Children’s Toys Often Go Through Fads Of Popularity And Some Vanish Altogether Quite Quickly, But There Are Some Of Inventions Which Have Stood the Test Of Time And Continue To Go From Strength To Strength

For over five decades, both children and adults around the world have spent many days playing and making things with Lego bricks. The extent of what you can do with the bricks is limited only by how many pieces you have and your own creativity. Though created as a children’s toy, the product has numerous adult fans as well and a quick look on an internet search engine will throw up some amazing and innovative designs.

Certain proof that the appeal doesn’t decrease as we become adults, the most unbelievable thing I’ve seen made with Lego was the life sized two storey house, complete with a working bathroom and a bed which television presenter James May stated was the least comfortable bed he had ever slept in. I must state here that I would have had to tone down the colour scheme for the house a bit, or I think I’d have been walking around in sunglasses in the place and needing Laser eye surgery to prevent my eyes from hurting so much! Building an object so huge could obviously only be done with a large amount of help and a large sum of money, but the human brain can think of some incredible creations even with only a considerably smaller amount of components available to use.

The Lego legacy began in 1932 in an unremarkable town in Denmark where a man named Ole Kirk Christansen founded a factory manufacturing wooden toys for youngsters. He asked his employees to come up with a name for the business, but eventually invented one himself by combining the Danish words ‘Leg’ and Godt’, which means ‘Play Well’, a prophetic name if ever I heard one!

He soon realised that plastic was far more long lasting than wood when utilised for toy production, and bought in the first ever injection moulding machine ever used in Denmark. He began testing plastic building blocks and in 1949 he came up with the prototype for Lego bricks. The Lego brick was launched onto the market in 1958, and although there have naturally been loads of additions to the original product when it comes to colours and shapes, the size of the pieces has always stayed consistent enough that Lego bricks manufactured today would still fit together precisely with the original 1958 bricks.

In 2011, Lego products are made in Denmark, Mexico and the Czech Republic and all factories are subject to the same extremely high precision standards which ensure that the pieces across the globe will always fit together and stay together properly. The margin of tolerance for the size of the bricks is so small as to be virtually unimaginable to the human brain. The variances allowed are in fact so tiny that I can only assume that they are measured by something like a Laser eye beam and computer software to check such consistency.

The Lego organisation is one of the biggest toy manufacturers in the world based on profit, and has around 4,500 staff. At the end of last century it gained awards in both America and the UK as the ‘Toy Of The Century’ and I don’t think that there are many people who would argue with that accolade.

There are allegedly 2,400 different Lego pieces, which is an an amazing number of shapes, sizes and colours! Of course, in the 21st Century, a great deal of the Lego purchased is in kit form and is designed to result in predetermined objects ranging from a fort to a fire engine, a pirate ship to a space rocket and a whole lot more besides. A lot of the kits are inspired by 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! Though even Lego’s inventive creators haven’t yet worked out how to get the lightsabers to give out a real Laser eye beam!

For children who want to build Lego scenes which are more identifiable, there is the City selection of kits, which enables you to have all of the buildings, vehicles and people you need in your town – police, fire brigade, the airport, trains, farms and much more so that you can put out the flames of fires, fly planes and arrest people. I expect, eventually, you’ll even be able to take out 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 questioned to what extent they have deprived today’s children of their ability to engage their own imaginations to build unique shapes and models. But now I’ve revised my opinion and believe that the kits are a good idea provided nobody says that they must be put together as demonstrated on the box. For example, find a wheel and work out how many other things are that sort of shape. You soon start to understand that the human imagination is much more inventive than you think!