by Abeline Shu

Created on: March 13, 2009

Since 1958, when the now-famous version of the LEGO brick first came into production, the LEGO Group has released thousands of LEGO play sets, venturing into far ranging themes such as dinosaurs to robots, underwater to outer space, Vikings and pirates to the wild, wild west. So successful have the little plastic bricks become that the toy is known by children and adults of virtually every age. Star Wars, Batman, Sponge Bob and Harry Potter are just a few of the pop-culture favorites to been captured by the LEGO magic.

The name LEGO was first coined from the Danish phrase "leg godt", which means "play well." And that is exactly what the company has been doing since it was first founded in 1932 in Billund, Denmark, in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen, a carpenter, who started his company building wooden stools, ladders and toys. After he started using the name "LEGO" in 1934, the company eventually expanded to plastic toys in the 1940s, and in 1949, LEGO began producing an early version of the interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks."

At the time, the use of plastic for toys was not highly regarded by retailers and consumers and LEGO experienced poor sales and many returned shipments. And though the novel plastic bricks could be locked together and pulled apart easily to create and recreate different designs, the bricks still had some technical difficultieslimited "locking" and lack of versatility. It was thought then that plastic toys could never replace the traditional wooden ones.

Eventually in 1954, it was Christiansen's son, Godfred Kirk Christiansen, who saw the immense potential of the LEGO bricks, after meeting a toy agent on a ferry in England who complained that toys lacked idea and system. The company launches the revolutionary "LEGO System of Play" in 1955. Though the reception is poor, Godfred Christiansen pushes on until the1958 modern-day brick design is developed. Patented on January 28, 1958, LEGO bricks from that year are still compatible with the current bricks manufactured today and since then, LEGO play sets have come in all shapes and sizes, from a handful of bricks, to the grand scale of LEGO land amusement parks (there are four in the world, one in Denmark, Germany, the UK and the US).

Always developing with the times, today's modern LEGO bricks have been unafraid to venture into the future. LEGO has managed to delve into the virtual world with video games that include Indiana Jones, Batman and Star Wars and the

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