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Lego, Changing the World One Brick at a Time.

By: River

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Table of Contents

History
Minifigures
Designers
Lego Art
Lego Ideas
Education

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History

Ole Kirk Christiansen,

Founder of Lego.

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History

Picture of Lego’s First Toy,

a Wooden Duck.

Ole decided to make a wooden duck and it made his children so happy so maybe he could start making and selling toys. Ole was a very skilled carpenter and had an eye for quality, but his sales were slow. Luckily, one of his sons helped him after school, together they barely managed. Eventually word of the high quality toys spread, and one day a wholesaler came to Ole’s shop and was very impressed with all the high quality toys and before he left he placed a very large order of toys to put in his store for the holidays. To get this huge order ready Ole decided to rehire his former employee, and he only used the highest quality of wood. They worked day and night to get the large order finished so that the buyer could get the toys in his stores before Christmas. In the middle of their work, Ole had received terrible news by mail that the buyer had filed for bankruptcy, which meant he couldn’t buy the toys he ordered. Soon enough, Ole had an idea. He was going to drive around town himself selling toys to local businesses.

Ole was a very fine toy maker but wasn’t a very good sales person, he didn’t like talking highly of himself or praising his small company, so at first he didn’t get any buyers, but he had to keep trying. Some local businesses said that they didn’t have much money so instead buying the toys they traded for food. He eventually sold all of the toys. He had a lot of food,but not as much money as he hoped but it was enough to get by. Besides, they had plenty of food for the holidays.

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Time soon passed by, but the toys didn’t sell as quickly as Ole expected, so he thought that maybe the company needed a good name, so he got to work. He wanted the name to be short and convey the idea of play well. In Danish, playing well means LEG GODT, Ole decided to merge the two words together to make Lego! As you can see, Ole came up with a very suitable name all by himself, but what he didn’t know was that in Latin the word Lego means I put together.

The name Lego was well received and they slowly started moving forward as a company. That year, they had made about three thousand crowns, and one of his workers said there was a milling machine on sale. Ole wasn’t comfortable with spending money on a milling machine but he eventually realized that the quality of the toys would improve, so he in fact bought the machine. One night, Ole asked his son if he could finish the last batch of wooden ducks and his son said yes, so he got to work. Later that night Ole's son came into his office and said that he saved the company a lot of money. Ole was intrigued and asked how? Ole’s son said “Well, I thought we could save money in the Lacquer so I only added 2 coats instead of 3!” Unfortunately, Godfred’s idea didn’t go over well with Ole. He made Godfred go back into the workshop and add the last coat of lacquer before they were shipped. Ole believed in the highest quality he could achieve` and didn’t like to cheat out his customers.

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History

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History

Plastic Injection Moulding Machine

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History

Great Ferguson Tractor

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History

Original Picture

of the Three Generations

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History

Lego System of Play

On a business trip to England, Godfred met the head of a popular shopping store. They talked about the toy industry and the head of the center was not big about Lego or any other toy industries because he kept bringing up how there was no system to play. He wanted something to challenge people's mind. He wanted something he could do himself. Godfred couldn’t get the idea of the system out of his head, so he got to work. He got to work on something called the Lego System of Play. Later that year, the idea was released. People could now build houses out of the Lego bricks as a new system. The first set was revealed as a town setting. There were even plastic roads that children could learn traffic safety from. It turned out to be a huge success! It was such a big victory that Godfred decided to try to sell the toys outside of Denmark. This was also a great decision because it ended up being very popular in other countries.

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History

Evolution of Lego bricks

Although Lego was meant to build houses and restaurants, people kept trying to build other things out of these bricks too. They could do it, but when they tried to move to a better location or even just bump the build it would shatter; so Godfred worked on this fault. On his journey he found that the bricks stuck together better when tubes were inside, so he started selling these new modified bricks. Now Lego could be anything in the world or anything in your imagination! Sadly, Ole died very shortly after the new brick was released to the public and he never got to see the success of the small brick. All by himself, Godfred went through another fire in the company that destroyed almost all of the wooden elements to Lego. The memory of his persistent father inspired him to rebuild again. As sales grew, so did the company and Godfred had to think ahead and decided not to resume the production of the wooden toys to focus solely on the Lego System of Play. It turned out to be an amazing decision for Lego. Many new sets were built and released to the public and the industry was continuing to steadily grow.

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History

Billund Airport

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History

Legoland

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Minifigures

Super Dope

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Minifigures

First Minifigures

Minifigures might be some of the most well known aspects of Lego, but it hasn’t been around since the beginning. A worker named Nygaard Knudsen noticed that at the time, Lego was based around houses and small cars, but he wanted people to inhabit this land. So he got to work on a design.

After more than 50 attempts, Nygaard had come at a design that allows the minifigure to hold certain accessories and with the feet could clutch to any brick. The arms and legs could also be posed to the owner's desire. The first minifigure that was accessible to the public was a policeman with a never changing smiley face and came with a trusty police car. There was also a fireman with a fire truck, and a nurse with an ambulance. It wasn’t much compared to the very cool sets we have today, but it was a great step for Lego.

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Lego Ideas

Popular Ship in a bottle set

From Lego ideas

Lego ideas was first created as an offshoot of a Japanese website called Cuusoo. It was made as a collaboration between that website and Lego. It was originally a test to see what customers really wanted to see created into new Lego sets.

The way Lego Ideas works is that “master builders” can go to the website and click the “how it works” tab. From there, you are given three different choices. Product ideas is where you can get started building your original idea. You either build it by hand, and write down exactly what you do, or you can also use a Lego creation website. A lego creation website essentially is a designing tool that you can use to help design your set and bring your idea to life.

After you submit your idea, you want to try to get the word out! If you get 10,000 people to support your idea then it will be forwarded to the Lego designers, and your idea will most likely get published!

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Minifigures

Golden Boba Fett Minifigure

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Designers

Of

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Designers

Designing Studio

When it comes to designers, Lego doesn’t want normal people, Lego specifically looks for people with stranger backgrounds such as working in a circus or a zoo. They do this to bring new ideas to Lego. There are even people who have worked in movie industries, then retired and brought their ideas to Lego as a new worker.

Unlike many toy industries, Lego designers don't start with a sketch of what they will build, they just make a rough prototype out of the actual bricks. They do every prototype out of real Lego bricks and almost never do an actual sketch of what they want to do. They do this because what you draw may look amazing and fun to any child's eye but what almost always happens is that what they drew isn’t compatible with any Lego brick that they have, so they may scrap the design entirely.

This may seem obvious but Lego designers have to document everything they do, because if you mess up fans of Lego will have an incomplete set and nobody really wants that. They need to place a brick and then right after write exactly what they did, what step it was, and how it was done. Lego designers are completely responsible for what your set looks like, what functions they have, and overall how cool it is.

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Lego Art

Also Super Dope

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Lego Art

Iron Man from the Marvel Cinematic Universe

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Lego Art

Darth Vader from Star Wars

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Lego Art

The Hogwarts Crest from Harry Potter

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Lego Art

The Beatles a Popular Band

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Lego Art

Mickey Mouse from Mickey Mouse

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Lego Art

Darth Maul from Star Wars

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Do Legos make you make you smarter? It’s a rather interesting question to ask yourself. Some people might not believe it, but Lego can make you smarter in a variety of ways. First off, as I covered in the history section, the first Lego System with bricks was a town setting which was especially made to teach children about traffic safety. Even nowadays, Lego can make you smarter in more obscure ways. Legos can help build hand eye coordination, and can help with sports and maybe even writing and typing.

The next educational benefit is pretty self explanatory, Legos foster creativity. You have the ability to let your imagination run wild with these bricks. If you can imagine it, you can build it.

The last but not least educational benefit is problem solving, something you're gonna need throughout your entire life problem solving will help with jobs in your future, and can help with other things such as puzzles.

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Experience

I love Lego , it’s so much fun I like them because you can be really creative and make anything you want. I also think it is really cool that you can get sets with star wars characters and superheroes in sets. -Cash 6th grade

I like Legos because you can be creative and build whatever you want. But it also depends on the character it is. -Olive 5th grade

I like Lego because they connect and it gives me a feeling I cannot explain but I like the feeling. -Samson 4th grade

I like lego because it is a lot like minecraft because in minecraft you can build stuff too.

-Desmond 2nd grade

As you probably know I really like Lego! I like Lego because of the creativity and the simplicity of it. Lego is such a fun toy that I will always enjoy playing with. During my project I was wondering why other people liked Lego? I decided that that would be my experience. So I wrote letters to some of my friends around America, and here are their answers.

I love Lego , it’s so much fun I like them because you can be really creative and make anything you want. I also think it is really cool that you can get sets with star wars characters and superheroes in sets. -Cash 6th grade

I like Legos because you can be creative and build whatever you want. But it also depends on the character it is. -Olive 5th grade

I like Lego because they connect and it gives me a feeling I cannot explain but I like the feeling. -Samson 4th grade

I like lego because it is a lot like minecraft because in minecraft you can build stuff too.

-Desmond 2nd grade

From the letters I received, I learned that the majority of the people like Lego due to the fact that you can build anything you want and have complete control and creativity over it. I would also add into the reasoning of liking Legos the simplicity of them. Lego is just a couple of blocks to start and can expand into something huge. I did however find it odd that one of the answers was relating to Minecraft since I do not find Legos to be like Minecraft.

It seems that most people who like Lego love it for it’s creative structure, simplicity, and the ability to create something in your interest areas (i.e. Star Wars, Mario, etc.). Overall, it was really interesting to learn about Lego. I had no idea they started as a wooden toy company or that through the Lego Ideas community you can become a “designer” or master builder. Now that I have this knowledge of Lego I think it would be a really cool career path to follow to become a designer for Lego. You get to dream and create all day, who wouldn’t want that!

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Conclusion to

In conclusion, Lego is an amazing toy that has been around for quite some time and should be fun to everyone who plays with them. Today we have gone over; history, minifigures, designers, Lego art, Lego ideas, and education. My essential question was; how have legos developed over the years, and why are they so popular today? As we’ve seen Lego has developed amazingly in its lifetime from the beginning of the brick to the recent Lego art. Lego has made amazing development!

Now why are they so popular today? I’ve asked around and people seem to say that they like Lego because of how creative you can be. I like Lego because of the simplicity of it, it is just bricks stacked on top of eachother and sometimes to the side of each other. There are no rules or complicated systems to it, it’s just so fun. I hope you enjoyed learning about Lego if you like Lego i would love to know why!

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