Stuff You Should Know - How LEGOs Work

Episode Date: May 5, 2010

Most people are familiar with the plastic, interconnecting bricks called LEGO bricks, but what's their story? In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the history, popularity and trajectory of LEGOS -- and throw out some serious stats along the way. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant with his hair looking mighty fine today. Is it good hair day? Yeah. Oh, it's a great hair day. Thanks man.

Yeah. You're doing great. You're feeling good. You're in peppy, full of energy and happy. My hair is happy. Yeah. I can tell. Yeah.

Chuck. Josh. Hey man, before we get started, we should plug Facebook, Twitter and your mom's cooking. My mom's cooking is great. Facebook, you can find us at Stuff You Should Know in the search bar and we're personally interacting now. Yeah. It's not a ghost writer.

It's not a net bot. No. And you'll be able to tell because it's clearly our silly and lame voices. Yeah. And we, Chuck started the trend that solved a big problem of saying, hey, Chuck here because our profile picture is the album art for our podcast. I don't want people to get what we're saying confused by. No.

Me neither. My words are my words. I didn't know Josh was an old crotchety man. Right. Yeah. He's just a young jerk. I didn't know Chuck was in a fight club. So that's Facebook and we already had a page, but we consolidated them.

If you were a fan of the old page, they ain't around anymore. No. Join the new one. Will you? Let's get with it. And Twitter, we are tweeting at SYSK podcast is the name of our account and should be funny and fun and I'm trying to follow Coco's lead. Oh, yeah.

Well, I was anti Twitter until I saw Conan O'Brien's. I think I told you that and they were just, they were funny and I thought, you know what, I could do that. Yeah. Well, of course you can. You're Chuck Bryant. 140 characters. I can do that.

Yeah. We're doing 160 pal. That was it. I don't know. I will figure it out. All right. When it cuts me off in the middle of a sentence. All right.

So we're done with plug fast 2010. Right. I think so. Okay. Chuck. Josh. Yeah, he's finally arrived. Donnie Darko himself.

Yeah. Uh-huh. Much to his chagrin. He was not a member of the cast of the fine fine picture hot tub time machine. Right. But he was cast in the starring role for Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time or something. Right. Yeah.

So the trailer for that the other day as a result, Mr. Gillan Hall will now have his own Lego minifigure. Well, and as a result, he's very buff now. Yes, he is. He got all jacked up for the role as the Prince of Persia. Yeah. But again, what we're focusing on here is the Lego minifigure. Well, but is the minifig buff?

It has stubble. Okay. Yeah. And there's something of a resemblance to him, which is actually kind of a new trend among Legos. Oh, really? To look like the thing or to just be branded like that? Well, both.

They started branding or working with licensed brands with Star Wars in 1998. And they were like, oh, we don't know. This kind of goes against our corporate philosophy of letting kids use their imagination and all of a sudden sales went through the roof and they're like, yeah, okay. So this is the way we put it now. We let kids' imaginations run wild with the added element of storytelling. So which is cool Lego, the Lego group is what they're called from what I understand is a pretty great company to tell you the truth.

And we should say this is in no way our Chuck and I, Wilfer Brimley-esque, compensated endorsers. Yeah. When we do a brand name like this, don't think that we're shilling because we just have chosen some of these iconic brands to cover because I think it's interesting. It's part of pop culture. It's part of who we are. And people seem to dig it. Yeah.

So anyway, now we're not getting rich off of Legos, unfortunately. So to answer your question, they started doing the branding sets, like Star Wars with 1998. I think that there was their first big hit and Indiana Jones was another big hit. Harry Potter, obviously. But it wasn't until they released the Lego basketball set that they started messing with skin tone. Up until that point, if you had a Lego character, even if it was based on somebody, it was yellow. Sure.

So while they were asexual, right? They were neither male nor female. Right. In 1974, when they released the first figures, they had a neutral facial expression. They were genderless and raceless. Right? Kind of boring. But in a kind of a backhanded nod to women, the female character was the first gender-specific

character introduced. Wait for it. As a nurse. Oh, really? Yeah. For their hospital play set. Right. The first thing is male nurses.

No. Right? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Well, that was better than, at least they made her a working woman and they didn't say, the first one is, you know, Betty Homemaker. Right.

Or a homeless person. Yeah, that would have been bad too. Let's start at the begin. We got plenty. This is a stat heavy extravaganza. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Chuck's all excited.

That's why your hair looks so good. Yes. It's standing up in excitement. Uh, Legos, Josh, like you said, the Lego group, they employ about 5,000 people. Mm-hmm. They got about 150 designers of 18 nationalities on their team. And they began way back in 1932, and I love this guy's name. I do too.

Old Kirk Christensen. Yeah. And his first name is O-L-E. Yeah. But we are, we've decided to refer to him as Old Kirk Christensen. Yeah. Old Kirk Christensen. Do you remember when we went to, uh, Tamberg?

Yeah. We found out one of their vice president's name was Odd Johnny. Yeah. And we're like, this is the most punk rock telecommunications firm we've ever, well, no, it's, uh, Odd is actually a very common name in, in, uh, Norwegian countries. Newspice. Wait, wait. Let me just double check my facts.

Is Denmark a Norwegian country? Yeah. We got that wrong with the Netherlands and we heard about it. Yeah, we did. That's in podcast correction. We don't usually do that. So Old Kirk Christensen. Yes.

He comes up with. Denmark. Yeah. From Billand, Denmark. Which is where the corporate headquarters still are. Yeah. And the first Lego land is still there. That's right.

Yeah. Um, he, at first, Josh made things out of wood, wooden toys and things like that, little ladders. And he did so until 1960 when the warehouse burned, it was destroyed in a fire. And I thought it was then that he said, it would have been a much better story if he would have said, oh, I need to work with plastic now. Right. But that's not true.

Plastic is inflammable. Because he, uh, he started working with plastic long before that. Um, and I think 1947, he started with plastic. Not coincidentally, that's the year that his son took over. Oh, yeah. And his son started saying, we need to look in the plastics. It's the wave of the future. And they started tinkering around with Legos, right?

Well, yeah. The first one, the first thing they made in 1949 was the automated binding brick. And that was kind of like the first modern Lego brick, uh, but it didn't have the tubes. We'll get to the construction in a minute, but it didn't have the tubes, a little interior tube. So it wasn't, things weren't as stable. So it was sort of like just the beta version. Right.

Um, but what was it? 1958? Yes. That's when they came up with the current, uh, design. It's called stud and tube coupling system, which like you said, we'll describe in a second. Yeah. But the cool thing about it is it hasn't changed since then. Isn't that awesome?

The brick that was made in 1958 and you go buy a set today, they'll work together. Yep. Yeah. That is, I think one of the coolest facts of this whole thing. I got one for you. What's that? The term Lego is actually, uh, an abbreviation of two Danish words, right? Leg and goat, which put together means play well.

Uh huh. So he combined the two into Lego. What old Kurt Christensen didn't know was that Lego in Latin actually means I put together together. Really? He had no idea. Huh. And I bet people think that's why he named it that.

Yeah. Not true. But it's not true. Look at you, Josh. Thank you. Look at you. So, uh, like I said, 1958, or like you said, was when they kind of finished the design of the modern brick and the rest is history in the, in the 60s and 70s.

They started introducing, uh, other, other facets to the, to the Legos besides just the brick, uh, for instance, the Lego technique, technique, but not technique. It's really technique. You know what I'm saying? Not spelled. You know what I'm saying? I'm reading between the lines. It hit the market in 77 and, uh, Mindstorms robots made their debut in 98.

And that was actually a collaboration with, uh, MIT, the technology media lab there. Yeah. In the 80s, right? 84 or something? Uh, no. Late 90s. Yeah. And then another with MIT starting in like 84.

Maybe it took that long. Yeah. I could see that. Yeah. Uh, and also their designers, you would think that all of their designers have art school backgrounds or some sort of, um, engineering design backgrounds. I would think that. Not necessarily true.

My friend, while most of their designers do have that, the company says that all designers are hired based on their hands-on work and a face-to-face interview. Really? And you don't necessarily have to have an art background if you are a natural Lego place that designer. That's what you are. Cool. Yeah.

That means you and I could go and try and do that. Let's give it a shot. We may have to. You never know. So Chuck, over the years, you just spanned a few decades. Yeah. Sure. You know, Legos were named toy of the 20th century by Fortune magazine in 2000.

Yeah. I saw that. Yeah. Good for them. I did too. Did you have Legos? Oh yeah. Of course.

I didn't. What? I know. You know, what's funny is I noticed that they're only sold in 130 countries. I did a little background check, Chuck. Uh huh. Um, it's not unequal access to sanitary drinking water that keeps underdeveloped countries underdeveloped.

It turns out it's a lack of an access to Legos. Is that what it is? Yeah. Well, they teach you how to build and construct things and play together. That's why you're all thumbs today, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, I was into Lincoln Logs and because, you know, I was born in the 1930s. Log cabins were how we had to do things.

Right. Back in your day. Back in my day. I was into a Rector Set, which was pretty awesome. Yeah. I never got into a Rector Set. Yeah. That was fun.

I was kind of into that. I was like, look at all those gears and pulleys. What is this? Yeah. And Hot Wheels. I just want to snap blocks together. Hot Wheels. Model cars.

I was way into model cars. Did you? I'll bet you were. Yeah. I would get them and I would then destroy them at some point later on with firecrackers and stuff. We're not recommending that you do that. No, we're not.

That's very dangerous. So I was saying you, you spanned several decades when you gave those stats and in the meantime, people have come up with some pretty cool uses of LEGOs. I've done some pretty cool things with them. There is, if you go onto YouTube, there is a thriller done in LEGOs. All 14 minutes shot for shot. And it was clearly done on like an old like 16 millimeter camera and it hasn't made the jump to digital all that well, but still it's pretty impressive.

Yeah. There's some Star Wars stuff on there. I've seen recreated. Definitely. Did you know there's a Boba Fett Lego character? I didn't know that, but it didn't surprise me dude and Chewbacca. Well, there should be icons. Yeah.

Um, the, in, uh, I think 2008 Lego and Kellogg's combined shared the blindingly obvious danger award from consumers international for producing the Lego fun snacks, which are gummy fruit shoes that look exactly like Lego blocks. Yeah. And it's like the bag of glass from a, the old Saturday night line. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

They're the super happy fun ball. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so of course those were discontinued in 2008. Yeah. That's not a very good idea. Uh, and there was a guy out there who's actually in the article and there's a cool picture of it in the article who created the, um, a life size replica of Han Solo frozen in

carbonite. Yeah. I've got info on that guy. Do you really? Yeah. He's a real artist. Yeah, he is. I do though.

Okay. Um, and then lastly, Chuck, MC Escher, relativity. Yeah. You know, the steps going different, the staircase, somebody did it in Legos. Really? It is amazing. You see, that's impressive to me. Yeah.

MC Escher. Eh. What? Oh, come on. Hands, strong hands. Please. You disappoint me today, Chuck. Sorry.

That's all right. I'm just over it. How many times can I see that stare thing? What? Each time you gaze upon it, you're still like riveted, aren't you? Do you know the, the incredibly disordered or highly ordered brain structure it requires to see things in that kind of perspective? That's amazing.

That's amazing. It's nuts. I'm not saying he was a dummy. I'm just tired of looking at it. Okay. I think we should talk about how Lego bricks are made. That's a good idea. Josh, they start out with plastic granules, as little plastic.

Yeah. What kind of plastic? It is Acra-Lonite trial butadiene styrene. Or ABS. We'll call it ABS. And ABS comes to the factory, well, we'll call it factory. It's a manufacturing facility in droves. They have 14 silos that, that are, these things are vacuumed into these silos.

And all in all, a factory has a close to a million pounds of this granulated plastic. Right. And all the plastic has already died. So they've got 52 different colors. Yeah. They don't need to worry about all that. You wouldn't want to have to color it there too. No.

I wonder where that's made initially. Interesting. I don't know, but I did a little background check and ABS is actually a very safe plastic. It doesn't contain phthalates or bisphenols. Well, yeah, because kids, despite everything you tell them, are probably going to put a Lego in their mouth at one point or another. Whether it's a Lego or a Lego fruit chew. Right.

I could see that meeting though. I sort of see it like, boy, it's really unsafe to eat these, but they want to eat them. So let's just give them one they can eat. Right. And then after they're like, oh, maybe that's what I do. Can Jerry put in like a sound effect of somebody slapping their own forehead? So what happens from here, buddy, is they take these granules and they use a process called injection molding.

It's all this is machinery pretty much, of course. And they melt the stuff down 450 degrees. Yeah, they're not made by hand. Is that a surprise? At 450 degrees. Right. At 450 degrees, it melts the plastic. It injects it into the molds and applies between 25 and 150 tons of pressure.

Right. And the cool thing is it's these, the dyes that they use to the injection molds that they use. The machining process is so precise, the most it's off is 0.002 millimeters, which is relatively insignificant for the kind of the kind of coupling system that Legos use. But first, let's talk about robots. I thought you were about to drop the knowledge there on that. Okay, let's do it.

You're talking about the interference fit? Yeah. That's what it's called, Josh. It is a tube that sticks. I'm sorry. The stud sticks into the tube, but it's slightly bigger, which is key, because that means it presses it apart and allows it to stay together using friction. Right.

And the key to this, Chuck, is you don't need any kind of fastener. It's all friction. It's all resistance. Yeah. And that was that change in design that they achieved in 1958 before it was, it lacked the tubes, I think. Yeah. So the things would fall apart pretty easy.

Yeah. Now it's like, once a Lego stuck, brother, it's stuck. Well, until you take it apart. Exactly. But I mean, think of how many pounds of pressure you have to use to overcome that friction fit. Yeah. That's true.

It's a lot. Like at least two. That's true. So where were we? Pressure. They apply all that pressure, makes it into the little mold, takes only seven seconds, and they spit it out, cool it, goes into a conveyor, into a bin, goes from a bin into the packaging.

We could get specific there, but it's not the most interesting thing in the world. I think the cool thing is, is they have robots that weigh the packages. Yeah, that is kind of cool. The reason when you get a Lego set, you get different bags, right? Because these designers have said, we need X number of these blocks and X number of these blocks, and they put them in different bags so that you can just throw these, this prescribed assortment of bags in a box and there's your play set, right? Yes.

And then they have robots that weigh the bags before packaging to make sure they weigh the precise amount. Pretty cool. Yeah. That's when humans come in. Yeah, humans come in and do a little QA along with machines. Machines perform the drop, torque, tension, compression, bite, and impact tests, and humans ...

The bite test is my favorite. Yeah. Humans use a little beaker, I guess the size of a child's epiglottis maybe, to make sure that it can't, a piece can't choke a kid to death. Right. Because that's a really important step in this whole process. Definitely. And the bite test.

One of my favorite stats, Josh, is out of every million Lego pieces made, only about 18 failed these tests. Yeah. That is.0002. No. Yes. .0002. I see four zeroes.

Yeah, you said three. I said four. No, you said three. 00002. Nice. And the castle walls are counterclockwise. 2023 is already well underway, everybody, so don't wait any longer to level up your small business, and the way you can do that is by joining up with Stamps.com.

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STUFF. Hey, everybody. It's a new year and it's a good time to take a look at your website. And if you take a look and you decide it looks kind of black, then it's time to head on over to Squarespace to create a new one. That's right, especially if you have, oh, I don't know, some kind of audience like we do. Squarespace member areas connect with your audience and generate revenue through gated

members only content. You can manage your members, send email communications and leverage audience insights all on one easy to use platform. Yeah. And if you have a big social media presence, you can display posts from your social profiles on your website. You can automatically push website content to your favorite social media channels. It's like the circle of life.

So head on over to Squarespace.com slash S-Y-S-K for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code S-Y-S-K to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. And this, like you said, Josh takes place in Billendenmark, but they have, they moved a lot of their manufacturing to the Czech Republic because they were kind of losing money there and laying people off and after the mid nineties. And so they had to make it a little cheaper, and I guess labor or whatever is cheaper over there in Czech Republic must be, I guess.

So that's why it's there now. So Chuck, they're making a 37,000 Lego sets every hour sets, not bricks, right? And I believe, I saw a statistic that every seven seconds, another Lego set is sold. Yeah, we have some of those fun stats we'll say at the end if we have time. Oh, sorry for jumping ahead. No, that's okay. So Josh, let's say you wanted to build a Lego project, but not a, you know, not a little tiny thing to put in your pocket, a pocket model.

Let's say you want to build something kind of big and cool. The first thing you need to do is, well, it depends what kind of guy you are. I'm a kind of guy that just dives in and starts building, but that's why I'm not an architect or a builder. What you should do is plan it out a little bit and decide how large you want it, because then you're going to, you know, that'll tell you how many bricks you need, how long it's going to take, and that determines your scale. And from there, you can just kind of move on and be creative, you can sketch it out

if you want, if you're into that, or you could use computer software. You can. It's pretty awesome, actually. There's three different types of software as far as I know. There's Lego Digital Designer, and that's actually available for use for free on the website. Pretty cool. You can either download it, or I believe you can go to Lego.com and use it.

There's also Eldraw, which is basically a type of CAD computer aided design software. And then there is Bricksmith. That's it on Bricksmith. And people use these to do things like, oh, I don't know, create the Statue of Liberty with a lightsaber. Yeah, that's a fun one. Or a scale replica of the Brooklyn Bridge, or, you know, or Yankee Stadium. Yes, Lego Land.

I have pictures of that, actually. I'll show you. The thing I thought was cool is when they, some Tracy for this article interviewed this, the one guy that you're talking about, Nathan Sawaya, Sawaya. And he, you know, it's sort of like real architecture and real building techniques. Like you should stagger your bricks for a wall because it's sturdier, and you can put, for hollow things, you can put interior columns, and it sort of follows the same rules of standard architecture, which I thought was going to need.

Right, and this isn't lost on Legos. They recently released the Lego Architecture Series. Did you check these out? No. Dude, they have, they have a couple so far. They have the Guggenheim, okay, okay. My favorite, they have Falling Water. Ah, very nice.

Frank Lloyd Wright? Yeah, it's pretty sweet. And they have some iconic landmarks. I think the Space Needle is one of them. But it looks pretty slick. What if I was like Frank Lloyd Wright? I'd come across this table, hadn't you? Square houses, please.

Yeah, and we've been trying to figure out how to do a Frank Lloyd Wright podcast, and we got, I'd say pretty far into the research process to do it, and figured out like, we can't do this. It's just too visual. Yeah, us sitting around describing Falling Water, it's just like somebody should slap us in the face. Yeah, it basically just be like, it's so awesome. Yeah.

No, really, it's awesome. And there's a river that runs underneath it. It's awesome. Yeah. I'm done now. Okay, if you're interested, there is a book called The Unofficial Lego Builder's Guide from Alan Bedford, and a publication online called Brick Journal, and you can get like tips on building big things there.

Right. Because if you never tried, either you're a genius and you're innately able to do so, or you're going to fail miserably. Well, one guy who was interviewed for the article who did the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Yeah, yeah. It was like his whole town he was building. I think that was Hawaii.

No, it wasn't. It wasn't. I think it was like Chris Doyle. Yeah, Chris Doyle. He said he just starts, like he has a rough idea of what he wants to do, but you know, he just goes to town basically. See, that's what I would do. Yeah.

It can be done. Yeah, but mine probably wouldn't succeed. And then if you are into robotics, electronics, that kind of stuff, you can use Legos too. Yeah, they've got new robot versions. They have like microprocessors and motors and gears. There's a guy who used Legos to create an automatic book scanner. Wow. I know.

Especially if you love books and you love Legos, then Booyah. There's also a CD launcher that somebody made using Legos. I saw that. That was pretty awesome too, right? And then one of the other cool things I saw combines Legos with Dominoes. It's a mechanical and automated Domino Stacker made of Legos. Wow. Yeah, it looks at the important part.

Yeah, I was trying to picture that. I got it now. I'm like, no, no, it's a Playmobil. But it has water running underneath it. It's so awesome. So I mentioned Nathan Sawaya. He is one of the preeminent Lego artists out of New York, of course. And he has a traveling exhibit called The Art of the Brick and a website too.

And he tours the real museums and the dude has got some serious talent. I mean, look at that. He did Starry Starry Night. Wow. He's a mosaic. Wow. He did the Iwo Jima statue? Yeah.

Oh, he did this one. That one's the favorite one I ran across and we should probably describe it. Yeah. It is a yellow man looking upward and he's tearing apart his chest. And inside his chest, he's full of Legos that are spilling out. And he's made of Legos. Well, yeah. We keep leaving that part off.

All of this is made of Legos. Oh, okay. All right. And then there's this other dude, Sean Kenney, and he is New York based too. And I get the feeling that they kind of battle a little bit for... Supreme dominance? Well, New York Lego supremacy at least, because both of their websites say, our studio has more than 1.5 million Legos.

Both of them have 1.5 million Legos. But I mean, I could have 1.5 million Legos and do nothing with them and slap a website together. But what you do with the Legos, not how many you own? Well, let me show you what Sean's done. He's done work for companies like Google and Nintendo and JP Morgan. Oh, yeah? And Samsung.

And he's been featured on, I mean, everything, you name it, he's been featured. Has he been featured on Jimmy Kimmel? No. But look at this. He did a Yankee Stadium. Check that out. Wow. And I hate the Yankees.

I was going to say, if I like the Yankees, I'd be really impressed. And he's a pretty talented guy, too. And he is a member of what are called the Certified Professionals, and I think there's 11 of them now, that Legos actually certified these people as professional artists or whatever. Yeah, I got the impression that as he became better and better, he stopped paying for Legos along the way. And this was like, ring ring, I need more Legos now. Yeah, I would think so.

I need green. And old Kirk Christensen is like, OK, all right. Old Kirk. 2023 is already well underway, everybody, so don't wait any longer to level up your small business. And the way you can do that is by joining up with Stamps.com. That's right, because with Stamps.com, you're going to be able to print your own postage and shipping labels right there from your home or office or home office.

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All you need is that computer and printer. Set your business up for success. When you get started with Stamps.com today, just use our promo code stuff for a special offer that's going to include a four week trial plus free postage and that free digital scale, no long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page and enter our code stuff. Hey everybody, it's a new year and it's a good time to take a look at your website.

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Yeah. Let go fun facts. Aren't all facts associated with Lego's fun? Yeah, I think so. Okay. I like this whole around the world stuff though, because every company has one of these. Wait, first, have you been on Lego.com recently? Did you go on for this?

Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty awesome. Wasn't it? Yeah. It's cool. Like all the little movies associated with each one. Yeah.

I haven't been to Lego land though. You've ever been there? No. One of their theme parks that they actually sold. Yeah. The Merlin entertainment or something like that. The Merlin Olsen. Yeah.

His ghost made a deal with old Christian since he just passed away recently, didn't he? Yes, he did. Very sad. Yeah. They sold those because they became unprofitable. So they kind of restructured and moved some things around. Now they're in the red. In the black.

In the black. Fun facts, Josh. Here we go. More than 400 million children and adults will play with Lego's this year. Yes. And I don't know what year they said that was, but it's probably every year. I saw their 2009 investor catalog or prospectus, I guess, and it said that same stat. You can put all your money in Lego's?

I'm going to put a substantial amount of it. They're actually privately owned, so I don't think that's possible. If you built a column, Josh, of 40 billion Lego bricks, it would reach the moon. 40 billion? Had to count those zeros. I've got one. Go ahead. Lego is the largest tire manufacturer in the world.

Yeah. Little teeny tires. Pretty cool stat. How many did they make a year? Oh, I don't know. Do you have that stat? Yeah. I do.

306 million? That's what I got, too. Somebody else is in the 2009 investor perspective. On average, Josh, this is my favorite one. There are 62 Lego bricks for every single person on earth. Yeah, I like that one, too. Four billion hours. That's the amount of five billion?

Five billion. Five billion hours. That's how much people will spend playing with Lego's in a year, on average. Not one person, not per person, but I mean combined, everybody playing with Lego's. You out of fun facts? I'm out of fun facts. I mean, there were more, but... I've got one for you.

Let's hear it. Remember what we talked about? I'm fascinated with the minifigures. Yeah, the minifigs, as I call them. If you're in the know, if you're one of the 11 certified artists. We talked about how they were originally gender-neutral, race-neutral. They were also emotion-neutral, too, and it wasn't until 1989 when Lego started releasing their pirate set that they realized, hey, man, we might need some facial expressions

on these people, and they came up with a good figure and a bad figure and an eye-patched figure. What was the diff? I think scowl and smile to differentiate between the good guys and the bad guys. From that point on, they started having facial expressions. Wow. We'll get for them. And I think I have one other.

Yeah, I was Fisher Price. We should do a podcast on Fisher Price. That was my bag. Yeah. I was way into that. I liked Playmobil, but I did love Legos as well. And then Chuck, the minifigs, four billion of them on the planet. There's only 6.5 billion people.

Four billion on the planet technically makes them the largest population group in the world. Isn't that cute? Because they're so tiny. That's so cute. Yeah. And I think that's it, buddy. I think so. I mean, there's a lot more.

We didn't cover all of it. No. There is something else. Yeah? Hold the presses. Stop the presses. You were talking about them selling Legoland. They did this huge restructuring in, I think, 2004 because they peaked in 1998 with their

Star Wars sets. And after that, they actually started losing money, and you said they were back in the black, part of it is because of their selling Legoland restructuring the company. But one of the reasons, actually, probably the main reason why Legos took such a hit was because of megablocks? No. Electronics. Oh, I thought their patent ran out, too.

That's something to do with it. That was definitely part of it. But they think that Legos are having trouble competing with MP3 players or video games or all that. So, Lego remains optimistic, buddy. I have a little tidbit of nice Danish optimism in broken English for you, courtesy of the Lego group. You ready?

Yes. I quote, but the Lego group is in no doubt that the Lego brick will continue in future to be relevant to children of all ages, period, a world of imagination and total absorption, period. That sounds like they literally said that in their native language and then just typed it into Babelfish. Babelfish, yeah. I think that's right.

Yeah. So, they have my nephew, Noah, plays with the PlayStation game. They have an Indiana Jones Lego game. Yeah. Yeah. So, they're trying to get a piece of that market, too. I think they get a good piece of it. They have a Star Wars game, too.

I think they have more than the trilogy in Lego. That's right. Yeah. They'll be around. They're fine. I think so. Yeah. So, that's it, man.

If you want to see really honestly, I know we say this every time, like, go read the article on the site. Because we've covered the article, gone beyond the article. This is not one of those cases. If you want to see just a series of super cool Lego pictures of Lego Brick Field Guide complete with precise measurements and just a bunch of other information that we didn't even touch on, type how Lego Bricks work. Because technically, there isn't a word called Legos.

It's Lego Bricks, but, you know, hey, we named ours how Legos work. Right. Legos Bricks work in the handy search bar at HowStuffWorks.com, and it will yield that article, right? Indeed. Listener Milt. Not quite. Oh, okay.

I wanted to give a little shout out. I had met a couple of fans this weekend, finally. It never happens. What about the Henry Clay people? Well, yeah. But I mean, yeah, sure. You're right. Okay.

I'm going to plug their album, actually. It's coming out in June. They've got a new album coming out, but I'll wait on that plug. Oh, okay. For when it's... When I have the release date. When I have the release date. Interesting.

So Jerry and I, over the weekend, went to a play of sorts. I think it's so cute. You two are dating. Well, live theater. We're not dating. Called Looking Glass Alice, based on Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, and Doug and Lindsay are in the show. Lindsay's Alice.

And actually, there's only five people in the show, so literally one, whatever, whatever percentage of the cast that is. One fifth. Our fans in the show. Two fifths? Two fifths. And, so Jerry and I went with Emily, with my wife, and met up with them afterward in the green room, which was really green.

And they were super cool, and we're going to take them out for barbecue while they're here, and just wanted to thank them. Are they still here? Yeah, they're... It's like a six-week run. Where are you going for barbecue? Well, I was going to say, like, Daddy Dee's, but that's... Oh, my friend.

Little dingy. Let me... Yeah, but it's a really great barbecue. It is. Daddy Dee is listening. Your barbecue rocks. Sure. Do you recommend that, or Fox Brothers?

Well, Fox Brothers is a little more the kind of place you would want to take someone from out of town. Yeah. But they're kind of into fat mats. They want to go to fat mats. Okay, you know that made an appearance in Up in the Air. Yeah, yes, indeed. Yeah.

Okay, well, that's it for the Atlanta barbecue scene. Right. And I also wanted to shout out to Emily, who had a craft show last weekend, and one of her fellow crafters. Her name was Julie. Oh, my... Is it Julia? No, I feel like a jerk.

Just to say both. It's either Julie or Julia. It's either Julie or Julia. She was really nice, and what she does, she has bought some of these, and I've seen other people that do this now, and I'm mentioning it because it's just so cool, those old printing presses from like the 1800s. Yeah, I have several. Yeah, no, you don't.

She has resurrected these things, and they're huge, and she does like real printing on cards. There's no computers involved. And it's just like... Because those Dagnabbit computers... I know, but that showed pictures over in front of this huge machine, and you crank it with your foot, and it turns all these gears, and it's really cool. It's very steampunk.

And she was... Yeah, it is very steampunk. But her, she has a website called redbirdinc.com, and I don't know, I think you should support people that like resurrect... She said the machines hadn't been used in like 70 years, when she got a hold of them. People used to have to walk uphill both ways in the snow to use those machines. To print. All right, Josh, this is a listener mail in honor of Mother's Day that should come out

sometime near Mother's Day. Well, hold on. We haven't even laid a part where we can do the music. Chuck, is it time now for listener mail? Yes, Josh. Setting Jerry up. So, like I said, hopefully this will come out sometime around Mother's Day, because this is from Nora, signed Nora, a mama from Missouri.

Okay. Hello, fellas. While driving my oldest son to start his freshman year of college this fall, I was trying to be cool. She put cool in quotes, and ignore all the mommy emotions bubbling up, so she was getting sad. Thank you for translating. For the hour-and-a-half drive, my son brought out his radio iPod gizmo and entertained his

brother and me with your podcast, starting with the one on a Ponzi Schemes. Nice. You know how to say it, clearly. We were totally involved, thought-provoked, and sparked a great conversation or two. After handling the separation without too much embarrassment and upon arriving home, I decided to go for a run to help shake off my mommy blues. The inspiration came to look up the podcast and load some on the iPod gizmo thingy. While running and listening, I headed that part, while running and listening, I was

struck by the whole circle of my baby teaching me a trick or two, as he heads off into the world. Now I get warm fuzzies each time I head out for a run and choose my topic. That is so cute. Isn't it? And I look forward to running more than I have for a while, so extra bonus now. My son, my youngest son, looks for podcasts he wants to listen to with us on car trips. She's really excited about this.

Yeah. We're bringing the intergenerational gap together. She says hooray for more family time with the teenagers. Who knew? Every time you encourage emails at the end of podcasts, I think about sharing our little story. The kids would roll their eyes if they knew I wrote in, but they love what you do too, and we hope you keep up to good work, and Nora, mommy from Missouri, I hope your kids

in college, rolling his eyes at you right now. Yeah. That's what we hope. But there's a tear coming down from his eye as well. Touching. If he wasn't homesick before, he is now. Believe me. Well, if you work out or run or do any physical exertion while you listen to Chuck and me,

we want a sample of your sweat. Put it in an email and send it to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?

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That's GateTheNumberOneTravel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. The South Dakota Stories, Volume 2. I could see beyond the black hills and the way they called for exploration. I could feel the air, the way it paints against skin and fills hungry lungs. I could hear the way the water ran for miles and the way the bison grazed, the way our boots meet the earth as we step past expected.

I could imagine my time in South Dakota, and I wish to go back because there's so much South Dakota, so little time.