90 Years of Play: International LEGO Day 2022
/Today we celebrate the informal International LEGO Day, and, as everybody knows by now, this date was chosen because the patent for the modern brick was filed on this day in 1958. We talked about this extensively one year ago including a rare photo of that original patent application.
The year 2022 is a bit special, though, because we are also celebrating 90 years of LEGO. But why are we celebrating this particular year? And what are we celebrating exactly? Other years might have been chosen as the “start of LEGO” other than 1932… like 1916, 1924, or 1934. In this article, we’ll see exactly what happened, when it happened and why 1932 makes more sense to celebrate than all the other dates.
We’re all AFOBM, Adult fans of Billund Maskinsnedkeri.
Ole Kirk Kristiansen started working as a carpenter in Billund in 1916, in the same exact place where you can see his famous “Ole Kirk’s House” today. But the carpentry and joinery (called “Billund Maskinsnedkeri og Tømrerforretning” which means “Billund Woodworking and Carpenter’s Shop”) had already been there since 1895, Ole simply bought it in 1916 when he was 25.
At that time, Ole and his journeymen mainly built big things like the wooden structure of houses and farms. Good examples of this can be seen in the Skjoldbjerg church (that celebrated 100 years in 2021) or in the now-abandoned Randbøl dairy, a “twin” building to the more famous Billund dairy that used to stand where LEGO House is today. Did they make smaller items too? Apparently they did, a bit, but that wasn’t their main focus. They used to think big.
Ole Kirk’s house (or “Lion House”… because of the two lions guarding the door.)
In April 1924 Ole’s young children Godtfred (4) and Karl Georg (7) were playing in the woodworking shop and accidentally set fire to… everything. Both the shop and the house burned to the ground, and Ole had to rebuild them from scratch. Where the older house stood, he built the so-called “Lion House” that still stands there today and is now also known as “Ole Kirk’s House”.
Remember, this is still in 1924, so the house predates LEGO (and sometimes people are confused by this when they see “Anno 1924” written over the main door and try to make it work with the 1932 date).
We’re getting closer and closer to 1932, and the thing that eventually led to LEGO was… the Wall Street crash in 1929. Recession reached the Danish market and in December 1931 Ole had to let his last journeyman go (asking him to cash his final check in a store but tell them not to send it to the bank for three months!).
But Ole was a man of faith—he started building smaller wooden items and asked his brothers and sisters for a loan. The new wooden products also included toys (even though his siblings didn’t seem to be too excited about them.) At first, the reborn company also made stepladders, ironing boards, stools, Christmas tree stands and other small items. But that soon stopped and the company started focusing on toys only in 1932.
The very first LEGO products (including stepladders, ironing board and stool). Image: © 2022 The LEGO Group.
The name of the company was still “Billund Maskinsnedkeri” though… and that was a bit problematic, could you imagine if it were still like that? We would be AFOBM! (Adult Fans Billund Maskinsnedkeri doesn’t quite have the same ring to it…) In 1934 Ole decided they should find a friendlier name and held a contest with his employees: whoever could come up with a good name for the company would win two bottles of his homemade apple wine.
We don’t know how many submissions he got (if any, he only had eight employees at the time), but we know he was the one who won! He came up with the word “LEGO” from the Danish words “Leg godt” which means “Play well”. So, in 1934 LEGO was basically up and running. but this is two years after what we celebrate as the anniversary.
In the past, we’ve celebrated August 10th, but it would appear that it was simply chosen for the 25th anniversary in 1957… because it was a Saturday and it was a convenient day for a parade! There was a very interesting topic about this, 10 years ago on Eurobricks with an official-ish answer from the LEGO Idea House. I’ve been wondering if maybe in these last 10 years new information has surfaced, I guess we might learn later this year!
August 10 is also written on the sundial you can find outside of the old factory (now part of the LEGO Idea House), a reproduction of the one given to Ole as a gift by his employees in 1957. (The original is lost, maybe damaged in the 1960 fire.)
As you can see, it makes sense to consider 1932 the beginning of LEGO since that is the year they decided to concentrate on making toys… even though the LEGO story started a few years before then. So we’re going to use this year as an excuse to celebrate. We all sure need it.
We know that LEGO will come up with something, or probably many things, to celebrate. Will it be in Billund? Will it be worldwide? Will it be both? Some things have already been announced, we know they’ll make a “90th-Anniversary set” based on one of the themes chosen by people on LEGO Ideas (Bionicle, Classic Space, Pirates or Castle).
We also know they’ll publish “The Secret Life of LEGO Bricks”, a book for AFOLs, written by an AFOL. And we might have other easter eggs like the stickers included in the Monkey Kid set “City of Lanterns” (that featured stickers that referenced 375 Yellow Castle, 928 Galaxy Explorer, 6285 Black Seas Barracuda and even an Automatic Binding Brick box from 1949, not to mention the LEGO Mascot/Gnome from the 1950s with a “90”.)
What else might be in the pipeline? We will have to wait and see.
If you want to know more details about those exciting times I can suggest three sources: the official LEGO History website, the classic (and hard to find) book “50 Years of Play” published by The LEGO group in 1982, and the new “Et liv med LEGO” book, by Jens Andersen – in conversation with Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen – published last year in Danish, but that will soon be translated in English… watch this space for more information on that!
What will you do to celebrate International LEGO Day? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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