- No Lego-designed toys are allowed to portray weapons from the 20th century.
- Every lego must be backwards compatible. Bricks produced in 2002 work seamlessly with bricks from 1956.
- They believe every lego leaves the factory unfinished. To come to life, each one needs the touch and the imagination of a child.
- Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, the CEO of Lego, is the grandson of Kirk Christiansen, the carpenter who founded Lego. The house where his father, Godtfred, grew up is nestled amid Lego’s corporate buildings. When the CEO visits the group that develops toys for preschoolers, he climbs the stairs to his father’s childhood bedroom.
- Lego believes childhood play should be open-ended, self-guided play. Not directed play concurrent with video games.
- Almost every office and conference room at Lego contains a bowl of loose Lego bricks so that people can play during meetings.
- The original Legoland theme park in Billund sits adjacent to company headquarters. Everything there is scaled to children. There are even child-sized toilets.
- The founder of Lego, Kirk Christiansen, used to keep a red square lego in his pocket everywhere he went, lest he forget the Lego values.
The sad part: Lego is loosing money quickly. They are nearly fighting for survival. Why? Kids and parents don’t express these types of values anymore.
Parents are overly career oriented, kids are assaulted by media and mass commercialism. Simply, Lego is having trouble competing with Pokeman, Playstation, and Gameboy. Not because they can’t compete, but because the values held by toys are just different now, and they lack creativity.
I wonder, if we could get our kids playing with Lego’s, and enjoying self-guided, open-ended play, would they be better people when they grow up? I’m thinking yes. Everything kids play with these days are directed. Games have outcomes and paths.
How many of you are old enough, like me, to remember having a tub of Lego’s in your room? I’m sure you remember, they were engaging. More so than a good book, they could hold your attention for hours. Much like the Sandboxes our parents played in, Legos encouraged us to create worlds - any world we could come up with. Those little interlocking pieces beckoned us to create, to think, to make. But they did not direct us, they simply gave our little minds a place to run free no matter where we were. A child in the thick of New York City could be off in his own lands and discovering new places. And all because of those little bricks.
And whenever we wanted, we could invite others on our journey. A friend from school, a neighbor, a cousin could easily create along side, adding their own twists and personality to the universe.
How does this happen now? Kids zone out staring at their Gameboys, neither interacting with anyone, nor wanting too. Anxiety comes along with games like that. Did I play it right? Did I beat the high-score? Did I get to the end? With Lego’s, kids always win.
In order to compete, Lego has been introducing themed sets, the most famous of them being the Star Wars Legos. But they are running into a problem, kids want to build it exactly as is shown on the box. This introduces a dilemma for Lego, wherein the themed sets seem to go against some of the Lego values. But they’ve had to do this to compete for market share.
Their solution: storytelling. Each themed set now comes with a story - a story that has a begining, but no ending. Literally, just chapter one. Just enough to set up the theme, to tell the kids a little about it and give them a push into the creative world. From there, the kids can play out the theme in any way they choose, as much as they choose. Still not true Lego values, but it’s something.
I love Legos. I built a Lego table for my son as his first birthday gift. Hopefully my son will grow up a Lego kid.
Because I think Legos can save our children.