Lego is a line of construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colorful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, minifigures and various other parts. Lego bricks can be assembled and connected in many ways, to construct such objects as vehicles, buildings, and even working robots. Anything constructed can then be taken apart again, and the pieces used to make other objects. The toys were originally designed in the 1930s in Europe and have achieved an international appeal, with an extensive subculture that supports Lego movies, games, competitions, and four Lego-themed amusement parks.
Building products
Since it began producing plastic bricks, the Lego Group has released thousands of sets themed around a variety of topics, like the new "Atlantis". Other Examples include town and city, space, robots, pirates, Lego Trains, vikings, castles, Bionicle, dinosaurs, holiday locations, scuba diving and undersea exploration, the wild west, the Arctic, airports and miners. Many licensed themes have also been produced, including Star Wars, Batman, SpongeBob SquarePants, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Spiderman, and Ben 10. At Comic-Con 2009, Lego announced Toy Story,"Cars" and Prince of Persia lines as well as additions to other lines such as Star Wars.
New elements are often released along with new sets. There are also Lego sets designed to appeal to young girls such as the Belville and Clikits lines which consists of small interlocking parts that are meant to encourage creativity and arts and crafts, much like regular Lego bricks. Belville and Clikit pieces can interlock with regular Lego bricks as decorative elements.
Also the new creation of DesignByMe 3.0, which replaces the Lego Factory name gives people the chance to customize and build their own Lego set, any shape or size. Users can even customize the box that the set comes in.
The one continuity not really touched on by Lego is that of military toys. While there are sets which can be seen to have a military theme, such as Star Wars or the German and Russian soldiers in the Indiana Jones sets, there are no directly military-themed sets in any line. This is following Ole Kirk Christiansen's policy of not wanting to make war seem like child's play.
The Lego range has expanded to encompass accessory motors, gears, lights, sensors, and cameras designed to be used with Lego components. There are even special bricks, like the Lego NXT that can be programmed with a PC or a Mac to perform very complicated and useful tasks. These programmable bricks are sold under the name Lego Mindstorms.
In January 2004 the Lego Company reported a deficit of Dkr1.4bn (£144m), which caused speculation that the owners of the Lego Company would be forced to sell to an American company. After re-evaluating its priorities and cutting expenses by selling their amusement parks and cutting a Lego line aimed at girls, Lego reported a net profit increase of 32% (DKr1.35bn), marking it as a company doing well during the global recession of the time.
In 2006 a new Lego Mindstorms kit called Mindstorms NXT was released. It is more advanced than the previous RCX, and has a new array of sensors. They include improved touch and light sensors, and new sound and ultrasonic sensor technology, the latter allowing the robot to measure distance. A rotation sensor, previously separate, is now directly incorporated into the NXT motors. There is also a Bluetooth compatible hookup that can send and receive messages from one's cellphone and other Bluetooth compatible devices. The RCX was only compatible with Windows (though the RCX using the educational software version called Robolab could be used on both Mac OS and Microsoft Windows), but the NXT is compatible with both Windows and Mac OS.
There are several robotics competitions which use Lego bricks and the RCX or NXT. The earliest, and likely the largest, is Botball, a national U.S. middle- and high-school competition stemming from the MIT 6.270 Lego robotics tournament. A related competition is FIRST Lego League for elementary and middle schools. The international RoboCup Junior soccer competition involves extensive use of Lego Mindstorms equipment which is often pushed to its extreme limits.
Bionicle is a line of toys by the Lego Group that is marketed towards those in the 7–16 year-old age range. The line was launched in January 2001 in Europe and June/July 2001 in the United States. The Bionicle idea originated from the earlier toy lines Slizers (also known as Throwbots) and Roboriders. Both of these lines had similar throwing disks and characters based on classical elements. The sets in the Bionicle line have increased in size and flexibility through the years.
The Lego group's Duplo product, introduced in 1969, is a range of simple blocks which measure twice the width, height and depth of standard Lego blocks, and are aimed at younger children.
Video games
Lego has a large list of video games that appeal to a wide age range, with titles like Lego Star Wars: The Video Game, Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, Bionicle Heroes as well as the Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga and Lego Indiana Jones, a Lego Batman, Lego Battles and the Lego Universe MMOG. Also, Lego has announced that they will be making Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4 set for release in 2010, and Lego Rock Band, was released in the fall of 2009. Another game announced is Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues including Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and total remakes of the other movie's levels was released in the fall of 2009, Lego Digital Designer is an official piece of Lego software for Windows and Mac OS X which allows users to build with Lego bricks on their computers. Users can then publish their creations online on the Lego Factory website, or purchase the physical bricks to build them. Lego Digital Designer includes some Lego products which only exist online, including models for the children's television programmes TUGS, Thomas and Friends and Speed Racer.
On January 28, 2008, Lego celebrated the 50th anniversary of the patent on its interlocking blocks with a worldwide building contest. Google paid tribute to the anniversary by writing its name on the Google homepage in Lego bricks, along with the Lego figure on one of the letters.
One of the largest Lego sets ever commercially produced is a minifig-scaled edition of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon. Designed by Jens Kronvold Fredericksen, it was released in 2007 and has 5,195 pieces. It was recently surpassed by a Lego model of the Taj Mahal which consists of 5,922 pieces.
Other ventures
Merlin Entertainment operates four Legoland amusement parks, the original in Billund, Denmark, the second in Windsor England and the third in Günzburg, Germany; there is also one in Carlsbad, California. On July 13, 2005, the control of 70% of the Legoland parks was sold for $460 million to the Blackstone Group of New York while the remaining 30% is still held by the Kirk Kristiansen family. There are also three Legoland Discovery Centers, two in Germany Duisburg and Berlin, and one in Chicago, Illinois.
Lego operates 43 retail stores (34 in the United States, 4 in the United Kingdom and 5 in Germany), including ones at the Downtown Disney shopping complexes at Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts as well as in the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. There is also a franchised Lego store in Abu Dhabi. The opening of each store is celebrated with weekend long event where a Master Model Builder creates, with the help of volunteers most of which are children, a larger than life lego statue which is then displayed at the new store for several weeks.
Lego has, in the past, intermittently published or licensed a small number of tabletop games which incorporate Lego pieces, such as minifigures, and/or imagery of them and in 2009 launched a range of 10 German-style board games designed by Cephas Howard and Reiner Knizia under the name LEGO Games.
A Lego movie was announced on August 12, 2009. The film will be an action/adventure-comedy that will combine both live action and animation. The film will be made at Warner Bros. with Dan Lin producing. No release date has been set as of yet.
