Brick by Brick: 45 Intriguing Facts about Lego

Lego has no military-related sets because the inventor's policy was to not want to make war seem like child’s play.

2. Due to high automation at the Lego factory in Denmark, when you open a set of LEGO you are probably the first human to look at the bricks.

3. In the 1960s and 1970s, Lego produced a line of bricks intended for professional use by architects and planners under the name Modulex.

4. Lego used to bury its used molds in the concrete foundations of their new buildings to prevent them from being reused. The high tolerance they had was really a competitive edge for the company, so when they built new factories, they took the old molds, threw them on the floor, and put concrete over the top.

5. In 1997, nearly five million LEGO pieces fell into the sea when a huge wave hit the Tokio Express cargo ship, pushing 62 containers overboard. One contained over 4.7 million pieces of Lego, much of it sea-themed. Those Legos are still washing up on beaches all over the world.

In 2007, 2008, and every year from 2011 to 2015, a 6-foot Lego Minifigure washed up on the shore somewhere in the world with the words “NO REAL THAN YOU ARE” written on it. They are all signed by “Ego Leonard” (or L, Ego), an artist whose actual name and identity are unknown.

7. The original inventor of LEGO used to “spend the whole of every Wednesday in a different nursery school, sitting on the floor and playing with the children, to find out exactly what type of toys would be of the greatest interest to them.”

8. There was once a LEGO video game in devolvement that would allow people to make anything they wanted out of Lego bricks, but it was never completed because they couldn’t stop people from making dicks, even with a dedicated ‘dong detection’ team.

9. Lego has actual “master builders” and certified professionals. There are only 13 master builders and the company isn’t accepting any further candidates.

10. A 14 karat gold LEGO brick was given out in the early 80s to employees who had worked at the Germany LEGO factory for over 25 years. They are valued at nearly $15,000.

The Lego Company has a secure, fireproof, temperature and climate-controlled underground vault in Denmark containing every Lego set ever developed by the company.

12. In 2004, corporate attorney Nathan Sawaya quit his lucrative job to build Lego professionally so that he could “get away from the daily grind.” His sculptures now command six-figure prices each.

13. Mindscape, the game development company that developed Lego Island, fired their development team a day before release so that they wouldn't have to pay them bonuses.

14. Professionals who walk over hot coals and broken glass have confirmed that walking over Lego bricks is more painful.

15. There are a total of 3,863,484 unique Lego bricks in 'The Lego Movie'. Recreating the movie would require 15,080,330 Lego pieces, with 183 different types of Lego Minifigures.

In 1996, Lego gave bricks to a Polish artist named Zbigniew Libera asking him to make a set for them. He decided to make a recreation of Auschwitz.

17. On the LEGO model of the Back to the Future time machine, the destination date is permanently set to January 28, 1958, the patent date for the 1st LEGO brick.

18. Lego produced 381 million tires in 2011, making them the world’s largest rubber tire manufacturer by the number of units produced.

19. Legos Minifigures were originally yellow to avoid assigning a specific ethnicity to allow fans to assign their own roles to the Minifigures.

20. The Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter right now is carrying three LEGO Minifigures made out of aluminum. The first is Galileo Galilei, who first studied Jupiter. The Second is the Roman God Jupiter. The third is the Roman Goddess Juno.

In 2014, Police broke up a Lego heist ring in New York for stealing $40,000 worth of bricks and found that one of the suspects was also in possession of another $160,000 worth of Lego bricks (18 pallets worth).

22. For at least 15 years, between 2000-2015, LEGOs were/are a better investment than gold.

23. In 2004, Lego changed the color of their grey bricks from brey (higher red content) to bley (higher blue content) in order to appear ‘newer’ in comparison to Megabloks.

24. A Danish carpenter named Ole Kirk Christiansen suffered huge losses after a fire broke out in his woodworking shop where he made furniture. He descended into bankruptcy and decided to start making small wood items, including toys. He even renamed his company to ‘leg godt’ (‘play well’) which became Lego.

25. Lego didn’t invent interlocking bricks. They just copied them from a toy that wasn't patented in Denmark. The original interlocking bricks though didn’t include the central bar on the bottom so they didn’t connect as well. This new innovation by Ole Kirk Christiansen is exactly why LEGO was more successful.