Children’s Toys May Go Through Fads Of Popularity And A Lot Vanish Altogether In A Few Years, But There Are Some Of Inventions Which Have Stood the Test Of Time And Keep On Going From Strength To Strength

For over fifty years, both children and grown-ups around the world have spent many days playing and creating things with Lego bricks. What exactly you can build with the bricks is limited only by how many pieces you have and your own creativity. Though invented as a children’s plaything, the product has numerous adult fans as well and a quick look on the internet will locate some amazing and clever designs.

Going a long way to prove that its appeal doesn’t diminish as we grow up, the most unbelievable thing I’ve seen done with Lego was the life sized two level house, complete with a functioning bathroom and a bed which TV star James May confirmed was the worst bed he had ever spent a night in. I must be honest here that I would have had to tone down the colour scheme for the house somewhat, or I think I’d have been wearing sunglasses in the place and needing Laser eye surgery to stop my eyes from hurting too much! Making an object so big could obviously only be pulled off with loads of help and substantial funds, but the human mind can come up with some incredible creations even with only a much smaller number of pieces available to use.

The Lego story began in 1932 in a small town in Denmark where a businessman known as Ole Kirk Christansen started up a factory producing wooden toys for kids. He asked his workers to think of a name for the business, but in the end thought of one himself by marrying together the Danish words ‘Leg’ and Godt’, meaning ‘Play Well’, an appropriate name if ever there was one!

He soon realised that plastic was far more durable than wood when it came to toy production, and bought in the pioneering first injection moulding machine ever employed in Denmark. He began testing plastic building shapes and in 1949 he developed the prototype for Lego bricks. The concept was launched onto the market in 1958, and despite the fact that there have naturally been many additions to the original product when it comes to colours and shapes, the size of the pieces has always remained consistent enough that Lego pieces bought today would still fit together exactly with the original 1958 bricks.

These days, Lego products are produced in Denmark, Mexico and the Czech Republic and all factories must conform to the same exceptionally high precision standards which make sure that the pieces all over the world will always click together and stay together perfectly. The margin of error for the measurement of the bricks is so miniscule as to be virtually unimaginable to the human brain. The variances allowed are in fact so tiny that I can only assume that they are measured by something like a Laser eye beam and a computer program to ensure such consistency.

The Lego company is one of the biggest toy manufacturers on the planet based on profit, and employs around 4,500 staff. At the end of the 20th Century it won awards in both the USA and the UK as the ‘Toy Of The Century’ and I don’t expect that there are many individuals who would object to that accolade.

There are apparently 2,400 different Lego pieces, which is an an amazing quantity of shapes, sizes and colours! Of course, these days, a great deal of the Lego purchased is in kit form and is designed to result in specific objects ranging from a castle to a aeroplane, a pirate ship to a space rocket and much more besides. Many of the kits are inspired by films or television shows, so, for example, you can make something like your own Star Wars world, including many of the characters, spacecraft, droids and even Mos Eisley Cantina! Though even Lego’s talented creators haven’t yet worked out how to get the lightsabers to shoot with a genuine Laser eye beam!

For children who wish to make Lego scenes which are more identifiable, there is the City range of kits, which enables you to have all of the buildings, vehicles and people you need for your urban district – police, fire brigade, the airport, trains, farms and much more so that you can douse the flames of fires, fly planes and arrest people. I’m sure, given time, you’ll even have kits that allow you to take out a Lego appendix, carry out Lego Laser eye surgery or pull out Lego teeth!

I used to believe that selling so many kits was a bit of a pity. I often wondered to what extent they have deprived today’s children of the chance to use their own imaginations to come up with unique shapes and models. But now I’ve revised my opinion and understand that the kits are a good idea provided nobody demands that they must be put together as demonstrated on the box. For example, look at a wheel and work out how many other objects are that type of shape. You’ll soon see that the human imagination is much more ingenious than you think!