A Million Little Bricks Read online

  In the early 1950s, LEGO introduced a number of different parts to help develop the building capabilities of its new line. Initially bricks were only available as 2 × 2 and 2 × 4 studded bricks, but they soon brought out 1 × 2 bricks, 2 × 3 bricks, round bricks, corner pieces, and different size thin base plates that allowed larger, more elaborate creations to be built. The slotted Kiddicraft bricks may have been the starting point for LEGO Mursten, but in 1954 a new brick-compatible window/door system was developed that meant the slots were soon to be made redundant—instead, window pieces were clipped onto brick studs with wings. The bricks did not change immediately, though, and the old slot-in window pieces were sold up until 1956. Through these innovations the LEGO Group was developing a recognizable building system of its own and a company more heavily associated with building bricks than other toys. Following on from the success of the Ferguson Tractor model, it continued to produce other popular metal and plastic toys including a number of 1:43 and 1:38 scale-model vehicles based on other real car and truck manufacturers’. Models of Chevrolet trucks and VW Beetles were some of the most popular LEGO toys until the introduction of the System of Play.

  These toys were made with zinc metal bases and plastic chassis and were the inspiration for the Town Plan 1:87 scale vehicles of the late 1950s and early 1960s. © Ian Greig

  The 1950s was a crucial decade for the LEGO Group, as the company saw changes in management, production, and a new manufacturing focus brought about by Godtfred’s determination to develop a toy system all children wanted to play with. He had helped to introduce plastic toys to their customers and brought about the production of LEGO Mursten with his father, but building bricks were not yet the company’s core product, or its best-selling one. Plastic toys were becoming more widely available and acceptable across Europe, despite critics blasting them as second-rate to traditional wooden toys, claiming they would not stand the test of time. Although he may not have known it, Godtfred had created a product that had the ability to resonate with generations to come—he just had to find a way to make sure it would. And that’s exactly what he did.

  FROM FATHER TO SON

  It was in 1951, when Ole Kirk’s health began to deteriorate after a stroke, that his son Godtfred, who had been named junior vice president one year earlier, began to assume more of his father’s responsibilities—he was just thirty years old. Despite not having the academic qualifications readily associated with someone in his position, Godtfred (or GKC as he was known) had spent ten years working for his father, designing toys and watching the company develop. Despite Godtfred’s brothers and uncle working in the factory, he was the one Ole Kirk decided would be best qualified (he was the operations manager at the time) to take up this important position, which would prepare him to eventually take over from his father completely.

  Ole Kirk may not have been in good health, but that didn’t stop him trying to force his hand and insist on the building of a new factory in 1952—something his son thought was quite unnecessary, especially as they’d only just finished paying off the cost of the current factory—Ole Kirk had his way, however, and it was up to GKC to find the money. Despite their differences, and GKC threatening to leave LEGO for good, the driven son persevered with his father’s business and was integral in the production of the first LEGO bricks and even more so in the development of the System of Play in the mid-1950s. Despite only speaking Danish, GKC made business trips abroad to Norway and Sweden to show off the LEGO bricks to possible partners—fsthese trips would be key in LEGO’s success in years to come. In 1957, when his brothers Karl George and Gerdhart were named heads of plastic production and wood production, respectively, the position of managing director went to GKC. Sadly, a year later, months shy of the production of the “real” LEGO brick, Ole Kirk died. The directorship of LEGO and its 450 employees passed to GKC, and it was therefore his decision to discontinue the production of wooden toys when the factory where they were made burned down in 1960—the third LEGO factory fire in its short history. By 1962 Karl George, Gerhardt, and Johannes had all left the company, leaving GKC in charge of the LEGO name. It would be his son, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen (the family name was spelled differently on Kjeld’s birth certificate, hence the change in spelling of the Christiansen name), who would then take over from him as chairman of the board in 1986, when he resigned his position from the company. Godtfred died nine years later, a few days after his seventy-fifth birthday.

  CHAPTER 2

  1954–1977:

  Systematic Success

  The name “LEGO” was officially trademarked by the company in 1954, as if in preparation for the success that lay ahead. The word, invented by Ole Kirk Christiansen, was soon to be synonymous with wholesome childhood play across the world. But before the LEGO Group became a formidable competitor (and champion) in the international toy industry ring, a few things needed to happen.

  Despite having developed a good-quality, reliable product, LEGO bricks had not taken off in the way Ole Kirk and Godtfred would have liked. When traveling to a toy fair in the U.K. in 1954, Junior Vice President Godtfred got talking to a Danish department store buyer from Copenhagen. The man commented on how it was such a shame there was no toy currently available that functioned as part of a really good system—which would encourage consumers to keep coming back to that product. Back in Billund, it was as if Godtfred had taken the man’s words as a challenge, and he set about re-examining the company’s current toy output. At the time, the LEGO Group was producing about 200 different toy items, so Godtfred drew up a list of ten basic qualities that a good LEGO product should possess, to help him determine which product might lend itself well to this new “system.” These qualities included some of the things LEGO toys are most revered for today: unlimited play potential, suitable for girls and boys of any age, quality and attention to detail, and long hours of play that encourage development, imagination, and creativity. It soon became clear to Godtfred that LEGO bricks offered the most potential to be at the heart of the company’s new venture.

  A year of development followed during which Godtfred centered the existing LEGO gift sets and components around a single building theme. Since the majority of LEGO models used to promote the product were scaled-down building structures a “town plan” theme was decided upon and the company set about developing new town-related sets and accessories. Godtfred combined the best of the bricks’ design and creativity—a construction system with windows and doors that was already ideally suited to building houses, shops, town halls, and factories—with trees, cars, and traffic signs to enable children to build up a more complete “world” for their LEGO models.

  The additional accessories built in the popular model railway HO building scale (1:87) were not made from compatible LEGO brick components but rather from a mixture of metal and plastic parts. The introduction of scale model vehicles, trees, and signs brought the brick models to life, making LEGO bricks no longer something you simply built with, but a toy that could be used to create your own play environment—a basis for a fictional world that you controlled. It was also hoped that the street environment would be educational, encouraging children to learn about road safety, similar to the 1947 Monypoly board game.

  Initially, eight lorries were designed and sold alongside the LEGO Town Plan sets and pieces—they were based on the British Bedford lorry (later replaced by Mercedes trucks under a new licensing agreement), and had metal frames and wheels and a plastic body. These moving parts helped bring the Town Plan to life, and they were soon joined by a VW bus in 1956 and a Beetle in 1958. Jaguar, Ford, Citroen, Fiat, Vauxhall, and Morris all got in on the LEGO 1:87 model car market, ensuring their vehicle designs made it onto living room floors around Europe. These miniature vehicles reigned over LEGO towns everywhere until 1969 when they were discontinued. The introduction of a LEGO System wheel in the early 1960s saw the gradual phasing out of the 1:87 scale models, replaced by cars, trucks, trains, and other vehicles built from LEGO bri
cks.

  Plastic bricks were combined with these metal trees and 1:87 scale vehicles to create a more recognizable world in miniature. © Ian Greig

  A Town Plan layout on display at the LEGO Museum shows some of the earliest Town building designs in red, white, and blue LEGO elements. © Ian Greig

  Originally consisting of the Mursten series of basic “giftbox” sets, (known as the 700 series because of their product numbers), these new vehicles, and other accessories, the Town Plan was tied together with a vinyl play mat for children to build on—the building of a town was encouraged by the street layout of roads and green lawn areas. The Town Plan System I Leg (System of Play) was unveiled at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1955, and despite receiving some rather uninterested responses from the German market, the Danish people had begun to catch on to what the LEGO Group was creating, so much so that Danish sales of LEGO Mursten products had nearly doubled as 1956 drew to a close. With Godtfred’s list of principles in mind, new designs were rolled out each year, keeping the brand fresh and exciting and giving consumers the opportunity to develop and add to their own collection.

  From 1957, products were branded “LEGO System” and boxes of LEGO bricks and sets featured the Town Plan design on the front, often with two or three children (including Godtfred’s own children) playing happily. Designs became more adventurous and soon LEGO towns could include a fire station, a petrol station complete with Esso petrol pumps, a VW garage, and a church, as well as traffic police to keep their eyes out for speeding 1:87 scale cars. The LEGO Group sold a few sets designed for children to build specific models such as the VW Garage (306—shown below) and Car Showroom (307) but the majority of sales were still through the larger 700 “gift boxes”—wooden compartmentalized boxes with a variety of bricks and specialty pieces. Although a lot of the basic parts packs could be used to build anything, the image of children building a townscape adorned the boxes, steering children toward this building theme, encouraging them to build up their own Town Plan collection. Most significantly, the LEGO Group introduced a play space to encompass your own LEGO town—initially in 1955 there was a flexible plastic rollaway play mat (1200/200) with seven areas designated for building, but the following year a masonite fiberboard alternative was released (1200a/200a). LG also molded new trees, sign posts, and petrol pumps to support the new theme.

  FIRST LEGO PEOPLE

  Long before the minifigure strolled robotically into the public’s consciousness, LEGO set number 271 was produced in 1956. It contained four traffic policemen—all striking different directional poses—as well as a traffic light and a traffic island. Each policeman was hand-painted, making each set individual. These four men are the first to have inhabited the world of LEGO.

  Some of the earliest 700 System sets were available in metal canisters such as these. On the right are some of the “200” series of smaller sets of LEGO Mursten; the numbers indicate the size of brick available in each box. © Alex Howe

  Set 700/5 was one of the 1958 LEGO System gift boxes available across Europe. The side of the box reads “Du système dans le jeu” and “Systeem in het Spe”—System of Play for French, Suisse, Belgian, and Dutch customers. © Maxx Kroes

  A 1955 Danish catalog printed an illustration of a metropolitan town built from LEGO bricks: A skyscraper looms over people walking the streets while a lorry trundles by and a plane swoops overhead. While the LEGO bricks themselves were very basic—TLG had yet to develop the stud and tube bricks—and there were only a limited number of parts available, this picture truly demonstrates the important part a child’s imagination played in the sale of the earliest Town sets.

  The LEGO System of Play was one of the most important developments in the company’s history. Other toy companies had been producing construction toys for years, some longer than LEGO, and none had been able to develop a system with the potential of the LEGO Town Plan. In the 1950s, Meccano, for example, were producing sets which, while updated, were not that dissimilar to those they had released in the 1930s: boxes of parts designed to construct various creations, which could be larger and more detailed the more parts you owned. But where these other building systems concentrated on the technical potential of the toy and the creation of individual structures, LEGO was encouraging children to build from their imagination, and create a world from LEGO bricks to play with. LG was beginning to set themselves apart.

  In 1957 GKC was appointed managing director one year before the death of his father, and the next fundamental development in the LEGO Group’s history. While the System of Play had begun to sell in other European countries (the first foreign sales office was set up in Hohenwestedt, Germany, in 1956), the bricks themselves did not have the interlocking capabilities required to build complex structures, or even a simple stack of bricks that would not fall apart if knocked over. So Godtfred set about designing a better brick, producing a number of different designs which were tested with focus groups of children, and the most successful design was selected to become the LEGO brick we know today. This new design widened the divide between the LEGO System and other brick systems that had come before it, especially Hilary Page’s Kiddicraft bricks. This was further cemented by the 1958 patent the company obtained to prevent its new bricks from being copied (all of the new designs were patented, in case the LEGO Group had any reason to use them in the future). To increase the brick’s “clutch” power, TLG introduced a tubing element underneath each brick which four studs would fit tightly around—the slots at the sides were removed. A 2 × 2 brick now included one tube in the center of its hollow underside, a 2 × 4 brick included three tubes, etc. The bricks could still be pulled apart with relative ease, but now there was more flexibility with how bricks could fit together and sides of structures could be smooth, without the aesthetic irregularity of the empty slots. When the new brick became available, the LEGO Group also brought out a range of sloping bricks to improve LEGO buildings’ roofs, which meant both LEGO toy designers and consumers were able to produce more elaborate designs. New molds were created immediately for all the new tube bricks, but some of the older bricks, especially the 1× bricks (e.g., 1 × 1, 1 × 2, 1 × 6, etc.), were not replaced right away—even today these bricks don’t have the same tubes inside as the larger bricks; they have smaller tubes that fit in between rows of studs, rather than in the center of four studs—so it was decided to wait until the old molds wore out before they would be updated.

  This original Volkswagen garage (306) included two VW Beetles and traffic signs. © Alex Howe

  This Esso Filling Station (310) came with an Esso truck (right), signage, and gas pumps. © Thorskegga Thorn

  After the introduction of the new stud-and-tube bricks, Godtfred pushed the LEGO System further, developing bricks and components to enhance this new world. The invention of the LEGO wheel in 1961 revolutionised the System—now cars and trucks could be built from LEGO, meaning the System no longer needed to rely on metal and plastic scale models to inject life and movement into the Town Plan. The wheel was one of the first important designs developed by LEGO Futura—a five-person division established in 1959 to come up with creative and original ideas for the LEGO System. The work of LEGO Futura was an extension of Godtfred’s informal testing methodology—watching his own children play with LEGO. With the expansion of the company and the brand, the Futura team not only introduced new, innovative elements to the LEGO world, but explored the possibility of introducing computerized parts as well. By 1987 around 150 people worked in this department, and 240 by 1995.

  The LEGO wheel was a breakthrough and the wheel-bearing design was unique enough to warrant a patent of its own. Originally available in 2 × 2 or 4 × 4 sizes, the plastic wheels had a small axle attached and a groove around the edge to hold a rubber tire. The axles were slotted in to reciprocal hollowed-out parts of a special 2 × 4 LEGO brick, and were then free to rotate. The design was first available in the 1962 wheel set collection (400), which included eleven pieces, to make up 2 × 2 wh
eel sets—these would be followed in 1964 by larger wheel sets (401) and white turntables (402) and sets that incorporated the wheels and turntables such as the European Taxi (315) and the Warehouse and Mill set (318). The wheel revolutionized LEGO toys and became an intrinsic part of the LEGO System. By the end of the 1990s, LEGO was producing more than three million tires every year for its little toy wheels. In terms of number produced, that made it the largest manufacturer of tires in the world. Futura also developed gears (large round plates with studs and tubes that could be rotated by attaching them to LEGO wheels) and battery-powered motors to make these models move independently. While patented in a number of countries, these sets were only available in the American market from licensee Samsonite, although LEGO System motors and batteries were introduced to Europe with the release of motorized LEGO train sets in 1966.