Sometimes the simplest ideas can have far-reaching effects. When Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen formed the Lego Group in 1934, he had no idea the company would go to become one of the most recognizable brands in the world. His only concern was that children would “LEg GOdt” – two Danish words meaning “play well.” And play well they did, this powerful toy brand has since expanded to include movies, games, competitions, amusement parks, and more. 

While the Lego Group has been around since the early 1930s, a forerunner of the company’s flagship product was introduced 70 years ago in 1949. Originally called “Automatic Binding Bricks,” this set consisted of bricks with four and eight studs, a plastic fish and a plastic sailor. Although these plastic bricks were an improvement on the traditional stackable wooden blocks of the time, Christiansen’s son, Godtfred, felt the locking ability was limited and not very versatile. Seeing the potential for these blocks to become a system for creative play, Lego spent five years developing the modern Lego brick. Much of this process was spent finding the right material for production, which ended up being a resilient plastic called acrylonitrile butadiene styrene polymer.  

The early 1950s saw many changes for the Lego Group, beginning with changing the name from Automatic Binding Bricks to Lego Mursten (Lego Bricks). The Lego name was now printed inside all the bricks and Godtfred introduced “system of play” that led to the formation of Lego sets. This system meant that all the elements fit together and can be used in multiple ways. “We will always make sure that all bricks – from yesterday, today and tomorrow – fit together,” Godtfred once said. A promise that holds true even seven decades later. The first product in Lego’s system of play was Town Plan no. 1, which consisted of such pieces as a firehouse, church, Esso station, small store, small houses, fire engine, townhouse, and a small cottage. 

Since the launch of the first Lego system, the Lego Group has released thousands of sets in a variety of themes. Some of the most popular themes were space, robots, pirates, trains, castle, dinosaurs, undersea exploration, and wild west. This included Lego astronauts, spaceships, aliens, pirates, soldiers, islanders, sailing ships, locomotives, knights, castles, submarines, aquatic animals, wranglers, sheriffs, bandits, Indians, and so much more. Many of these classic themes remain in production today, as does the Lego City and Lego Technic lines. During this period, Lego also produced the first minifigures, which have become a staple in most sets ever since.  

Although each Lego playset comes with instructions on how to recreate the box model, the versatility of the interlocking bricks encouraged creativity. For example, six Lego bricks of 2x4 studs can be combined in 915,103,765 different ways. To showcase users’ innovations, Lego building competitions have taken place around the world for some time. The company later expanded to launch a robotics line of toys called Mindstorms consisting of an intelligent “brick” computer that controls the system, a set of modular sensors and motors, and Lego parts from the Technic line. This line is utilized in several robotics competitions including Botball, Junior FIRST Lego League, FIRST Lego League, and RoboCup Junior football. 

While Lego prefers to rely more upon its own characters and themes, over the years the company has also licensed themes from such franchises as Batman, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Minecraft, and Star Wars. The latter licensing agreement is easily one of their most popular and profitable. Lego has produced sets and minifigures for the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy as well as Star Wars Rebels, The Force Awakens, Battlefront, Rogue One, Solo, The Last Jedi, and Star Wars Resistance. Along with the regular minifigure-scale sets, Lego released 26 Star Wars sets for the Ultimate Collector Series. These models are considerably larger, more detailed, and meant more for collecting and display purposes. 

One of the largest Lego Star Wars sets commercially produced was a 5,195-piece Millennium Falcon. It was briefly surpassed by a 5,922-piece Taj Mahal before a redesigned Millennium Falcon retook the top spot in 2017 at 7,541 pieces. This partnership between Lego and Lucasfilm has also spawned several television specials, television series, short films, and video games. Through Lego’s collaboration with Traveller’s Tales, they have also produced a series of Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Batman, and Lego Marvel Super Heroes video games.

Aside from video games, the Lego Group has also enjoyed substantial success in various other media including direct to film, television specials, television series, short films, and theatrical films. These adaptations featured such franchises as Lego Clutch Powers, Lego Star Wars, Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Atlantis, Lego Friends, Lego Super Heroes, Lego Ninjago, Lego Hero Factory, Lego Scooby-Doo, and Lego Jurassic World. In 2014, Lego took the leap from the small screen to the silver screen with the computer-animated comedy The Lego Movie. 

This film featured the voices of Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Charlie Day, Liam Neeson, and Morgan Freeman. It grossed $469 million worldwide and was nominated for both a Golden Globe and Oscar Award, while winning a BAFTA, Critics’ Choice and Saturn Award for Best Animated Film. The film franchise has since expanded to include the sequel The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, and the spinoff films The Lego Batman Movie and The Lego Ninjago Movie.

Arnett reprised his role as the Dark Knight for The Lego Batman Movie alongside Zach Galifianakis, Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson and Ralph Fiennes. This film was also commercially successful, grossing $312 million worldwide, and featured many characters within the DC superhero dimension of the Lego Universe. A sequel is currently in development.  

Through a partnership with Merlin Entertainments, there are also eight Legoland amusement parks in Denmark, England, Germany, California, Florida, Malaysia, Dubai, and Japan. A ninth is planned to open in New York in 2020 with a tenth planned for 2022 in China. These family-friendly theme parks feature roller coasters and educational elements, with everything either made from millions of genuine Lego bricks or made to appear as if they are built out of Lego bricks. 

As of 2015, 600 billion Lego parts have been produced with the company replacing Ferrari as Brand Finance’s “world’s most powerful brand.” While the small pieces of plastic by themselves are not particularly eye-catching, Lego has served as a creative outlet for 70 years. In the right eyes, the Lego brick can become a rocket ship, a video game, a feature film, or even a roller coaster. With the right imagination, these bricks can become anything and everything – one must only LEg GOdt.