Why We Celebrate International LEGO Day

Best of BrickNerd - Article originally published January 28, 2021.

Happy International LEGO Day from BrickNerd! Today we celebrate our love of LEGO bricks from all around the globe—but why today specifically? Looking at history, I believe there are three important events that led to the AFOL community celebrating today’s holiday. These events changed the game in such a remarkable way that we wouldn’t be AFOLs today if they hadn’t happened.

The System

Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, courtesy of LEGO

Let’s start chronologically. In 1954, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, then junior managing director of the company, was traveling to the United Kingdom for a business trip. Along the way, he talked with a manager of a toy department in a Copenhagen store named Troels Petersen. During their conversation, Petersen lamented that there was no “system” in the toy industry.

This idea really made an impression on Godtfred who started thinking of solutions. Back in Billund after his trip, he went through the company’s catalog to find what could work well in a system from the few hundred plastic and wooden products in their portfolio.

To fans today, it is glaringly obvious that plastic bricks would scream “SYSTEM!” but at the time, the LEGO brick looked quite different. They were hollow, didn’t have clutch power, and were seen as more of a stacking toy. The bricks weren’t even one of the company’s best sellers, but Godtfred took a chance on the system idea. He later explained his thinking:

“The LEGO System means that: all elements fit together, can be used in multiple ways, can be built together. This means that bricks bought years ago will fit perfectly with bricks bought in the future… It means that a LEGO element not only has instant value, but will keep its value always… We will always make sure that all bricks – from yesterday, today and tomorrow – fit together.”

With that vision in mind, LEGO produced the first System set in 1955 called “Town Plan, no. 1” which was designed to create a more realistic urban environment for children to build and navigate.

The Patent

The second big change is the reason why we actually celebrate today: the patent of the brick. However, this patent was not for the original hollow bricks, but for a special addition that made them infinitely more versatile. The whole story about how it happened exactly was discovered in 2020 thanks to some documentation found by in their archives by LEGO corporate historians (what an insanely cool job to have! This is what they do, they dig up cool information!)

The original sketch of how tube arrangements could provide clutch power, courtesy of LEGO

Godtfred, now managing director of the company, was frustrated that the stability of the hollow bricks made them difficult to play with. He called a meeting with a few other people to try and solve the problem. It was Godtfred himself who came up with the idea of adding tubes to the undersides of the brick which would essentially clutch the studs on the top, providing the much needed stability. He immediately had some samples prepared and only five days later applied for the patent.

On January 28, 1958 at precisely 1:58 pm local time, LEGO submitted patent application for the bricks we know and love today with interlocking studs and tubes. Here is one of the few photographs of the actual patent which is typically kept safe in LEGO’s archives. (Those on display at the LEGO House and LEGO Ideas House are copies.) I took this photo in 2018 at LEGO’s headquarters in Billund, Denmark when the real thing was on display briefly to celebrate their 60th anniversary.

The concession for the patent mentions the application date, time and cost.

It only took five days from inception to patent application. That discovery of the studs and tubes enabled all of the future advancements of the LEGO System and is the primary reason we celebrate International LEGO Day every January 28th.

The Plastic

A page of the US patent that came a bit later

I’ll briefly mention what I consider to be the third big moment that significantly affected AFOLs: a change in plastic type.

We don’t normally recognize this as significant, but I assure you it is! In 1963, five years after the patent was submitted, LEGO decided to change the type of plastic that they manufactured their bricks out of. They had been using CA plastic (Cellulose Acetate), which was nice and shiny but it didn’t provide enough clutch power and easily warped.

By shifting to ABS plastic (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene), LEGO had finally perfected the LEGO brick, ensuring Godtfred’s dream of having all bricks from every era fit together. I have some of these old LEGO, and if you try to use CA bricks from the late 50s or early 60s, you’ll see that most are warped and unusable beyond novelty. However ABS bricks from 1963 onward are just like today’s.

The Impact

We’ve covered the “LEGO” part, but now let’s briefly explore the “International” aspect of International LEGO Day though a fun activity. As LEGO fans, we celebrate on January 28th because of a patent that changed our world. LEGO binds us across continents. It has helped us build communities together, explore artistic expression, and create friendships around the globe.

BrickNerd has contributors from more than 10 different countries, so it can be viewed as a manifestation of what LEGO fans can create together. To mark the holiday, people generally build something to celebrate—so we have decided to show you some of us “building” but in a different way—the way we did many years ago when LEGO first caught our imaginations.

Here are a few of our childhood memories of LEGO. (WARNING: All the kids in the photos are now adults… unfortunately!) There are no names because these photos can almost represent all of us at some level—that initial fascination with LEGO in our lives no matter how old you were when you first got started. But if you want, you can try your hand at matching us with our older selves. We’ve numbered the photos, so leave your guess in the comments on who is who! (Hint: there may be a new contributor or two included that we haven’t announced yet!)

Happy International LEGO Day everyone!

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Warning! Playmobil.

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What are your earliest memories of LEGO, and can you tell which of the photos belongs to some of our BrickNerd contributors? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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