January 29, 2008

LEGO fifty years old

One of the favourite kid’s toys of the yesteryear is LEGO and to prove how successful this toy has been it has now reached an historic point in its life, for fifty years this building set has kept both adults and children busy.

This success is even more remarkable considering the competition from computers etc, but they have even mastered that with a series of successful games.

LEGO brick curiosities:

There are about 62 LEGO bricks for every one of the world’s 6 billion inhabitants.
Children around the world spend 5 billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks.
More than 400 million people around the world have played with LEGO bricks.
LEGO bricks are available in 53 different colours.
19 billion LEGO elements are produced every year.
2.16 million LEGO elements are moulded every hour, or 36,000 per minute.
More than 400 billion LEGO bricks have been produced since 1949.
Two eight-stud LEGO bricks of the same colour can be combined in 24 different ways.
Three eight-stud bricks can be combined in 1,060 ways.
There are more than 915 million combinations possible for six 2 x 4 LEGO bricks of the same colour.
7 LEGO sets are sold by retailers every second around the world.
The LEGO bricks sold in one year would circle the world 5 times.
40 billion LEGO bricks stacked on top of one another would connect the earth with the moon.

Source [Gizmodo]