History of Lego - Move To Plastic Bricks

Move To Plastic Bricks

Another warehouse fire struck the Lego Group in 1960, consuming most of the company's inventory of wooden toys. Godtfred decided that the plastic line was strong enough to abandon production of wooden toys. As a result, Godtfred's brothers Gerhardt (then head of wooden toys) and Karl Georg left the Lego company and began a separate company "Bilofix". By the end of the year, the staff of the Lego Group included more than 450 people.

In 1961, Lego wished to expand sales to North America, but did not have the logistical capabilities to do so. Lego made an arrangement allowing Samsonite to begin producing and selling Lego products in the United States and Canada.

1961 and 1962 saw the introduction of the first Lego wheels, an addition that expanded the potential for building cars, trucks, buses and other vehicles from Lego bricks. Also during this time, the Lego Group introduced toys specifically targeted towards the pre-school market.

In 1963, the material used to create Lego bricks, cellulose acetate (CA), was dropped in favor of more stable acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS plastic), which is still used today. ABS is non-toxic, is less prone to discolouration and warping, and is also more resistant to heat, acids, salt, and other chemicals than cellulose acetate. Samsonite manufacturing in North America did not switch at the same time, and still used some degree of cellulose acetate in its Lego products.

1964 was the first time that instruction manuals were included in Lego sets.

One of the LEGO Group's most successful series, the Lego train system, was first released in 1966. The original train sets included a 4.5-volt motor, battery box and rails; two years later, a 12-volt motor was introduced.

On 7 June 1968, the first Legoland Park was opened in Billund. This theme park featured elaborate models of miniature towns built entirely from Lego bricks. The three acre (12,000 m²) park attracted 625,000 visitors in its first year alone. During the next 20 years, the park grew to more than eight times its original size, and eventually averaged close to a million paying visitors per year. More than eighteen million Lego sets were sold in 1968.

In 1969, the Duplo system went on sale. This was a newly developed system, targeted towards younger children; Duplo bricks are much larger than Lego bricks, making them safer for very young children, but the two systems are compatible: Lego bricks can be fitted neatly onto Duplo bricks, making the transition to the Lego system easily made as children outgrow their Duplo bricks. The name Duplo comes from the Latin word duplus, which translates literally as double, meaning that a Duplo brick is exactly twice the dimension of a Lego building brick (2× height by 2× width by 2× depth = 8× the volume of a brick).

The 1960s were such a period of major growth for the Lego Group that by 1970, one of the biggest questions they faced was how best to manage and control its expanding market.