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In lugnet.mediawatch, David Laswell wrote:
> Maybe nobody ever really tried to make it as big as TLC did. They even
> treated it as a minor line of their toy company for a few decades.
I dunno about "a few" decades since there was only about an 11 year overlap
before the warehouse fire :) Truth is there were lots of similar products on the
market going back to the early 1930's (about 15-20 years before Automatic
Binding Bricks), and none of them made it big, and Lego was no different until
the late 50's. Nearly the 1st decade of Lego brick sales weren't anything
fantastic.
> > Seems like Godtfred and maybe even Kjeld were the ones responsible for
> > making Lego a real hit.
>
> It's hard to say for sure. There were two major changes in the 50's that
> opened the door for the enormous success that was seen later, and Ole Kirk
> was still in charge of the company at that time...but one of them, at least,
> has been directly credited to Godtfred, and the other happened the same year
> Ole Kirk died, so it's hard to say how much he was involved in that.
(and also 1 year after Hilary Page's death-- I know I read one site that
speculated that there might have been a possible connection between the two
companies considering the immediate innovations on Lego's part, although the
'compensation' Lego paid them later on would seem to contradict that theory.
Guess it would help to know more about how Godtfred got ahold of the KiddieCraft
bricks-- from one site I read it almost sounded like there was some
correspondence between Hilary and Godtfred)
> The first change was the introduction of the "10 characteristics" (Unlimited
> play potential; ..[snip].. Without that set of clearly defined
> characteristics, The LEGO Company might never have bet their money on LEGO
> bricks.
That's my guess. He made the list following the lament of a buyer in the toy
industry, who complained about the lack of a real toy 'system'. It sounds like
this might really have been something merchandisers were generally interested
in, and what helped Lego get its brand awareness out the door.
> The second change was the development of the tubed interior, which increased
> sales enough that within only a couple of years, they were the most popular
> toy in Europe. And without that, they probably would have lost the bet.
(That and adding a few other specialized elements like sloped roofs) My guess is
that was probably less likely Ole Kirk's doing-- By '58 Ole Kirk was ... uh...
darn. Born sometime in the 1890's, I forget when-- but around 60-70. I'd
probably guess the idea came from the younger blood of the company, though not
necessarily Godtfred by any means.
Ole Kirk seems more to be commended for building a strong foundation for the
company-- He managed to grow to a fairly large toy company through a depression
and a war, all from being pretty much completely on his own, without going
under, all from a small backwater town in an equally small country.
DaveE
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