We celebrate Lego’s 60th with fun facts and a classic movie quiz to test your film knowledge
Get set for the world's biggest block party with our fun-fact guide to the world's biggest and best-loved brands - and can you spot the iconic movie scenes recreated as Lego blockbusters?
GET set for the world’s biggest block party – tomorrow marks Lego’s 60th birthday.
First patented in 1958, the design of the plastic toy building blocks has stayed the same through all those years.
Since being conceived by Danish toy maker Godtfred Kirk Christiansen in the small town of Billund, the colourful toy has become one of the world’s biggest and best-loved brands.
Here, GRANT ROLLINGS and NICK PRITCHARD click together 60 fun Lego facts. And on the right, try to spot the classic film scenes recreated in Lego – answers at the foot of page.
1. ORIGINALLY, the Lego company used to sell wooden toys. It was founded in 1932 by Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen, who started making toys out of leftover wood.
2. One of the first he made was a wooden duck for his children. They loved it so much it inspired him to put it into production.
3. The name Lego comes from the Danish words “leg godt”, or “play well”.
4. Later the Lego Group discovered that “Lego” can be loosely interpreted as “I put together” or “I assemble” in Latin.
5. Ole’s son Godtfred took over as the firm’s managing director in 1957 and ran it when his father died the following year. He had the idea for a type of interlocking plastic toy brick, to inspire creativity in children.
6. The design has not changed since its patenting in 1958, so one of the original blocks would still fit with one made today.
7. In 1939 British toy maker Hillary Fisher Page had patented plastic interlocking bricks. He died in 1957, without discovering that Lego had borrowed his idea.
8. In 1960 a fire destroyed Lego’s stock of wooden toys. Godtfred decided its plastic range was now selling strongly enough and the firm stopped producing wooden toys.
9. His brother Karl headed the wooden toy division and was so angry, he quit to start rival firm Bilofix – which soon sank into obscurity.
10. Despite being four times smaller, Lego bricks are compatible with the big Duplo bricks aimed at younger children.
11. Legoland in Windsor, Berks, is the most popular theme park in Britain.
12. David Beckham says playing with Lego helps to calm him down.
13. Other famous plastic brick fans include Brad Pitt and Britney Spears.
14. Lego boss Ole refused to make any toys that made war look appealing to kids and there are still no military-themed Lego sets.
15. The company even banned guns in Lego sets until 1999.
16. Many Lego workers protested when the firm began making Star Wars sets in 1999, feeling the theme went against its pacifist ideal.
17. Those Star Wars sets were a major factor in reversing the company’s decline.
18. One of the rarest mini figures is Boba Fett from the Star Wars Cloud City set. An original changes hands for around £275.
19. The most expensive mini figure ever is a 14-carat gold C-3PO, of which five were made as contest prizes to mark Star Wars’ 30th anniversary. None has been sold since, but some estimate each would fetch £10,000.
AGELESS CLASSIC
MY Lego love affair began with a cable car ride in the Alps.
On returning home, my dad and I built a working Lego replica between the first-floor toilet window and the back garden.
Father and son bonded over a mountain of bricks, wheels and cogs – then fell out when it crashed into the drain three days later, whereupon he spent his pub time fishing those little plastic bricks out of a sea of tea leaves and dirty dishwater.
Weeks later, my best mate and I built a miniature version of the town of Hitchin, Herts, where I grew up – complete with kebab shop, boozers, a gym and a busy police station.
A generation later and it’s the same in my household, with its dedicated Lego table and endless bags and storage boxes for the stuff.
There’s no cable car yet but I’ve built football stadiums, battleships, castles and mini cities with my kids. The football stadium was taken over by an army of knights during the World Cup. Donald Trump landed in Air Force One at the airport and was kidnapped by aliens who arrived by train.
In this age of social media and games consoles, I’m amazed that Lego can still absorb my kids for hours.
But then I’d argue that Lego has never been better – who wouldn’t want to build the Nou Camp with Chewbacca screaming from the dugout, Batman and the Joker fighting on the terraces and a ninja army arriving by fire-fighting plane to stage the half-time entertainment?
By DUNCAN HAMILTON 45-year-old Lego- loving dad of three
20. Each mini figure head is hollow, with a hole on each side to make it less likely that a child would choke if they swallowed it.
21. In 1978 Lego created its first mini figure – a tiny policeman for a Lego town set.
22. The global total of 4billion mini figures is nearly three times the population of China, the world’s most populous nation.
23. The company is the world’s biggest tyre manufacturer, due to the millions of rubber wheels on its toy vehicles.
24. TV presenter James May built the world’s first full-size Lego house in Surrey in 2009. He used 3.3million bricks and it had a working toilet, bed and shower.
25. Just six of the eight-studded Lego bricks can be put together an amazing 915,103,765 different ways.
26. The largest ever tower of Lego was 112ft tall and contained 500,000 bricks. It was made by students at a school in Delaware, US, in 2013.
27. Seven Lego sets are sold every second. In the run-up to Christmas this hits 28 per second.
28. There are enough bricks in the world to stack them one on top of another, all the way to the moon – ten times over.
29. In 2011 astronauts took Lego into space for the first time.
30. A single Lego brick can support 375,000 other bricks before buckling. The tower would be 2.17 miles high before the bottom brick caved in.
31. Grown-up Lego enthusiasts call themselves AFoLs – Adult Fans of Lego.
32. When adult Lego fans complained that the firm did not cater for them, it responded by calling them “a bit bizarre” but now welcomes their ideas for new Lego sets.
33. The online dating site Plenty of Fish has an entire section on its site for lovelorn Lego enthusiasts.
34. Last year Lego unveiled its largest ever set – the Ultimate Collector’s edition of the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo’s spaceship. It cost £650 and comes with 7,541 pieces.
35. Artist Geoffroy Amelot arranges the colourful blocks so that they look like famous paintings including the Mona Lisa.
36. In 1977 the company changed the name Duplo to Lego Preschool, before changing it back two years later.
37. The word “Lego” is never said in the 2014 film The Lego Movie.
38. Morgan Freeman reckons the Lego Batman movie is better than the live-action Christopher Nolan trilogy he starred in.
39. The largest Lego store is in Leicester Square, London.
40. It includes a replica of a London tube carriage made out of 637,903 bricks.
41. There are eight Legoland theme parks around the world, with the ninth park scheduled to open in New York next year.
42. Last year Chinese firm Bela lost a copyright case for its Lego rip-off products.
43. Three aluminium Lego figures flew on a five-year voyage to Jupiter on board the Nasa probe Juno, arriving in 2016. Later this year they and the craft will be deliberately crashed into the planet.
44. Dara O Briain judged the C4 show Lego Masters last year, where kids and adults competed to make extraordinary Lego structures.
45. Rupert Grint plays with the famous bricks in the video for Ed Sheeran’s 2011 hit Lego House.
46. The singer has confessed: “I once went on a date and brought a Lego set and then made the Lego set, and then left.”
47. The toy has the seal of approval from Britain’s future king. Prince William said of George: “My son’s very into Lego.”
48. Oscar favourite Gary Oldman voices baddie Lord Vortech in the Lego Dimensions video game.
49. In 2012 Lego Friends – packaged in pink boxes and aimed at girls – brought accusations of sexism because the pastel female characters played in a salon and a swimming pool.
50. But the firm saw its sales rise by 25 per cent in that year.
51. Last November a Women Of Nasa range of figures was launched, including Hubble space telescope developer Dr Nancy Grace Roman.
52. Godtfred’s son Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, 70, is the richest man in Denmark, worth £16billion.
53. Kjeld survived a car crash in 1969 which killed his 19-year-old sister Hanne.
54. Pictures of Godtfred’s three children, Gunhild, Kjeld and Hanne, appeared on Lego packaging in the 1950s.
55. Brit Bali Padda, who last year became Lego’s first non-Danish chief executive, left school at 16 with no qualifications.
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56. The Kristiansen family’s interest in the firm passed to Kjeld’s son Thomas, who owns 12 per cent of the business.
57. Instead of a gold watch, German Lego factory workers used to get a 14-carat Lego brick after 25 years of service. They are now worth £10,000.
58. The first Lego Technic toys, aimed at older children, were a tractor, a fork-lift truck, a car and a helicopter, released in 1977.
59. The manufacturer’s moulding process is so accurate that only 18 items in every million fail the company’s strict quality standards.
60. The White Stripes’ video for 2002 single Fell In Love With A Girl was made using Lego bricks.
And now the movie answers...
How did you get on? Here are the answers to our Lego movie scene quiz.
A. The Sound Of Music, B. Titanic, C. Dirty Dancing, D. A Clockwork Orange, E. American Beauty, F. Psycho, G. The Shining, H. Harry Potter, I. Pulp Fiction, J. Inception, K. James Bond, L. The Exorcist