The intent of this thread is to be a one stop shop for all LEGO related news, releases, reminiscing about your favourite sets or themes as well as showing off any of your own creations or recent or intended purchases.
What is LEGO?
Lego (trademarked in capitals as LEGO) is a line of construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colorful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, minifigures and various other parts. Lego bricks can be assembled and connected in many ways, to construct such objects as vehicles, buildings, and even working robots. Anything constructed can then be taken apart again, and the pieces used to make other objects. The toys were originally designed in the 1940s in Denmark and have achieved an international appeal, with an extensive subculture that supports Lego movies, games, video games, competitions, and four Lego themed amusement parks.
Source Article
History
The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (7 April 1891 – 11 March 1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934 his company came to be called "Lego", from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means "play well".
It expanded to producing plastic toys in 1947. In 1949 Lego began producing the now famous interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks". These bricks were based largely on the patent of Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, which were released in the United Kingdom in 1947. Lego modified the design of the Kiddicraft brick after examining a sample given to it by the British supplier of an injection-molding machine that the company had purchased. The bricks, manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of traditional stackable wooden blocks that locked together by means of several round studs on top and a hollow rectangular bottom. The blocks snapped together, but not so tightly that they required extraordinary effort to be separated.
The Lego Group's motto is det bedste er ikke for godt which means 'only the best is good enough'. This motto was created by Ole Kirk to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly. The motto is still used within the company today. The use of plastic for toy manufacture was not highly regarded by retailers and consumers of the time. Many of the Lego Group's shipments were returned after poor sales; it was thought that plastic toys could never replace wooden ones.
By 1954 Christiansen's son Godtfred Kirk Christiansen had become the junior managing director of the Lego Group. It was his conversation with an overseas buyer that struck the idea of a toy system. Godtfred saw the immense potential in Lego bricks to become a system for creative play but the bricks still had some problems from a technical standpoint: their locking ability was limited and they were not very versatile. In 1958 the modern brick design was developed but it took another five years to find the right material for it. The modern Lego brick was patented at 1:58 p.m on January 28, 1958;bricks from that year are still compatible with current bricks.
Source Article
Theme Highlights
Below is not a full list, just the highlights over the years
City
Space
Castle
Pirates
Technic
Duplo
Fabuland
Bionicle
Games
Creator
Licensed Themes
Star Wars
Indiana Jones
Spiderman
Batman
Harry Potter
Toy Story
Cars
Pirates of the Caribbean
Duplo
Glossary
Minifig or Minifigure - The official name for the little LEGO men and women.
MOC - My Own Creation, the term used in the community to describe your LEGO creations.
Stud - The name given to the little protruding round circles on the top of LEGO bricks.
AFOL - Adult Fan of LEGO
TFOL - Teenage Fan of LEGO
TLC and TLG - The LEGO Company and The Lego Group respectively.
Links
Official LEGO Site - Official Site
The Brothers Brick - Most popular LEGO blog which promotes peoples own creations.
Bricklink - The Unofficial LEGO Marketplace, the main place to go if you want to find anything from old or new sets, to individual or bulk pieces.
Peeron - An extensive catalog of pieces, sets, themes and you can even find downloadable copies of old (and new) instructions.
