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Lego: a toy of gentle genius

The fact that Lego is still the top toy in Britain after the best part of half a century shouldcome aslittle surprise. Children everywhere might be bombarded with theidea that they're meant to be products of the all-consumingdigital-electronic-computer-txt msging-iPod world, yet nothing, itseems, beats the elemental pleasure of placing bricks together andcreating worlds of their very own. plastic toys When those bricks fit togetheras precisely and as enjoyably as Lego's do, and offer the sheervariety of plastic-bricky joy as the latest Lego sets do, then thegently instructive pleasure is simply all the more.Lego is one of those toys that adults can happily play withalongside children without getting bored. It is a toy of gentlegenius and one that goes to prove that very many of us, of allages, in a country devoted to not making things and shutting up itstraditional manufacturing industries as plastic toys quickly as commerciallypossible, enjoy making things.If the Lego experience was played out on a wholly adult,manufacturing scale, we would still be happily making locomotives,ships, aircraft and Brunel only knows what, rather than muddlingour way disgruntledly through an economic life given overincreasingly to shopping and, if not shopping, then stackingshelves and buying cars to fill up with costly petrol to drive to supermarkets to shop some more. Making things makes uscontent and even happy and Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891-1958), a Danish carpenter and inventor of Lego appears tohave known this intuitively.Lego, from the Danish "leg godt", or play well, has done ratherwell since the company was founded in 1934, making wooden buildingbricks for children, turning to plastic in 1949. The richest personin Denmark today is Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen grandson of Ole, and Lego's CEO from 1979 to 2004. Some 20million bricks are made each year not in China, or at least notyet anyway and each brick connects with every other made, tothe same scale, since the plastic technology was perfected in 1963.Lego likes to say that sufficient bricks have been made since 1963for every person in the world to own more than 60; that means someof you out there must own thousands.While it's true that Lego has been cashing in on fashionable filmtie-in and other crazes in recent years, creating toys based on Star Wars, Harry Potter and other heavily marketed children's favourites, the basic bricksstill allow, and encourage, fresh generations of children to thinkand play and to make things for themselves.