by Sarah Herman
Before LEGO is made, however, it needs to be designed, and this itself is a multistage process. After a theme has been selected for development, designers work together to draw inspiration from the world around them (for themes such as LEGO City, Technic, etc.), popular culture and technology (for more unusual fantasy themes like Space Police and Atlantis), or existing characters and locations (for licensed LEGO themes such as Toy Story or Harry Potter) to get a range of possible ideas for how to develop the theme. A mood board is often created to help consolidate all of these ideas and focus on the best ones, which are then developed into potential LEGO sets to serve a variety of price points.
To develop an individual set, designers must consider any functions or specific mechanics of it that will need to be incorporated, and how best to incorporate them. With about 6500 different elements to choose from, the “sketch model” stage gives the designer an opportunity to flex his muscles and come up with a range of ways to build a sellable LEGO set. All designers work differently—some draw out their ideas or build a virtual model on their computer, while others “sketch” immediately in LEGO bricks. Unfortunately, their options are not unlimited. In the designing of a model, certain factors must be taken into consideration, the most important of which is cost. Unusual or new elements can be expensive to produce, especially if they are not required for any other set/theme. If a piece does not exist that a designer feels is necessary for the success of the theme, he can design one, but must consider safety standards, compatibility with other LEGO elements, and the cost of manufacturing, packing, and supplying the part (some parts can take longer to mold than others).
Designs for LEGO Toy Story minifigures shown on a computer program, which illustrates how the various elements would fit together and their size. © Alex Howe
With more recent themes and licensed themes, the characters and story behind them have been an integral part of the launch of the theme, and these are developed in conjunction with the sets to create a complete play experience. If a license is involved, models must be approved by the licensor, who may make suggestions to make sure the model is staying true to the brand. Once a viable sketch model and its characters have been designed, the LEGO Group often presents models to focus groups of children to see what they like and dislike about the products. Sometimes children’s suggestions can influence the final design, or the focus group can highlight potential problems with a set when it is being built and played with by a child. The designers will also test the model and rebuild it multiple times to make sure every part included is essential, and every part required is present.
All of the LEGO designers’ precision and perfection means nothing if a toy is unsafe for the child who plays with it. TLG’s international sales mean its toys must comply with safety standards all over the world, so a whole array of tests are carried out on each piece and product in a stage called “Model Review.” not only are the building instructions designed to make sure that children of the target age group will be able to reconstruct the model, but tests are carried out by machines that imitate a child’s bite, attempt to twist objects, and drop them with a measured force, all of which are required to make sure the product is safe. The materials are also tested for heat durability and toxicity. Despite no LEGO products ever leaking any chemicals, a scare in the 1970s surrounding cadmium metal used in many toys including LEGO yellow and red plastic bricks caused a health and safety and environmental concern. TLG proved that there was no danger from its bricks, but made the costly decision to change the specifications of its plastic to make sure it was cadmium-free. After designing, testing, and rebuilding, and when everyone is happy with the model, it goes into production.
One of the LEGO Group’s most astounding factors is the meticulous attention to detail given to each individual part produced. How often have you had to return a LEGO toy because some of the parts are missing? Do you remember the last time you couldn’t fit two LEGO bricks together? LEGO bricks have to stand the test of time, perhaps twenty years or more. In addition, bricks made twenty years ago have to be able to fit perfectly with a brick made today. The “clutch power” of a LEGO brick is the pulling force required to pull two bricks apart, and it is the molding techniques and materials used by the LEGO Group that mean the bricks maintain clutch power over their long lives. The quality control in a LEGO factory ensures this, and it is not taken lightly—arguably, it’s the cornerstone for the LEGO Group’s success.
Many people have described their visit to the LEGO Kornmarken factory in Billund as something straight out of a sci-fi movie and there’s a good reason why. In 1959 LEGO production was considered advanced when only one operator was able to manage two machines at once, while today vast areas of factories are run by a computerized system which requires robots to do most of the work, while a couple of human workers oversee entire warehouses.
In one of Billund’s giant warehouses, there are fourteen silos each three stories high, constantly being refilled with raw plastic granules that arrive from Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Deposited into the silos from frequently arriving truckloads, the granules come in fifty-five different colors (which can be mixed to produce more colors) and are the size of grains of rice. They are soon vacuumed up again by large nozzles and transported via tubes to the molding machines in one of twelve adjoining molding halls. Every twenty-four hours fifty tons of raw plastic are processed in an ongoing cycle of LEGO production. Despite the vastness of the factory itself and the volume of production, the molds are very modest and can produce a small number of parts at once providing a high degree of accuracy. LEGO bricks have a diameter variation of two hundredths of a millimeter, to ensure bricks made years apart for completely different sets will all fit together perfectly.
One of the fourteen silos at Billund’s Kornmarken factory is refilled with ABS granules. © Alex Howe
In total there are 775 molding machines—their job is to melt down the granules to a temperature of 455ºF and inject the liquid plastic into the specific mold they are programmed to. These molds are capable of applying anywhere between 28 and 165 tons of pressure (depending on the element being produced) and maintaining that exact pressure for the time required, due to a hydraulic system. LEGO engineers also designed a cooling system to keep the molds within one degree of the necessary temperature, and the molding rooms themselves are climate-controlled. The parts harden and cool within fifteen seconds and are dropped onto a conveyor belt and into a bin at the end of the machine.
The Kornmarken factory makes parts twenty-four hours a day, all year round, but normally during the “low season” when there is less demand for sets, 40 percent of the molding machines are turned off, with the remaining machines producing basic bricks and plates to feed the ongoing demand. Specialist parts are not made all year round but respond to seasonal demand, which is less predictable. It is only after a brick has been produced that the true efficiency and resourcefulness of this LEGO factory comes into play. When the container of molded parts reaches a precise weight, the central computer alerts a robot via a radio signal to come and put a lid on it, give it a barcode, and replace it with an empty container so the process can begin again. Because of the level of accuracy required, and the dangerous conditions, there are rarely any people present in the molding rooms, unless they are checking machines for quality control or performing maintenance work. One person, supported by a group of maintenance workers, will oversee the work of seventy-two molding machines. The robots themselves find their way around by following grooves on the factory floor.
Each molding hall includes approximately sixty-five molding machines, but only one human worker. © Alex Howe
OLD MOLD
After many years of hard service, all LEGO molds are put into retirement. Made from hard steel and polished with diamond dust, the friction of the plastic and the extreme heat and pressure these molds have to endure mean eventually they have to be replaced at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds. They work hard, though,
with some molds producing over 120 million bricks before they can take it easy.
A retired 2 × 4 brick mold on display at the LEGO Museum in Billund. © Ian Greig
The LEGO Group’s ingenuity can also been seen through its recycling methods. all the leftover plastic from the mold that helps form the unique stud system inside a LEGO brick, and any elements that accidentally find their way onto the factory floor, are not thrown away but are reground and reused to make more parts. The same happens with faulty bricks and clear melted plastic that is used to “clean” the inner tubes of the machines before a different color plastic is used. Together the machines at Billund produce approximately 2.4 million individual bricks every hour, and for every one million bricks produced, only eighteen fail to meet the high quality standards, so nothing is wasted—not time or resources. In addition, boxes that are damaged or sets with missing pieces are used for donation boxes given to underprivileged children organizations around the world.
The molding machines have built-in sensors to detect if there’s a change in pressure or temperature that might cause faulty bricks to be produced, setting off an alarm to alert technicians. If the molding machine detects flaws, the faulty pieces are pushed aside, but some flaws are too subtle for even these robots so there’s always a pair of human eyes working the floor. The technician’s job is to take a sample of the molded output to the inspection station and inspect them for faults and variations often so small they’re unnoticeable to the untrained eye. Faults that occur are abnormal studs, a tiny hole in the brick where the light shines through, variation in color or plastic thickness at any point on the brick, or even an excess of plastic (known as a “high gate”) caused when too much plastic was injected into the mold.
Nothing gets wasted at the LEGO factory—unused plastic and faulty bricks are melted down to make new parts. © Alex Howe
After the robots have deposited the filled containers onto the conveyor belt, they are sent through to a sorting room where a robotic forklift takes them to a check-in station and then, depending on the computer’s orders, they are either sent to the storage facility or straight to the assembly line in the packing hall. LEGO is known for turning giant buildings into mini-models, but when it comes to storage it’s chosen to supersize.
The Billund factory has four storage chambers: Two stand at twenty meters (65.6 feet) high, and the other two at thirteen meters (42.65 feet) high. With no humans in sight, the storage facility is operated by eight logical motion machines and fifteen automatic cranes that are directed by the mainframe computer as to what to shelve, where, and what to retrieve. Powered by compressed air, these robots float up and down the aisles at a speed of 2.5 meters (about 8.2 feet) per second, in a nonstop aerial performance. LEGO makes the most of this 170 square kilometers (65.6 square miles) of shelf space, stocking 420,000 boxes of parts at any given time, which is only 80 percent of the towers’ overall capacity.
But for those LEGO bricks that are needed immediately (or for those picked from the shelves by the machines), the next stop is either decoration or straight to packaging. Not all parts require decorating, luckily, as it is the most expensive part of the LEGO production process. Tiny minifigure heads are held individually by machinery while facial details are printed on. Any special coloring/markings you see on a piece are created by going through this intricate process. Pre-assembled parts are also put together here—such as clicking minifigure arms and hands into place.
As mentioned earlier, it’s very rare that a LEGO customer will open his or her purchase and find faulty or missing pieces. That is due to the meticulous checks in place to ensure no LEGO set goes out the shipping door incomplete. Unlike other packaging rooms, where workers count pieces into boxes, almost the entire packing process is automated to ensure an almost flawless level of efficiency. Every single LEGO part that finds its way into the packing room is weighed individually. Twenty billion of them each year are poured into a vibrating funnel which, using optical sensors, shakes each piece out of the top one by one so they can be weighed on the scales. This measurement checks that the piece is the precise weight it should be, assuming there are no faults. If it passes the test, it makes its way along the conveyor belt to be packaged in a polyethylene bag, or if not, it is dropped into a bin to be ground down to begin the whole process again.
For the lucky pieces, the wait is almost over. The correct amount of each piece required for the set are dropped into a small box that moves along the conveyor belt collecting the rest of the pieces required. As the box makes its journey it is weighed to ensure the correct number of pieces are present at any given stage. If there is an inconsistency, an alarm will alert a packaging worker to come and check the box and make any corrections. Then, once all the pieces have been grouped together, they are wrapped in a polyethylene bag. Two types of bags are used by LEGO, as you may have noticed. Some bags are perforated, and although these are more expensive they tear less easily, so are used for groups of pieces that are more likely to tear the packaging. Perforated bags can be compressed more easily, so take up less room in a smaller box. Smaller pieces are usually inserted into solid bags. After filling, the bags are weighed again to check for any inconsistencies.
Each box in the vast storage “cathedral” has a unique barcode to tell the computer what parts are inside. © Alex Howe
Tiny minifigure heads are given their unique facial features in the decorating room. © Alex Howe
With so many parts coming through the decorating room at once, technicians have to keep track of the variety of minifigure faces being made each day. © Alex Howe
A LEGO employee checks the correct packets of parts as they make their way into the boxes with their instruction booklets. © Alex Howe
The cardboard packing boxes that contain LEGO sets are assembled and a book of relevant instructions is dropped into it. The boxes are weighed at this stage to check the instruction booklet is not missing any pages. The appropriate polyethylene bags are then dropped into the set, or placed in by assembly line workers, before it is weighed for a final time. If it makes the grade, it gets boxed up with other sets just like it and sent to the shipping department.
BONUS BRICKS
It is better to have too many (you might have gone wrong in your assembly) than to have too few. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, some pieces (e.g., 1 × 1 tiles) are so small the scales do not always pick up when more than the required amount have dropped in, and secondly LEGO knows how easy it is to lose these pieces under the sofa, so they try and throw in a few extra where possible.
CHAPTER 4
1989–1999: It’s a LEGO World
For many older LEGO fans, the sets of the 1970s and 1980s will never be replaced by more recent incarnations no matter how colorful, unusual, or technologically advanced. Playing with an old Classic Space set recently rescued from a dusty attic is a reason many people give for why they returned to LEGO toys as adults, gripped by nostalgia and the joyful memories of building giant lunar bases and indestructible spaceships on their bedroom floors. But like the company’s family history, LEGO toys are generational—a box of bricks passed from sibling to sibling and parent to child, with each adding new sets and building ideas to the pile. To a LEGO fan born in the 1980s, “Classic” Space means Space Police locking up Blacktron criminals, or zipping across Ice Planet 2002 wearing bright orange skis. And while different generations will often argue that “their” LEGO sets were the best they’ll ever be, if you played with LEGO toys in the 1990s, you had more choices and LEGO themes than any previous generation. Yours was a LEGO world of pirates, time travelers and adventurous heroes; of giant-domed space bases and deep-sea treasures; of glow-in-the-dark ghosts, pink bricks, monkeys, sharks, and parrots—and a LEGO world filled with all the riches of expansion, global domination, and technology. No, these were not the first LEGO sets produced, but they sure were memorable.
By 1989 the LEGO Group’s development of the System of Play had seen them build towns, tr
ains, castles, and spaceships populated with minifigures. On the cover of a 1989 catalog those familiar faces from Town, Castle, and Space look over a wall onto a moonlit sea where a pirate ship approaches. For many children, this was their first peek at the next play theme the LEGO Group would try and conquer—the swash-buckling world of pirates. Stories such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and the adventures of Peter Pan have long inspired children and informed their playtime. In the 1980s and ‘90s, films such as The Goonies (1985), Roman Polanski’s Pirates (1986), a 1992 re-release of Walt Disney’s Peter Pan, and Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated Hook (1991) contributed to the popular culture pirate tapestry, so it seemed the next logical step for the LEGO Group to embark on these uncharted waters. Unlike many themes that followed it, Pirates has stood the test of time, only disappearing from toy-shop shelves in the mid-2000s, before returning in time for their twentieth anniversary in 2009.
“After all the work on Space and Castle we were about to launch a new theme,” explained then Head of Design Jens Nygaard Knudsen. “We decided on LEGO Pirates and it became the biggest of all the themes.” The earliest 1989 sets were an immediate success, and introduced fans to new parts and new approaches to the building system. As with the creation of all LEGO themes there were various decisions that needed to be made. “We decided on designing a hull for a pirate ship,” Knudsen said, “but we had to decide whether it should be able to float or not. GKC and I quickly agreed that the ship was to be designed for floor play. We also designed rope ladders and masts, rowing boats and cannons. After some discussion about whether the cannon should be able to shoot or not, we made one that could shoot.” And even though pistols and guns were things that LEGO had refused to produce for previous themes, minifigure Flintlock-style pistols and muskets were included in sets featuring the Imperial Soldiers. The pirates themselves were infamously the first minifigures available without the original plain smiley heads. As Knudsen explained, “For the minifigure we designed a wooden leg, a claw instead of a hand, a patch over the eye as well as new hats and decorations for role play.” Their eye patches, facial hair, peg legs, hooks, and headgear made them unmistakably pirates and they were the first minifigures to have multiple facial expressions, hair, and features. There was even a female minifigure in this range—something some of the Space and Castle ranges were missing. “We also invented the palm building system for Pirates,” said Knudsen of the first LEGO palm trees sold with sets such as Shipwreck Island (6260) and Eldorado Fortress (6276). They would become a mainstay for Pirates and also appear in other themes such as the Paradisa line.
