I read today of the death of Danish inventor Jens Nygaard Knudsen. What could be his most notable achievement was his role in creating LEGO mini-figures, the ubiquitous people who inhabit the LEGO places we build. They debuted on the market in the late 1970s, to populate LEGO landscapes that were sold in boxed sets. The mini-figures themselves have become movie stars, with the first LEGO movie in 2014 ranking among the top-grossing films that year.
This news started me searching about the history of LEGOS.
I didn’t remember them from my childhood. When I was a kid, the building toys back then were Erector Sets – metal girders that you had to screw together with nuts and bolts. I also remember Lincoln Logs, wooden pieces that had grooves at each end so they’d fit together.
But I first saw LEGOs when my kids were little in the late 1970s. I loved them – still do. I’d spend hours sitting on the floor with Jennifer and then with Michael, building things from the plans in the box, but just as often freestyling, making buildings and towers as tall as I could get them without toppling over.
And then my kids outgrew them. So my LEGO play stopped until Jen had kids and, once again, I’d be on the floor with Jack and then with Gabriel. We made space ships, cars, boats – you name it.
And then my grandsons outgrew LEGOs. But I never did.
The countless plastic pieces remained in our basement where, from time to time, I’d walk past a partly-built structure and add a few pieces or switch things around. Until just recently, when I cleaned up the basement, there were a few towers that just about touched the ceiling. I’d sometimes get lost down there, trying to make them sturdier or higher.
In my online searching, I learned that Mr. Knudsen was part of a long line of imaginative folk who brought those plastic bricks to life. LEGOs actually began with a Danish carpenter, Ole Kirk Christiansen, who had a store where he sold his handmade step-ladders and ironing boards. In the mid-1930s he developed building blocks that would interconnect. The first were the large blocks now known as Duplo, that younger children play with. He then began making smaller bricks and called his company “Play Well,” which in Danish is spelled leg godt. That became LEGO, as we know it today.
During World War II, traditional toy-making materials wood and metal were scarce, but plastic was readily available. Christiansen bought the first plastic injection-molding machine in Denmark and set it to work making plastic bricks and other parts.
Christiansen died in 1958, but his son continued the business, expanding it through Europe and, in 1972, to the U.S.
Estimates have the number of LEGO pieces produced since the 1950s at more than 400 billion, or enough for every person on earth to have 64 pieces. Visit a LEGO store now and you’ll see entire cites built of LEGOs. The LEGO store in Rockefeller Center here has a mini-Rock Center, complete with the skating rink. At the Los Angeles Auto Show a year ago, I saw a full-size McClaren sports car completely made of LEGOs.
I know some adults who, like me, enjoy playing with LEGOs. It keeps the “kid” in us alive by helping us “play well.”