Jens Andersen. The Lego Story. Translated by Caroline Waight, Mariner, 2022.
My prayer to the Lord for LEGO is that he will help us run a business that is honest in every way, in our life and dealings, so that our lives are lived in his honor and with his blessing. (62)
—Ole Kirk Christiansen, 1942
The Lego Story tells the history of the well-known toy company, its origins and its growth. It is a fascinating story covering three generations of a family-run business into the fourth generation.
Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891-1958) was the founder of the toy company. He began in rural Denmark on the Jutland Peninsula as a carpenter. In the 1930s, he found that the wooden toys he made were in demand. He was careful to make high quality wooden toys, and his only real competitor in Northern Europe was the Swedish Brio, which still makes wooden toys today. It was then that he coined the name Lego (often written in all capital letters) from the Danish leg godt, or “play well.”
The business managed to survive the German occupation—in one exciting tale of what was probably the closest call they had to being taken over by the Germans, the principal involved pretended not to understand the German language and eventually the officer gave up and never returned. By German standards Lego was still small potatoes.
After the war, Christiansen saw that plastics were being used more and more for toys, and he began experimenting with plastic molds. By 1949, Lego was making some plastic toys along with its nearly 300 different wooden toys.
The bricks that changed the world of toys did not emerge overnight, nor were they an immediate sensation. Christiansen saw some similar hollow blocks with short columns for connecting them and copied them. They had been patented in England, but he could sell them in Denmark and, later, Germany. In 1950 Lego made cubical hollow blocks that attached. The brick shape came out a few years later. Kids could build things better than with plain wooden blocks, but they still did not stay attached to each other well.
A couple of significant events happened in the 1950s. Lego would make an arrangement with a British company to sell the bricks in the United Kingdom. They were then able to take care of the patent issue to everyone’s satisfaction. But the big breakthrough was in 1958 when Lego, after much experimentation, figured that by putting hollow columns inside the bricks, the bricks would interlock and stay attached much better.
In 1959 they made their first foray into North America by entering a marketing agreement with Samsonite. Samsonite makes, and still makes, very rugged plastic-based luggage. Both sides thought it would be a match since both were concerned about the quality of their plastic products. However, the toy market is very different from suitcases and briefcases, so the toy was largely still unknown in North America when the agreement ended in 1969.
As is true with all toys in the toy market, there were ups and downs from year to year, but we gradually see how Lego took advantage of new developments and different licensing agreements. In the early 1970s, Legos finally became well known in the United States and Canada when the company made a licensing agreement with McDonalds to include a small Lego kit in its children’s Happy Meals.
In the 1990s, when the Star Wars films were re-shown in theaters, Lego came out with various Star Wars kits. Later, they would do the same with Harry Potter. By 2000 they realized that many adults still built things with Legos, so they began more marketing aimed at them such as the series of famous buildings made with smaller bricks.
Probably the single biggest change or improvement since 1958 came out in 1978 and caught on in the 1980s: the Lego figures. Some strategic people hired by Lego promoted the idea of role playing and making little plastic people to populate the various buildings and vehicles children made with Legos. the figures also began to attract more girls to play with the Legos, which up till then was largely seen as a toy for boys.
The Lego Story is largely told from the perspective of the three generations of family members who ran the company: Ole, his son Godtfred Kirk Christiansen (1924-2015), and Godtfred’s son Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen (b. 1947). Other family members were involved. Even fathers and sons had different visions for the company. Ole, for example, was more interested in quality and manufacturing, often spending more than others might have. Godtfred was a businessman, but one who never forgot how to play. The front of the book has a helpful family tree that the reader may have to consult once in a while to keep the names straight. Kjeld, by the way, spelled the family name more in line with current Danish orthography. No one in the family had a problem with the way he spelled it.
There were a number of flops or products that were not worth retaining along with related products like Duplo blocks that took off well. Kjeld stepped down from his position in 2004 and the first non-family member ran the company though Kjeld would remain on the Lego board until 2016. The company is still privately owned.
The author was able to interview many people including family members, workers, retired workers, and townspeople of Billund, Denmark, which still is its headquarters. The book is full of quotations from Kjeld. It gives an intimate view of the family dynamic over the years as well as many experiments: some like the Lego people were successful beyond imagination, and others did not succeed like the deal with Samsonite. But that is life and corporate life.
As suggested by the quotation which introduces this review, Ole and his wife were devout Christians, impacted by the widespread revival that took place in many lands shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. Until the 1960s, workers could attend an optional prayer meeting before work each day. While neither Godtfred nor Kjeld were as openly expressive about it, they both acknowledged that a faith in the God of the Bible was important to them, to the company, and, perhaps as we have seen, to the joy and peace of many children around the world as they played and continue to play with Legos.