The Ultimate Guide to LEGO

They are so very simple: little plastic bricks that snap into each other, basic enough for a child to enjoy, yet brimming with infinite possibilities. Lego was born on Jan. 28, 1958. That’s when the Danish son of a toymaker raced to the patent office with a marvelous design breakthrough that allowed those tiny bricks to fit snuggly together yet pull easily apart. Those innocuous-looking top studs and bottom tubes, combined with the use of a kind of plastic that was both lightweight and incredibly strong, produced a building block capable of constructing everything from the most humble house to a tower reaching hundreds of feet high. Over the decades, Lego became more than just a plaything. The bricks and their additional parts are an artist’s medium; an educational tool;…

Back in 1924, a Danish carpenter named Ole Kirk Kristiansen was running a thriving carpentry business, building cupboards, kitchen cabinets, doors, ladders, stools and ironing boards, fulfilling his dream of making his living by working with wood. The 10th son of a poor family, Ole had worked as a farmhand from the age of 6 and got a basic high school education. Always fascinated with wood, young Ole loved to whittle in his spare time. After apprenticing for his brother Kresten as a teenager, he left Denmark for the first time in his life to work as a carpenter in Germany in 1911, at the age of 20. When he returned five years later, an established carpentry shop went up for sale in the town of Billund, about 15 miles…

Before there were Legos, there were the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Building Bricks. Created by British toymaker Hilary “Harry” Fisher Page after World War II, the bricks were colorful plastic construction blocks that allowed a child’s imagination to run wild. With round “studs” on top, the Kiddicraft bricks could be snapped into place and easily pulled apart for new creations. In 1947, Page patented the bricks and debuted sets that year at the Earl’s Court Toy Fair. Lego’s founder, Ole Kirk Kristiansen, and son Godtfred had gotten a sneak peek of the bricks, either through a salesman’s sample or drawings, and created their own version in 1949 that, with improvements, emerged as the Lego brick in 1953. According to Lego’s official history, the company had reached out to Kiddicraft asking if it…

MATTHEW PERRY Can a toy be any more fun? Friends’ sarcastic star is totally and unironically enthusiastic when it comes to his love of Lego. Naturally, he had to build the Friends TV set Lego kit. But, Chandler being Chandler, he tweeted, “I made myself Batman. But that’s neither here nor there.” DANIEL RADCLIFFE While he has his own minifigure in the Harry Potter sets, the actor instead ventured into another movie blockbuster-themed set, spending days…and days…and days…on a 3,200-piece Jurassic Park set, with the help of his girlfriend. “It took up a lot of time,” he told The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert, “and was weirdly meditative.” BRITNEY SPEARS The pop princess is crazy for Lego. “Oh & look at my new hobby my children have given me—my new past time…

On Jan. 28, 1958, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen submitted paperwork to the Danish Patent and Trademark Office for building blocks that “could be put together in a great number of mutually different positions,” as the original patent filing says. Over the next few months, patent applications were filed in Norway, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Italy, France, Switzerland and Belgium. Patents were next filed from South Africa to the United States. But it was that original patent filing, submitted at 1:58 p.m., that is considered the birthday of the Lego brick, which turns 65 years young on International Lego Day, Jan. 28, 2023. While no official celebration plans have been made public as of press time, fans can look forward to a slew of new Lego sets in 2023. The Brick Fanatics website…

Like a finely engineered clock, Lego bricks are manufactured down to a fraction of a millimeter. That’s what allows them to snap together so smartly, with enough strength to create both massive sculptures and the most precise creations, yet also be able to pull apart with minimal effort. As a Danish product, Legos are measured using the metric system, though Lego has its own measurement system. One “Lego unit” is 1.6 mm, or the thickness of a Lego wall. Standard 2 x 4 Stud Brick LENGTH 3.2 cm (1.26 inches) WIDTH 1.6 cm (0.63 inches) HEIGHT 0.96 cm (0.378 inches) STUD HEIGHT 1.8 mm (0.07 inches) STUD DIAMETER 4.8 mm (0.189 inches) THICKNESS 1.6 mm (0.063 inches) MATERIAL Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS, a petroleum-derived product known for its strength,…