Legos

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Wendy Woloson

Legos were certainly not the only building toys on the market during the better part of the twentieth century, but they were the ones that quintessentially represented the culture of the time. Wooden building blocks had been around for thousands of years and symbolized a simple, pre-industrial era. Toys like Erector and Meccano sets, with their nuts and bolts and metal girders, captured the aspirations of the skyscraper era experienced in the 1910s and 1920s. Legos, however, as interlocking plastic bricks 1 1/4 by 5/8 inches with eight knobs on top and three tubes underneath, combined the concept of a simple toy with newer materials.

The concept for the Lego brick began in 1932 when Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen used scrap material from his furniture-making business to make wooden bricks for children's toys. In 1947 the Lego Company introduced plastic and was making all of their bricks out of plastic by 1960. These basic bricks, made of red, yellow, white, blue, and black indestructible plastic and infinitely combinable into all manner of shapes and structures, had not changed in design since their early models.

The word Lego, from the Danish "leg godt," or "play well," epitomized the philosophy of the Lego company, which was to provide a "system" of play: simple, educational toys that allowed children to be creative and use their imaginations. The company manufactured various lines of their signature bricks specifically intended for different age ranges: Primo were larger and meant for infants; Duplo for preschoolers; Technic kits, for builders aged 9 to 11; and Freestyle for older children. The bricks themselves combined order with flexibility--one was limited to the rectangular form of the brick, but could use it in combination with other bricks to build almost anything from one's imagination; Norman Mailer, for example, used Legos in the 1960s to build his own version of the "city of the future" using 15,000 Lego bricks. In addition, Lego manufactured kits that allowed one to make anything from castles, airplanes, and ships to houses, cars, and bridges.

By the 1980s and 1990s Lego kits became more specialized and less interchangeable, reflecting children's desire to possess things on demand rather than having to use their intellectual skills to get them. These kits came with more pre-built components that lessened the challenge of original construction. In addition, the parts became more particularized, including things beyond the basic bricks, such as rubber tires, plastic trees, and even human figures, which the company introduced in 1997. The Lego "Mindstorms" kits, introduced in 1999 and starting at $200, integrated computer chips in the bricks, allowing for interactive possibilities.

It was estimated that by 1993, 70 percent of American families with children owned at least one Lego product. By 1996 Lego was the world's fifth largest toy maker, amassing a profit of $79 million in that year. During this era Lego also shifted its focus from creating educational toys for children to becoming the most familiar brand name among adults with children. To this end, Lego expanded its product line to include backpacks and children's clothing. In addition, the company expanded its LegoLand theme park. Known as the "Disneyland of Europe," the first LegoLand was built in Billund, Denmark (home to the Lego factory) in 1968. LegoLand California opened near Carlsbad in 1999, and the company promised many more--including a theme park in Japan--by 2005.

These developments epitomized equally the shifts in the nature of children's play and in the formation of corporate identity during the late twentieth century. At one time Lego bricks--as simple and affordable objects of a sturdy material that allowed educational yet creative play--encouraged children to build their own universes. Eventually, however, the bricks were no longer basic structural elements but were instead pre-built component parts used to create a pre-determined object with the help of instructions and expensive computer technology. This reflected both the tendency of parents to steer their children toward more sophisticated play as well as Lego's desire to abandon its original mission of manufacturing sound toys with integrity and become, rather, the embodiment of an identifiable brand name that manufactured mass-media experiences for children (as evidenced by LegoLand) that were worlds away from simply building houses with colored bricks.