Jan 28
Playing Well for 50 Years
It was on this date back in 1958 when a Denmark company finally got it right. And had they not settled on the particular design they patented five decades ago, the their brand, named after the words leg godt, which translate as “play well,” might never have become a household name.
The company had actually been in business since the early 1930s, but their idea for a toy involving interlocking bricks just never quite caught on. Through perseverance and a little experimentation, they finally stumbled on the right formula for the plastic that makes up their “Automatic Binding Brick.”
And America has been grabbing up LEGO blocks ever since. I think my first LEGO set was a hospital, and since I already knew I wanted to go into television, when I played with the set, I would build the hospital without the “fourth wall;” then I’d stage the action on the inside and outside of the hospital. For a while, the doctor and nurse characters were right out of Jack Webb’s Emergency! series. (Remember that show?)
Every kid should have a LEGO set.
