LEGO celebrates 90 years at San Diego Comic-Con

This year’s San Diego Comic-Con features a 14-foot-tall “Bowser” from the “Super Mario Bros.” video game franchise. It is made up of more than 700,000 LEGO bricks, a symbol of Lego’s great 90th anniversary celebration.

“A lot of people have this long history of playing with bricks as kids and then growing up, so I think we just wanted to pay homage to that,” said Cassidy Najarian, spokesperson for the LEGO Group.

The LEGO Group started on August 10, 1932 in Denmark with wooden toys, then the colorful plastic interlocking bricks inspired by an existing range of toys from Kiddicraft were introduced.

This means that LEGO wasn’t the first of its kind, but it quickly became the most popular. In 1998, LEGO became one of the first toys inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, and in 2000, LEGO beat Teddy Bear and Barbie to win “Toy of the Century” by the British Association of Toy Retailers. .

Today, LEGO continues its reign over the toy industry. The company made $8.4 billion in revenue in 2021, making it the highest-earning toy brand in the world, ahead of Bandai Namco, Hasbro and Mattel, which each have their own competing brick toys .

It’s also one of the most expensive toys on the market, costing parents and families almost double what they’d pay for other types of toys like action figures and stuffed animals. In some cases, LEGO sets can cost hundreds of dollars.

This is because of another feature of LEGO history: licenses.

In 1998, LEGO negotiated with Lucas Film the exclusive rights to create a line of “Star Wars” toys. Since then, the company has partnered with other major franchises like Marvel and Harry Potter, and even sitcoms like “The Office.”

In many cases, LEGO sets aren’t just toys designed for kids; they are for collectors.

“It really became a cultural moment in its own right,” Najarian said. “He’s been able to tap into a lot of different people’s interests and honor that, but bring it back to the focal point of different ways of playing and different ways of celebrating the game.”

For nine decades, LEGO has built its brand brick by brick to include more than just toys. The company now orders several video games, movies and 10 different theme parks around the world.

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Daniel K. Denny