Children’s Toys Usually Go Through Phases Of Popularity And A Lot Disappear Without Trace In A Few Years, But There Are A Number Of Creations Which Have Stood the Test Of Time And Continue To Go From Strength To Strength

For over half a century, both children and adults around the world have spent many days playing and making things with Lego bricks. What exactly you can do with the bricks is limited only by what quantity you have and your own creativity. Though developed as a children’s game, the product has numerous adult fans too and a quick search on the internet will locate some amazing and inventive designs.

Certain proof that the appeal doesn’t decrease as we grow up, the most unbelievable thing I’ve seen done with Lego was the life sized two floor house, complete with a working bathroom and a bed which television presenter James May considered to be the least comfortable bed he had ever slept in. I must say here that I may have toned down the colour scheme for the house somewhat, or I feel I’d have been wearing sunglasses in the place and needing Laser eye surgery to save my eyes from hurting so much! Building an object so huge could obviously only be managed with a lot of help and a large sum of money, but the human imagination can dream up some fantastic creations even with only a much smaller number of pieces available to use.

The Lego legacy began in 1932 in a quiet town in Denmark where an entrepreneur named Ole Kirk Christansen founded a factory producing wooden toys for youngsters. He asked his workers to think of a title for the company, but eventually invented one himself by combining the Danish words ‘Leg’ and Godt’, meaning ‘Play Well’, a prophetic name if ever I heard one!

He soon found out that plastic was far more durable than wood when it came to toy production, and bought in the pioneering first injection moulding machine ever used in Denmark. He set out trialling plastic building blocks and in 1949 he produced the prototype for Lego bricks. The product was launched onto the market in 1958, and even though there have naturally been a lot of additions to the original product in terms of colours and shapes, the size of the pieces has always stayed consistent enough that Lego bricks bought today would still fit together precisely with the original 1958 bricks.

These days, Lego products are made in Denmark, Mexico and the Czech Republic and all factories must conform to the same extremely high production standards which make sure that the pieces globally will always fit together and stay together perfectly. The margin of error for the dimensions of the bricks is so miniscule as to be virtually unimaginable to the human brain. The variances which are acceptable are in fact so small that I have to assume that they are checked by something like a Laser eye beam and a computer program to make sure of such consistency.

The Lego organisation is one of the Top Five toy manufacturers on the planet based on profit, and has around 4,500 staff. At the end of the 20th Century it was given awards in both the USA and the UK as the ‘Toy Of The Century’ and I doubt that there are many folk who would object to that accolade.

There are allegedly 2,400 different Lego pieces, which is an an amazing amount of shapes, sizes and colours! Of course, these days, a lot of the Lego purchased is in kit form and is designed to make predetermined objects ranging from a fort to a helicopter, a pirate ship to a space rocket and a whole lot more besides. Quite a few of the kits are based on films or television shows, so, for example, you can make something like your own Star Wars empire, including a lot of the characters, spacecraft, droids and even Mos Eisley Cantina! Although even Lego’s inventive creators have yet to work out how to get the lightsabers to give out a authentic Laser eye beam!

For those who want to make Lego scenes which are more realistic, there is the City range of kits, which enables you to create all of the buildings, vehicles and people you need to make your city – police, fire brigade, the airport, trains, farms and a great deal more so that you can douse the flames of fires, fly planes and arrest people. I bet, in time, you’ll even have the ability to operate on a Lego appendix, carry out Lego Laser eye surgery or drill into Lego teeth!

I used to believe that selling so many kits was a bit of a pity. I often wondered to what extent they have deprived the youngsters of today of their ability to use their own imaginations to build unique shapes and models. But now I’ve revised my opinion and think that the kits are a good idea provided nobody says that they must be put together as demonstrated on the box. For example, look at a wheel and think about how many other objects are that kind of shape. You’ll soon realise that the human imagination is way more ingenious than you think!