Lego
construction toy
Lego ( , LEG-oh; Danish: [ˈle̝ːko]) is a brand of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously coloured interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) that accompany an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Its pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Assembled Lego models can be taken apart, and their pieces can be reused to create new constructions.
Inspired by the self-locking bricks invented by English toymaker Hilary Page in 1939 which were produced by his company Kiddicraft, the Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Moulding is done in Denmark, Hungary, Mexico, China, Vietnam and the United States. Brick decorations and packaging are done at plants in the former three countries and in the Czech Republic. Annual production of the bricks averages approximately 36 billion, or about 1140 elements per second. One of Europe's biggest companies, Lego is the largest toy manufacturer in the world by sales. As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.
“Lego” enters the record as construction toy. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lego and construction can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Lego” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Lego and construction provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q170484. The Library of Congress control number is sh86008105. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939, 1949, 1140 and 2015.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Lego”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Lego primary sources, Lego archive and Lego research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Lego” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.