Legoland Billund opened its doors in Billund, Denmark, in 1968, followed by Legoland Windsor Resort, in the United Kingdom in 1996. Other parks subsequently opened in California, Germany, Malaysia, Dubai and Japan. Future parks will be opened in Hong Kong and South Korea. Another is planned in Orange County, New York.
Currently, there are eight Legoland parks, three of them in Europe, three in Asia and two in the United States:
Legoland Billund, Billund, Denmark.
Legoland Windsor, Windsor, United Kingdom.
Legoland Deutschland, Günzburg, Germany.
Legoland California, Carlsbad, United States.
Legoland Florida, Winter Haven, Florida, United States.
Legoland Malaysia, Nusajaya, Johor, Malaysia.
Legoland Japan, Nagoya, Japan.
Legoland Dubai Resort, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Each park is divided into thematic areas, although there are several that are common to all of them. The parks are aimed at families with small children, despite which, some of them have roller coasters.
They are characterized because they present reproductions of characteristic buildings or animals of LEGO and Duplo. Among the most important reproductions are the Mount Rushmore National Memorial, the Statue of Liberty, the Port of Copenhagen and the Parthenon of Athens.
LEGO was not always the system of plastic blocks that it is today. His humble origins arose in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen, an impoverished carpenter from Billund, Denmark. His innovative family business would grow to become one of the most respected toy companies in the world, being directed until 2005 by Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, grandson of the founder2 and since then by Jørgen Vig Knudstorp.
On January 28, 1918, Ole Kirk Christiansen opened a woodworking business in Billund, and made a living building houses and furniture for farmers in the region with the help of a small team of apprentices. His workshop burned down in 1924. Christiansen took the disaster as the opportunity to build a larger workshop, and he dedicated himself to expanding his business. Trying to find ways to minimize his production costs, Christiansen began producing miniature versions of his products as design aid. His miniature stairs and ironing boards were the ones that inspired him to produce toys. [Citation needed] 3
"Only the best is good enough", was the slogan under which Kristiansen produced ducks, trucks and wooden planes, pieces of great quality that, although they were well appreciated by consumers, could not be sold in large quantities.
Two years later, Kristiansen became aware of the need to grant an identity to his company, in order to achieve better results in sales, so he thought it necessary to seek a good name. After experimenting with different ideas, he finally chose the first two letters of the Danish words leg and godt, which mean "play well", resulting in the word "lego".
In 1946, during an industrial fair in Copenhagen, Kristiansen found a small block of plastic produced by a molding machine. Both the fire that his factory had suffered in 1942, and that had forced him to rebuild the business, as well as the potential he saw in the plastic figures, motivated him to acquire such technology. Although it did not abandon the production of wood (which in fact would continue until 1960), the arrival of the plastic molding machine meant a great advance for the company. With it, they began to manufacture a wide variety of toys in both materials. Between 1947 and 1955, Lego produced more than 200 models of toys that were well received ..
It is during this same time, specifically in 1949, when they began to make small plastic blocks of four and eight bolts, which were launched to the market under the name of "Automatic link bricks", with which multiple designs could be built (The same Ferguson tractor, for example, existed in a ready-made version and a finished version).
Since its launch in 1955, the Lego system had been so successful that it had begun to be exported first to Sweden and then to Germany. The boom was such that in 1959, Lego established companies in France, Great Britain, Belgium and Sweden. Later, the variety and territory covered by the company expanded exponentially. In 1961, the company began selling in the United States and Canada. In 1962, he introduced his products in Singapore, Australia, Morocco and Japan, and by 1964, the first sales were made in the Middle East. The company experienced a steady growth that would continue once Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, son of Godtfred, took over.
When the plastic reached mass use, Christiansen adapted to the changes and began producing plastic toys. One of the first modular toys produced by LEGO was a truck that could be disassembled and reassembled. [Citation needed] It was not until 1949 that the plastic blocks that can be connected very easily, which led the company to the fame, they were developed. These "automatic building blocks", made of cellulose acetate, were developed in the style of traditional wooden blocks, which could be stacked on top of each other; The revolutionary concept, however, was the fact that the plastic blocks could be "locked" together. Each block had several flat buttons on its upper face and a rectangular recessed bottom. By connecting the upper and lower faces of two blocks it was possible to hold them together. In 1953, these blocks got a new name: LEGO Mursten or "LEGO blocks"
