The name LEGO comes from the Danish words "Leg Godt", which means "Play well". In Latin it means "I put together".
How LEGO bricks are made
The LEGO Company has production facilities in several places. Moulding takes place at our own plants in Denmark and Switzerland – then the bricks are finished and packed for retail in the USA, Denmark, Switzerland, South Korea and the Czech Republic. Since 1949, the LEGO Company has manufactured more than 203 billion LEGO bricks.The Company produces bricks round the clock, seven days a week. Moulds are engineered at two LEGO plants in Germany and Switzerland – accurate to two-thousandths of a millimetre.
During the moulding process the raw plastic material is heated to 232 degs. C until it takes on the consistency of bread dough. At this point it is injected into the moulds, which close under a pressure of between 25 and 150 tons, depending on which parts are being produced. It takes seven seconds to cool and eject new elements. As a measure of the accuracy of our moulding processes, we can reveal that only 18 bricks in every 1,000,000 fail to live up to the Company’s high quality specifications.
All LEGO elements are fully compatible, irrespective when they were made during the period 1958-2004 or which of the Company’s factories manufactured them.Regardless where they are made, LEGO products must be suitable for sale on all markets. Which means that all LEGO products conform with all safety standards in all markets. The LEGO Company’s own standards equal the toughest external requirements anywhere in the world.
LEGO facts and figures
- It would take 40,000,000,000 LEGO bricks stacked on top of each other to reach from the Earth to the Moon.
- A LEGO set is sold across the counter somewhere in the world every 7 seconds.
- The eight robots in the LEGO Warehouse in Billund can move 660 crates of LEGO bricks an hour.
- The King’s Castle in LEGOLAND Billund cost DKK 45,000,000 to build. A total of 160 tons of crushed granite and 150 tons of boulders were used in its decoration. The castle was built in only eight months – the fastest castle construction in Danish history.
- The big Dockosaurus, part of the water ride at LEGOLAND Deutschland, is made of 90,750 LEGO bricks and weighs 262 tons.
- Children all over the world spend 5 billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks.
- There are 102,981,500 different ways of combining six eight-stud bricks of the same colour.
- On average each person on earth owns 52 LEGO bricks.
- With an annual output of about 306 million tyres, the LEGO Company is the world’s leading tyre manufacturer.
- If all LEGO sets sold in the past 10 years were laid end to end, they would reach from London, England, to Perth, Australia.
- Visitors to
www.LEGO.com spend an average of 48 minutes exploring the site.
- The largest model at LEGOLAND Windsor is a Technosaurus, which required more than one million bricks. The smallest? A pigeon on Trafalgar Square.
- When you manufacture a LEGO brick, accuracy is measured to 2/1000 of a millimetre.
16Writing the LEGO brand namePlease help us to protect our brand name:- The LEGO brand name should always be written in capitals.
- The word LEGO must not be used generically – nor should it be used in the plural form or the possessive, e.g. “LEGO’s”.
- When the LEGO brand name is used as a noun, it must never stand alone. It must always be accompanied by another noun. For example: LEGO set, LEGO products, LEGO Company, LEGO play materials, LEGO bricks, LEGO universe, etc.
- The first time the LEGO brand name is used in a heading and in the following text it should be accompanied by the registration symbol ®.
