, 2008), and the websites www.brickset.com, www.peeron.com, and www.worldbricks.com.
In the Beginning...
A company made a brick and the rest, as they say, is history. But this company didn’t just make any brick—it made one that went on to define play time for generations of children around the world. A brick that over sixty years later still inspires and enthralls children of all ages to create, to build, and to play; a brick that still goes missing under the sofa, probably ends up in the vacuum cleaner, and definitely hurts to accidentally step on as much as it ever did. A commonly cited fact is that there are sixty-two LEGO bricks for every human living on Earth. This unfathomable number exists because every hour of every day of the year for over fifty years, the LEGO Group has been churning them out, along with plastic people, monkeys, windows, palm trees, horses, swords, and just about every other conceivable thing you could imagine in miniature. Possibly more shocking, however, is that you can take a LEGO brick built in 1958 and snap it together with a brick from 2012 as if more than fifty years had never happened.
Life, replicating toys, replicating life: A LEGO minifigure gets to work shipping out the latest LEGO sets in 2010’s City Truck (3221). © Ruben Saldana
But they did happen, of course. In fact, the LEGO Group’s history started long before January 28, 1958, when the famous LEGO brick was patented.
The privately owned company may now sell its products in 130 countries, but toy manufacturing was never what LEGO Group founder Ole Kirk Christiansen intended to spend his life doing. This generational family company has progressed from carpentry workshop and wooden toy maker to plastic pioneer and household name with many highs and some lows in between.
The development of a play system based around LEGO bricks in the late 1950s, which was unrivaled by other toy makers at the time, led to rapid expansion and a growing collection of sets and parts. Over the next twenty years, ideas were developed and pushed, with new systems for advanced building, the infant market, and moving sets with wheels, gears, and motors. By the 1980s the minifigure had populated this LEGO world and new, exciting play themes began to emerge. As the toys pushed boundaries, so did the LEGO Group, opening theme parks and developing a recognizable brand through various avenues including video games, stores, clothing, and the LEGO website. As the century progressed, the company continued to challenge itself with the development of robotics, story-based themes, and licensed toys. But with management spread thin, the LEGO Group faced serious financial problems and the future of LEGO bricks hung in the balance.
But just as LEGO toys are suitable for children, so is this story—it does have a happy ending. According to the LEGO Group, children spend five billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks, and those little studded building blocks that continue to sell year after year were the key to the biggest comeback in recent toy-making history. The company fought its way out of financial ruin to become a more profitable producer of better toys, focusing on the development of diverse and delightful play themes made from LEGO bricks. Gone are the superfluous products created in uncertain times and the unusual licensing decisions. In their place are toys kids want, no, need to have, supported by digital and online media they love to explore.
But the LEGO world is bigger than its design and manufacturing processes, the LEGOLAND parks, building systems, play themes, and all its success and (few) failures, all of which are explored here. The LEGO world is made up of millions of fans, most young, many not, who see LEGO bricks as more than a toy; as an artistic medium, a way to learn, or a window to an entire subculture of like-minded individuals who attend LEGO conventions, enter building competitions, and spend their spare time playing with bricks and accessing the online fan community. And this part of the company’s history is explored here, too.
As the LEGO Group has passed from one generation to the next, so have its toys. Plastic boxes filled with bricks stored away for years are dug out for children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews or for oneself—as if instinctively we know never to throw them away. And why would we? The quality of LEGO toys is clear; any child no matter h
is age or abilities can enjoy them, and they’re as relevant today as ever—no matter what crazes kids are into, the LEGO brick never goes out of fashion.
LEGO Certified Professional and artist Nathan Sawaya summed up the classic toy’s charm when he said, “Playing with LEGO toys growing up let me build anything I wanted to build. It let my imagination control the playtime. If I wanted to be a rock star that day, I could build myself a guitar. If I wanted to be an astronaut, I could build myself a rocket. . . . It was Christmas 1978 when I received my first box of LEGO bricks from my grandparents. I remember ripping into the package and building a LEGO house right then, oblivious to the rest of Christmas morning. It seems like I have been creating with LEGO ever since that day.”
A company made a brick. And the rest, as they say, is history. But it wasn’t just any company. It was the LEGO Group.
A Million Little
Bricks
CHAPTER 1
1891–1953:
Bricks and Mortar
Godtfred Kirk Christiansen (1920–1995) may have been the person to develop and patent the famous LEGO brick design in 1958, but the LEGO story began with a different man some years before he was born. A few miles outside of Billund, Denmark—a town famous for its connection to the LEGO name and the original LEGOLAND theme park—in the Grene Church cemetery, is the final resting place of Ole Kirk Christiansen, Godtfred’s father and the father of the LEGO Group.
Ole Kirk (OKC) was born into poverty in the farming community of Filskov, near Billund, in 1891 and went on to work as a carpenter, honing the skills which would lead to the creation of wooden toys and, later, plastic building blocks. These intersecting bricks would inspire the development of a system of play synonymous with the LEGO name and the most popular toy of the last 100 years, according to a 2004 survey carried out by the V&A Museum of Childhood.
When the young Danish carpenter opened his wood-working shop in Billund in 1916, a year before the town received electricity, he never expected to make his fortune in the toy business. It’s also likely that he never imagined Billund, once a town described in Henry Wiencek’s book The World of LEGO Toys as a backwater home to only a few hundred people, becoming one of Denmark’s most visited destinations. Today, Billund is home to over 6,000 people, as well as LEGO headquarters, LEGOLAND Billund, and the country’s second busiest airport, which was built by the LEGO Group in 1964.
OLE KIRK CHRISTIANSEN (1891–1958)
From the age of six, Ole Kirk worked as a farmhand tending to the family’s sheep while also attending school for two days each week to learn to read and while. While out in the fields, the young boy would whittle wood, and so began his love for shaping and creating objects. In 1905, when he was fourteen years old, he became an apprentice carpenter to one of his older brothers, Kristian Bonde Christiansen. After his training was complete, he practiced his trade working in Germany and Norway between 1911 and 1916. It was in Norway that he met Kirstine Sörensen, who became his wife after he returned to central Jutland in 1916. The twenty-five-year-old carpenter used his savings from working abroad to buy the local woodworking shop and set up his own carpentry business in Billund. He had four sons with Kirstine—Johannes, Karl Georg, Godtfred, and Gerhardt—before she died in 1932. Two years later he married Sofie Jörgensen, with whom he had one daughter, Ulla. Ole Kirk instilled a solid work ethic in his sons, all of whom were involved in the company from young ages, and focused on the importance of manufacturing high-quality products and harvesting a good reputation over making a quick profit. Arguably, without the foundation of Ole Kirk’s teachings, which have passed on down the generations, the LEGO brand would not be the international success story it is.
The LEGO Group’s headquarters in Billund, Denmark (pictured), is on the same street as Hotel LEGOLAND and LEGOLAND Billund. © Ian Greig
Throughout the late 1920s, Ole Kirk’s growing business restored old buildings, developed new structures, and created goods such as ladders and ironing boards for his small community—mainly local farmers and their families. By the end of the decade he no longer worked alone but employed a small workforce. But this new business venture was not without its setbacks. And Ole Kirk demonstrated unshakeable strength of character when, in 1924, two of his sons (Godtfred and Karl Georg) accidentally set light to wood shavings in the workshop, which quickly resulted in the whole premises and the family home being destroyed by fire. This tragic accident was looked at as a reason to expand the business, and Ole Kirk had the plans drawn up for a large building that would house his new workshop and a small flat for his family. The rest of the building’s space would be rented out to provide an additional income.
By the 1930s the Great Depression had begun to affect farming prices in Europe (dropping in some areas by 60 percent), meaning Ole Kirk’s customers could no longer afford his services or products. In early 1931 Ole Kirk was forced to lay off some employees, reducing his workforce to just seven people by 1932. The business in decline, this was the year Ole Kirk started making affordable wooden toys—brightly colored animals, piggy banks, and racing cars he hoped to sell to the farming families in the area. But by the end of 1932 he faced bankruptcy and turned to his siblings for help. They loaned him money but asked that he stop producing toys, something they saw as unprofitable. Ole Kirk continued, however, and in 1934 named the company LEGO, a contraction of the Danish phrase leg godt, meaning “play well.”
Despite being famed for producing the plastic LEGO brick and the LEGO System, Ole Kirk’s company started out producing toys out of wood. Some reports indicate that it was the production of scaled models (for his other carpentry projects) that got him thinking about making toys, while others claim the idea was suggested to him by a social worker. Either way, soon enough, miniature vehicles—cars, trains, planes, and buses—began to appear among the ironing boards, step-ladders, and wooden stools. These simple-looking toys may seem bulky and plain, especially by today’s standards, but they were built with the same level of skill and craftsmanship that Ole Kirk had been putting into his furniture and carpentry for years. Believing that “only the best was good enough” (the company motto), even for a child’s toy, Ole Kirk’s toy manufacturing process was as meticulous as all his other work, if not more so. The birchwood used to build the toys was cut from the forest, dried outside for two years, and then dried in a kiln for three weeks before it was considered suitable for the workshop. After the toys were assembled, they were sealed, sanded, primed, and finally painted three times over to produce a top-quality finish. Once, when Ole Kirk’s son Godtfred skipped a layer of painting to save money, his father ordered him to return the shipment and repaint all the toys himself, reminding his son of the importance of product quality over profiteering.
Known locally as “The Lion house” because of the two statues guarding the door, Ole Kirk’s new home and workshop, built in 1924, still stands in Billund today and forms part of the LEGO Museum. © Ian Greig
A price list from 1932 shows twenty-eight different toys listed, including a six-wheeled school bus, a tramcar, and a lorry. It also shows that Ole Kirk continued to manufacture practical furniture and household items alongside the colorful new additions to his product line—not that the people of Billund could really afford either. While his first toy range enjoyed some success, the families in the area were poor, and would sometimes exchange food for toys rather than money. In 1932 a wholesaler went bankrupt, leaving Ole Kirk with a surplus of toys. Selling them door-to-door, he even traded some toys for a sack of almonds.
These trains, planes, and automobiles were soon joined by a menagerie of animal creatures in 1935. From bejeweled elephants and jolly green mallards to ladybirds, squirrels, and puffed-up cockerels, the animal kingdom had arrived. Some of these new designs were more complicated than their transportation predecessors, especially the pull-toys, which incorporated moving parts and noise mechanisms, the patterns for which Ole Kirk carefully drew up himself. They included a man riding on a goat, which
would move up and down as you pulled it along—it was based on the Hans Christian Andersen story Clumsy Hans—a monkey riding a car and a pony towing a brightly colored cart. One of the most recognizable and most popular LEGO pull-toys was also one of the first. The wooden duck was sold in various incarnations for twenty-two years (1935–1957) and is typical of the wooden designs the LEGO Group produced during the thirties and forties. As it moves along on wheels, its beak opens and closes, while the base includes a mechanism that “quacks” at the same time. Because of the expanding workload, the painting of early LEGO ducks was contracted out to locals. In the 1940s, TLG started stenciling the ducks instead to save time and labor costs. Because of this and its longevity, the LEGO wooden duck is available in hundreds of variations.
Over the next twenty-eight years, TLG manufactured not only wooden toys but also a variety of other wood-based products. In one 1950’s LEGO catalog there are 120 products listed (over 200 designs were produced in total), and while there are the expected wooden animals, trains, and trucks, there’s also an abacus, a skipping rope, and a dustpan and brush. The company also made doll buggies, wheelbarrows, chalkboards, and coat hangers designed by Dagny Holm (Ole Kirk’s cousin, who would go on to be one of the chief designers of LEGOLAND Billund). These toys may have been a diversion from the carpentry work Ole Kirk had trained for, but they were not that unusual when compared to the toys being produced by other European toy makers at the time. Prior to the twentieth century, Germany had been the epicenter of toy manufacturing, and one particular village, Seiffen in the Ore mountains region of Saxony, was renowned for its production of detailed wooden toys and traditional Christmas figures and decorations, which were, and still are, exported all over the world.
