FACTORALY - E37 LEGO

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Lego is amazing stuff. You can build everything from a simple dwelling to Hogwarts with it. This episode looks at Lego from its British beginnings to its Danish interplanetary existence today (inasmuch as you can build a death star!) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello! Hello! Hello everybody! Hello Simon! Hello Bruce! How are we today? We? Well, I can't speak on behalf of both of us, but I'm okay, thank you. How are you? I'm absolutely fabulous, thank you very much. That's very good. So, what are we doing here, Bruce?

Well, we're doing a thing called Factorily. Tell me about that. Factorily is a, well, you know it's a podcast because you've got it on your podcast player, haven't you, people? Of course, everyone has. But it specifically talks about facts and not the kind of facts that are particularly useful how to how to cook an egg or well i don't know they do come in handy though because especially if there's a lull in the conversation and you go did you know that vikings dyed their hair really no i didn't know that what an

interesting conversation it's a good conversation starter it It is, isn't it? Yes. Any point at any day, you can just go, I heard a thing the other day. Yes. And if you're mixing with the right people, they'll say, oh yeah, I heard that thing as well. So we get together, we pick a topic each week, we find out some interesting, useless facts, we come together and we chat about them. That's right. And you, all you lovely listeners, you get to hear us do so.

So what is the subject, Simon? The subject that we're talking about this time, Bruce, is Lego. Lego, or Legos, as the Americans wrongly call it. They do, don't they? Yes, they refer to an individual Lego brick as a Lego, and therefore a collection of them as some Legos. Yes. i find this most disturbing i do as well but that's because i i count sheeps at night oh okay well that's not let's not go there righty be telling me you eat shrimps next i know it's awful isn't it so lego wonderful stuff it is isn't it what what are your personal feelings on lego do you have a particular history? Well, you see, I wasn't brought up on Lego. I was brought up on something a bit more sort of industrial. Meccano?

Yes. So was I. There you go. I find Meccano much more engineering-based. Yes. Whereas Lego is a bit more toy-based. Yes. Okay. I think we've just opened ourselves up to the possibility of doing an episode on mcconnell we could do actually i love mcconnell it's great but lego i i know that if you step on it really hurts yes that's the one famous thing about lego isn't it it's like a torture

implement laid down on the floor by children yes parents yeah and i know it's not danish is it not no it isn't it's english hooray good for us well done us well the word lego is is we'll come to in a minute but but there was a a chap called hillary fisher page okay back in 1936 right who invented a thing called bryplax, which were self-locking bricks that look pretty much the same as Lego. It was made by a company called Kiddycraft. And you know how we had

an episode on Vikings, where we talked about the Vikings coming to Britain and pillaging. Pillaging all the way. So the Danes may... It's actually most likely that they did, that the chap who invented Lego nicked it from Hilary Fisher Page's briar plaques.

Right. Now, I've got a little step further than that. You're absolutely right. In fact, this gentleman, Hilary Fisher Page, he actually presented these bricks to the Lego company who were already established they made wooden toys they were just beginning to experiment with plastic um and this this fella said look we've been making these bricks they're okay we're not we haven't had a massive success

with them here have a few see what you think and the people at lego said well yeah do you know what we reckon we can do something with that. We can change it slightly. We can market it a bit better. Can we buy the rights from you? And Kiddy Craft went, yeah, all right. We're not really doing anything with it. Here you go. So it was an actual transaction.

The Brits gave away the design for these interlocking bricks to Danish company Lego, And the rest is history. The history of Lego is quite fascinating. I'll give you a very potted version, but if anyone wants to go on to lego.com and search the history archives, they have an entire history of the whole of Lego. It's fascinating. I've spent a really long time reading it it's brilliant um the company lego was founded in 1932 by ole kirk christiansen

who uh lived in in denmark and um the company was originally called leg got which is danish for play well because this fellow was really interested in children playing and learning and having a good time and a good quality of life leg got was eventually shortened into lego because it's it's just nicer but they made wooden toys and things christiansen was a carpenter and he made household products but then he also sort of started making toys he wasn't very well off was he was from quite a poor yeah yeah he had to borrow quite a bit of money from from family and friends in order to get the company off the ground so yeah i mean very very poor background um he left school at 14 and um trained as a carpenter

he basically couldn't find work where he was in in denmark and and went to germany to become a carpenter oh i see i didn't read that then when he was a successful carpenter then he went back to denmark ah um but the this fellow was was really insistent on on high quality you know he really wanted these toys to be to be good quality yeah um back in the mid 30s lego had a motto which i associate with an entirely different product and the motto was only the best is good enough oh which i recognize as being a line from the milky bar kid yes song yes um but apparently that was that was originally lego's motto only the best is good enough. Isn't that great? Interesting.

The Lego bricks are on me. Hooray. And to that high standard of quality, his son Gottfried Christensen, who worked in the company, came up with an idea of saving the company money by only using two coats of varnish instead of three on their painted wooden ducks. And his father said, how dare you?

We can't be skimping on quality. Quality is the most important thing. You go away and apply the third coat of varnish to every single one of our painted wooden ducks yourself, my son, and learn your lesson. I think that's wonderful. That's great. So that was all going on in the 30s. They didn't start experimenting with using plastic for toys until 1947.

So a couple of years after the Second World War, obviously that's when the stuff sort of became more readily available. And they just made average everyday toys out of plastic until this event happened in 1949 with the chap you just mentioned. Hilary Page. That's the one. And they redesigned it a bit, made it a bit better, and named it the Automatic Binding Brick, which is so catchy.

ABB, yes. Automatic Binding Construction might have been better because then it could have been the ABC. See, what they needed, Bruce, was a wonderful, world-renowned marketing man like yourself on the team. Copywriter, if you don't mind. Marketing is much too difficult for a simple chap like me. Fair enough. It's interesting you talk about only the best is good enough there's a fanaticism within lego for perfection yeah and apparently there's the tolerance for the lego bricks

is 0.002 millimeters oh my goodness so if anything is greater than two thousandths of a millimetre, then it just gets rejected. But it's stood them in good stead. Because if you buy a box of Lego now, and you've got an old box from your, well, from my childhood, for example, from 1958, you will find that the 1958 Lego still works with 2024 Lego. Oh, really? They're compatible? Yeah. How wonderful. Yeah. That's how intolerant they are of poor tolerance.

That's incredible. Wow. So my first introduction to Lego was sort of in the early 80s. And it was in 1978 that Lego started first doing sets, per se. Up until then, it was all very brick and plate stuff. You know, build something out of your own imagination. And then in 1978, they started doing themes. And they brought out the Lego Castle, Lego town and Lego space set. And that is pretty much what informed my entire childhood. I still have bags and bags and bags of Lego in the loft. And I have these pieces of castle. I have these little Lego men holding a

sword and a shield. I have little Lego horses. I have little Lego astronauts all hailing from the late 70s, early 80s. Wow. I mean, you talk about holding a sword. One of Lego's very important principles is they do not make modern warfare weapons. Oh, really? They'll make things like, you know, lasers and stuff for the Star Wars, you know, for the space sets. And they'll make things like you know lasers and stuff for the star wars you know for the space sets and they'll make swords and stuff yes for a tiny little amount of time they're quite rare now um they after the second world war they did make um little minifigures holding

rifles yeah and then they just stopped doing it and their principle is they will never make a modern weapon of warfare that's fantastic What a great philosophy to have. Which means, I guess, if you're the kind of person who doesn't like that sort of bellicose attitude, that you can happily let your children play with Lego. Yes. And knowing that they're not getting influenced by anything other than wanting to go into space or build castles. Oh, how wonderful. I hadn't really thought about it, but you're right. Lego does

have a rather wholesome ideology to it, doesn't it? It's sort of, you know, you build parks and towns and scenes from daily life or, you know, exploration and they have wonderful nature sets and safari sets and sports cars, things like that. You know, it's all fairly harmless, isn't it? It's delightful. But did they just sell sets of Lego? Or did you actually have to buy something which made a castle or a racetrack or a train or something? So you can, at the very basic level, there are plates and bricks and dots and construction pieces. And from that, you can build anything that your imagination can think of building okay um which wasn't great for me because i don't have a terribly good imagination i follow instructions very very well bruce so having a set with a

picture on it saying this is what you're going to end up with and here are very clear and concise instructions as to how you're going to end up there yeah that was my kind of lego i have wonderful friends who hate my experience of lego because they are all about creating something out of nothing from your imagination yeah so there are there are very very different camps of of lego users um but, you talked about sort of the, the fanaticism of, of, of quality and precision. There is a major, major fanaticism amongst Lego fans. There are people who spend thousands and thousands of pounds a year on the latest sets because they're not cheap.

Some of them. Yes. But especially since they got involved with Lucasfilm, they do do quite a lot of Star Wars sets. Don't they now? Well, it was their very first, the first licensing that Lego did was with Lucas.

Oh, really? Is that right? Yeah, so their relationship with Star Wars goes back to 1999. Okay. When they brought out the first Star Wars set. The remastering era, wasn't it, I guess? Yes. Yeah, and what happened was in order to make video games they they then licensed to a video game company yes and then weirdly the the video game company

was bought by a film company right okay who then purely bought the video game company so they could make lego films oh my goodness how convoluted do you know i hadn't even thought about the lego video games i love the the lego star wars games and games and Lego Batman and all of that sort of stuff. I hadn't even thought about researching those. Well done. Speaking of Lego and Star Wars, I decided to have a look at what are the highest selling, the most popular Lego sets. And I found a website, is um a rather fun place

brickopedia of course you did yes there's lots of uh brick based stuff isn't there there's brick world chicago which is the world's biggest lego convention yeah there's bricktastic in london and brickfest and all sorts the the word brick seems to be an easy substitute for the word Lego. Yes, it does seem to be quite ubiquitous, doesn't it? Simon. Sorry. Yes, and Bricopedia, if you have the time, I tell you what, if we put some links up onto the blog section of the wonderful factorily.com website, you'll find links to these various websites.

Bricopedia is a dream. It catalogues so many different types of bricks and varieties and colours and shapes and sizes anyway. I found the top 10 highest selling Lego sets of 2023 last year. Okay. And out of the top 10, seven of them were Star Wars themed. Wow. There were also two racing cars and one simpsons house so it's properly synergistic with that yeah absolutely and um

some of the star wars sets also constitute the most expensive lego sets that you can buy i went on to the lego online store and the two most expensive lego sets at present are exactly the same price the millennium falcon and the at-at walker from star wars yeah both currently cost 734 pounds and 99 pence what i've got a friend who's got those have you i didn't realize he was spending that much money on his child. On his child. He's spending it on himself. Come on. They're big and they're impressive and they're going to provide you with hours and hours and hours of construction entertainment.

And then you get to have the thing sitting on a mantelpiece gathering dust. What could be better, Bruce? Yes, exactly. Now, I know you like a quiz. Oh, I do love a quiz. How many combinations do you think you can make with just eight Lego bricks? I would say it depends on the bricks in question. Are we talking about a two by two or a four by two or a one by six?

Okay, so like the standard Lego brick, whatever that is. It's probably two by three is the most. i'm getting nerdy now um i'm gonna guess a number and i'll tell you whether it's higher or lower i'm gonna say 75 combinations keep going i mean think of a ridiculous number okay five thousand no no more ridiculous really a hundred thousand much much, more ridiculous. Really? 100,000? Much, much, much more ridiculous. A million? Even more ridiculous. Just give me the answer. 950 million combinations.

No. From eight Lego bricks. No. Oh, yeah. I mean, I suppose. Yeah, okay. That's a lot of combinations. Now, actually, I may be wrong.

I don't think I am. But if I am, you can tell us. How can they tell us? Well, you can comment. When you leave your five-star review, which we know you will. Obviously. Then just leave a comment saying, actually, I think you'll find that you were way out with the 950 million.

It's more like seven. Yes. And you will have just used one of our favorite phrases as well. Actually, I think you'll find that you were way out with the 950 million. It's more like seven. Yes. And you will have just used one of our favorite phrases as well. Actually, I think you'll find. Yes. So what other interesting things have you got to tell us about Lego, Bruce? So many things. They are the largest producers of tires on Earth.

I beg your pardon? So, you know those little tires? Those little wheels and tires? You're getting Lego. So, they make 360 million of those every year. For the listeners who can't see, I just took a swig of coffee and I very nearly spat that all over my screen. What? 360 million tires and wheels a year.'s a lot isn't it that's

more than every single other tire manufacturer combined that's a stunning fact isn't that cracking it's really good and they are legitimately tires aren't they they are they are circular rings of rubber that you put around a wheel hub absolutely they are tires they are tires no question that's awesome would you like your own lego set oh i'd love one yes please well you can have it all you have to do is come up with an idea for for a lego set yeah and find 9999 other people who also think it's a good idea. So 10,000 people submit your idea to Lego. Yeah. And they will consider it as something they can make in the future.

Isn't that good? That's cool. So if you've got a passion and you really want your own Lego set, just find 10,000 other people who agree with you. Well, there's you and me straight away. So we only need another 9998 what should we create bruce i don't know i but i think the best the best day to to submit this to lego would be uh january the 28th oh is that international lego day it is international lego day isn't that the amount of ridiculous silly things that i found out about there was a tortoise that had an accident

right and lost both its back legs oh and so the vets went how are we going to sort this out so basically he puts a lego set in some wheels on the back of this tortoise wonderful and now it's happily well it was certainly at the time happily wandering around on its two front legs and wheels at the back brilliant i can go one better than that there's a a chap called david aguila who built himself a working prosthetic arm out of lego wow so he was a he was a boy who who was very prolific at using Lego. He was born with one forearm missing, and he built an actual can't remember how long ago that was but he's he's now a bit older and uh he makes prosthetic limbs for for people who who can't afford them isn't that great what a great story that's fantastic the uh the minifigures are are taking over the world. Yes, they are.

They are. There are something like 4 billion minifigures in the world, which is twice the population of China. Goodness me. So it is technically the world's largest population. So 4 billion minifigures. So that's sort of everything from the standard little yellow fella all the way through to themed characters from the Star Wars sets and the Harry Potter sets and so on and so on. Yes.

Wow. There are currently 400 billion individual pieces of Lego on planet Earth. 400 billion. So that's everything from the bricks and the plates through to the figures. That's about 80 bricks for every man man woman and child on the planet that's very very good maths bruce well done i was just about to say if you were to split that number evenly across the entire population of the planet we'd all we'd all get just over 50 pieces per person is it 50 oh pretty close fair enough um not far off there are a total of around i mean this keeps changing

because they keep on bringing out new sets that have pieces that are specific to that set. But at the time of recording, there are around 3,764 unique Lego elements. Wow. Which doesn't really sound that lot, but I would imagine if you put them all together, that would look like quite a lot of Lego. It would. together that would look like quite a lot of lego it would i found a list of the most commonly used and frequently produced individual lego pieces and they actually list them in order of popularity and frequency of recurrence within sets the top five most used lego pieces are at five at five and they all have names which is wonderful at five brick one by one at four brick one by two at three connector peg with friction

at two round plate one by one and the most popular most frequently used piece of lego is plate one by two wow fascinating and i can picture exactly what all of those things that's impressive that you can that you can do that it's not bad is it when i when i do lego with my son we've formed this wonderful habit of reading each other a page of instructions whilst the other person does the build but without seeing the instructions so we we try to narrate it we try to see if the other person can get what, but without seeing the instructions. So we try to narrate it. We try to see if the other person can get what we're saying. That's cool.

So we sort of say, take a light blue 2x4 plate and stick it underneath a dark green 1x3 brick. No, not there. There. No, no, not there. There. Yes, that's it. And that's how we build Lego together. It's great fun. Oh, brilliant. there yes that's it and that's how we build Lego together it's great oh brilliant yeah

Canterbury University did some research into the faces of minifigures the faces of minifigures the faces of minifigures and and they

they basically did some research using 628 minifigures from the 1990s up to today yeah and they've worked out that they're getting angrier right so out of the 628 originally that there was something like 40 or 50 angry faces but today it's

up to like 192 so out of the 628 this research group felt that 324 were happy faces. 49 of them they felt were sad. 28 of them they felt expressed disgust. 11 expressed fear. 23 expressed surprise. But 192 expressed anger. Wow. They looked angry. That's some angry Lego, isn't it? Yeah. And I suppose given the context of what we've been talking about,

how Lego have branched out into movies and pop culture and things like that, if you're going to make a, I don't know, let's say a Lord of the Rings Lego set. Yes. Lego-lass. Lego-lass. Oh, why didn't I think of that that was brilliant sorry it just came to me that's wonderful um other than lego lass so lego lass is gonna have a look of slight concern and consternation upon his face yes there are going to be bad guys in

there who have angry faces because that's what bad guys look like yes so that kind of makes sense yeah i guess the fans are crazy i mean i mean fan is short for fanatic yes and they are quite fanatical it really does apply here doesn't it yeah it really does people have done some extraordinary builds over the years what have you heard that people have done so this this kind of overlaps onto a regular feature here on fact orally the guinness world records um there's sort of an overlap you can't really talk about how incredible some of these builds are without saying this guy made the world's biggest whatever it is yes um so there are a lot of these things there's a a chap in america who made the world's largest lego skeleton he made a t-rex containing 80 000 pieces of lego wow and

this thing is six meters long from nose to tail that's quite big this fella also he's quite an enthusiast clearly he he broke the guinness world record for the number of life-size um lego sculptures and he he has built 11 uh life-size superhero characters out of lego they look incredibly good we'll put the link on the website um he's got aquaman the flash green lantern wonder woman etc etc all life-size made out of Lego and incredibly detailed. There are people who try to break the world record for the quickest build of a particular set. Yes. I guess it's good content for YouTube and TikTok and stuff. Well, yes, absolutely, yeah.

There's a Lego set of the ship Titanic. I don't know if it comes with an iceberg or not, but there was a 15 year old fellow called Sebastian Horwath who built the Lego Titanic ship in just 8 hours 42 minutes and 12 seconds Wow

I don't know how long it would take everyone else I know how long it would take me A very long time There's one Lego set which is a map of the world and this is the largest official lego set it contains 11 695 pieces wow the map turns out to be 65 centimeters high by 104 centimeters wide and it comes with an audio guide um so there are people who just spend an awful lot of time

have a massive amount of passion presumably presumably quite a sizable spare budget. I guess. Because the stuff ain't cheap. But yeah, some of the fans are quite impressive. And you just mentioned a world made from Lego. There is actually a place which is a land made from Lego. They should have called it Lego Land land they should have you been i have not been so i i have been to lego land um under the guise of going with my son yeah yeah whatever yeah whatever i would very easily go

on my own it's a wonderful place um lego land, the first Legoland was created in Billund in Denmark, where the Lego HQ is based. And this was built in 1968. Not until 1996 did it come to the UK, Legoland in Windsor, quite close to me, on the grounds of the old Windsor Safari Park. And it's a fascinating place. If one hates Lego, there is zero point in going there. But there are rides, there are activities, there are sculptures dotted around all made out of

Lego. It's a wonderful place. And at the heart of it my favorite part of it is called mini land all right and um it's it's a lot of scale models of different landmarks from around the world made entirely out of lego so there's a lego london there's a lego san francisco there's a lego times square there's you know all of these things wow and when And when I say their scale, I mean, the Canary Wharf building is 5.2 metres tall. So they're quite big. Yeah. And you can walk around and look at this miniature world in Lego with all the information on little plaques telling you the history of those places.

It's a fantastic place. How educational. It's gone from being my son's most favorite part of lego land to being the most boring part of lego because now he just wants to go on the roller coaster and things but i love walking around miniland i'm assuming his favorite part is the gift shop well yes there is that we try to avoid that because it's um as I've mentioned before, it ain't cheap. It ain't cheap. But the Miniland, at least the one in Legoland, Windsor, is comprised of 40 million Lego bricks.

Wow. And a team of 100 builders were employed, working full-time to build Miniland and the various other LEGO sculptures that exist in LEGOLAND and they have a team of people on site to repair it when it you know gets broken they they cheat a little bit they put it together with glue so that it's permanent yeah but yes it's a wonderful place I mean the only things are the only large things I'm interested in that are built of LEGO are cars. Okay. I've seen life-size models of Lamborghinis and Teslas and all sorts of cars, which are made purely from LEGO. They are amazing.

I'll put a link in the show notes. They are quite something, these modern cars made from LEGO. I think I've seen one in Mercedes-Benz World, right next to Brooklyn's museum. Quite possibly, yes. That's a labour of love, isn't it? Yes, if you're a car nerd. A car nerd and a Lego nerd. And a Lego nerd.

It's not work at all, is it? It's the perfect Venn diagram. Well, that is all the information that I have to offer on Lego. I'm sure there's much more, but that's all I have. That's all I have too. How convenient. So thank you very much for spending this time listening to us. We do appreciate it.

I mean, frankly, we would do this if you weren't listening. But it's far more fun with you. Yeah, absolutely. And it's nice to share. It is indeed. So I mean, we're sharing it with you. You can share it with your nerdy friends. Everybody gets better educated yes so thank you for joining us on another fun-filled episode of factorally and goodbye goodbye