How Lego Expanded from Lego bricks, to Lego Clocks and then Video Games
Any time you look through any child’s play chest you can discover items of Lego. The multi coloured bricks have maintained their global recognition since there first appearance 50 plus years ago. In 2000 Lego achieved an impressive honour ‘Toy of the Century’ by the British Toy Retailers Association as well as by Fortune Magazine. It beat Barbie, board games and other popular toys.
The Lego group’s roots began in 1932 when Ole Kirk Christiansen began producing toys out of timber for kids. It took until 1958 for the Lego brick as we know it today to be developed. The colourful bricks were simple and sturdy; therefore they were great for kids to spend time playing with. The plastic-made brick can be joined together to make a wall or other shapes which kids can readily build or take apart. Over many years the design has hardly altered and today’s bricks can still be interlocked with the bricks made in 1958.
Why Lego has grown to become so popular is primarily because that Lego can be built into numerous shapes and sizes. The only limit is the extent of your child’s imagination. The bricks are incredibly multipurpose that Lego has determined that six, eight-stud bricks may be arranged in 915,103,763 alternative ways.
Lego bricks today are produced within the company’s main factory in Denmark. The bricks are designed so precisely that the company claims for every million bricks made only 18 are defective and extracted.
After the basic bricks were manufactured, Christiansen’s son and successor to the Lego group, created Lego Duplo during the early 1960′s for smaller children. This made it simpler for younger kids to hold the bricks since they were bigger.
The other big jump in development for Lego was the Lego figurine in 1974. The small-scale yellow coloured figures gave kids a different way of using Lego. They could now interact and manoeuvre the Lego toy. Since 1974 billions of Lego figures were manufactured including Walt Disney models to Lego clocks.
Lego could appear outdated by current day high-tech gadgets, but it continues to thrive by working with today’s sought after themes. For instance in 2004 Lego released Lego factory where anyone can design and make their own Lego model and have it dispatched to their home.
Lego also partnered with Lucas Arts to obtain a publishing deal for video gaming which has given the company a brand new lease of life. For example Lego Star Wars 2 sold 1.1 million units within the first week of launch.
Nevertheless it has not all been a roaring success story. In the early 2000′s Lego was under pressure to create an impact in the toy market it used to own. The issues started in the late 1990′s once the business stopped working on design. There figurines didn’t require much constructing knowledge or very little imagination. Also they were much like other toy companies.
Worse still Lego created a children’s TV series, a field they knew very little about. The Television show was predictable and basically a sales pitch. It only lasted two seasons on fox network and when the show stopped income figures slumped.
With the company endeavouring to enter into new sectors and create new play-toys the cost of components went through the roof.
The real problem was the new models just weren’t very well liked with the young children. The Lego city line, once one of their most lucrative businesses lines had dropped to merely 3 % of the company’s total gross sales.
In 2005 Lego had begun to get there products right again. There designers were still designing but they now had limitations. Items were only fabricated after a hard line voting process and designers were advised to utilize non creative employees. Managers would now guide the designers about what research data was finding. Creative designers were also told to cooperate with manufactures to advice on exactly how the price of design would influence profits.
By 2008 the City Line had regained the top spot within the Lego portfolio claiming 20% of the business sales. The toy characters had gone back to basics and toys most notably aeroplanes now appeared like aeroplanes instead of spaceships.
If you want to obtain a lego clock then look no further than Clock Shop UK who have a fantastic selection of lego alarm clocks.
Author: Adam Russell
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