LEGO facts & stats 2021: how much do you know about the toy empire?
Last updated: March 13, 2021
The toy empire LEGO has been with us for the better part of the last 100 years. We all remember growing up surrounded by LEGO bricks and all sorts of LEGO minifigures - and many of us still play with LEGO as adults. There’s nothing wrong about enjoying one of the many types of LEGO, isn’t there? Today we celebrate the LEGO brand with the latest LEGO facts and stats as well as some extra information about the franchise that’s extra special!
It’s no secret we here at TechACake.com love LEGO. The LEGO brand is one of the major toy companies in the world and we’d like to shed some light on the latest stats and facts about the toy giant. LEGO is all about learning through play and today we honour one of the most influential brands in the world which has changed the way children play and learn for generations. We’ll start with LEGO stats (the LEGO revenue statistics will definitely surprise you!) and then we’ll continue with LEGO facts (stay tuned for the fun part!).
LEGO stats 2021
LEGO is a family-owned company that has existed for almost nine decades now. The process of making LEGO bricks and the famous LEGO minifigures is just mesmerizing and we’d like to spend some time to see how much is all this worth. Here’s what we know about LEGO in 2021. The most recent LEGO statistics will surprise you! Here we go:
1. The total LEGO brand revenue for 2020 amounted to $7.54 billion.
(Source: Statista)
The brand makes billions in operating profit every year. Back in 2015, the brand revenue amounted to $5.4 billion.
2. During the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, the LEGO profits rose 11%.
(Source: CNN)
During the coronavirus pandemic, the gaming industry saw a significant raise in interest. The LEGO brand was no exception. The profits of the company rose 11% during the international lockdown.
3. In 2020, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa were the largest net sales region for the LEGO Group.
(Source: Statista)
This statistics is estimated according to the LEGO revenue by region. It seems that the LEGO brand is most popular in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. The Americas follow close behind. Asia and the Pacific are the least interested group with a global revenue of less than half of what the brand earns from the Middle East-Europe-Africa group.
4. The latest LEGOLAND theme park is scheduled for 2021 - the construction is estimated to cost $350 million.
(Source: Realestate in-Depth)
The construction of the ninth LEGOLAND theme park - LEGOLAND New York Resort, started in 2017. The initial plan was for the park to be ready and to open for visitors in 2019. In 2021, the construction is still not finished. Of course, one of the obstacles must have been the global pandemic of 2020.
5. The average number of LEGO Group employees worldwide hit record levels in 2020 - 17,400.
(Source: Statista)
This is the record number of LEGO Group employees since 2009. One of the reasons for the sudden increase in the number of employees might be the raise in interest during the pandemic. In 2019, LEGO Group had more than 16,000 employees.
The LEGO Group was founded on August 10, 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen. The headquarters of the Group are located in Billund, Denmark where the original LEGOLAND was built back in 1968. (If you want to know more about the current LEGOLAND locations, see stat #8.) The LEGO Group has thousands of employees all over the world and a revenue of billions of dollars every year.
6. In 2018, LEGOLAND Windsor in the UK generated a revenue of $728 million.
(Source: Statista)
Thanks to LEGOLAND and Disneyand, magic is real for kids of all ages in the world. The LEGOLAND theme parks generate millions of dollars every year and LEGOLAND Windsor is one of the top grossing. In 2019, the eight LEGOLAND parks played host for more than 15 million visitors (this is the last stat available since in 2020 we pretty much stayed at home).
Image © Legoland New York
LEGO facts 2021
Here comes the fun part! How much do you know about LEGO? How old is the LEGO brand? When was the first LEGO minifigure created? How many LEGOLAND theme parks are there in 2021? We’ll answer all those questions and more. Let’s dive in:
7. In 2021, the LEGO brand is 89 years old.
(Source: LEGO)
LEGO was created back in 1932 by Ole Kirk Kristiansen and is now owned by his grandchild, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen. 89 years later, the company is a billion dollar enterprise and one of the largest manufacturers of toys in the world.
8. There are currently eight LEGOLAND parks in the world.
(Source: LEGO)
Each LEGOLAND resort is based on the LEGO toy brand. In 2021, there are eight LEGOLAND amusement parks in the world. There are three LEGOLAND parks in the US (one of which is still in construction), three in Europe, and three in Asia. The original Legoland park in Billund, Denmark opened 52 years ago. Here’s a list of the eight LEGOLAND theme parks (plus the one which hasn’t opened yet), along with the year they were opened at:
- LEGOLAND Billund Resort - Denmark (1968)
- LEGOLAND Windsor Resort - United Kingdom (1996)
- LEGOLAND California - USA (1999)
- LEGOLAND Deutschland Resort - Germany (2002)
- LEGOLAND Florida - USA (2011)
- LEGOLAND Malaysia Resort (2012)
- LEGOLAND Dubai - U.A.E. (2016)
- LEGOLAND Japan Resort (2017)
- LEGOLAND New York Theme park & Resort - USA (scheduled for 2021)
9. LEGO means ‘play well’ in Danish.
(Source: LEGO)
And play well we do! Here’s another LEGO fun fact: the plural of LEGO is the same - LEGO (although many people say LEGOs all the same). The creator of LEGO started out in a carpenter shop and almost a century after that his successors own a billion dollar company.
Ole Kirk Christiansen named his company LEGO after the Danish phrase ‘play well’ and in 1949 he started producing our favorite plastic bricks. However, the word LEGO also has a Latin meaning - ‘I put together.’ (It’s rumored that Ole Christiansen didn’t know about that alternative meaning when he was naming the company.) The first LEGO market outside of Denmark is Germany - in 1956 the company started selling their products there.
10. The first LEGO brick came out in 1949.
(Source: Britannica)
The LEGO brick is the most important product of the brand. The brick in its present form was introduced back in 1958. The signature bricks became a legend in the decades to come. According to some sources, around 400 billion LEGO bricks have already been produced - and that's about 62 for each person on the planet.
One of the best things about LEGO bricks is that it doesn’t matter when it was produced - you can still use them today. In other words, LEGO bricks produced after 1958 have the same dimensions and fit together perfectly. In 2018, the LEGO brick celebrated its 60th birthday. 🎉
11. The current LEGO logo was originally introduced in 1998.
(Source: LEGO)
The brand logo went through many changes during the (almost) hundreds of years of its existence on the toy market. The current LEGO logo is quite familiar with some of the earlier designs and it’s been with us for more than 20 years.
12. The rarest LEGO brick costs $14,450.
(Source: CNet)
The most expensive LEGO brick to ever exist is a 2x4 piece made entirely by gold. However, it costs much more than its weight in gold. The LEGO bricks were bestowed to LEGO employees who worked for the company between 1979 - 1981 as a token of appreciation for their 25-year working for LEGO.
13. The most expensive LEGO set costs $7,375.
(Source: Wealthy Gorilla)
No, it’s not the Millennial Falcon or the Death Star, although some of the most expensive LEGO sets are without a doubt the Star Wars LEGO. (The Death Star LEGO set costs only $1,972 and the Millennial Falcon LEGO is $4,500.) There’s also the glorious Taj Mahal LEGO - available for around $3,000. However, the winner of the most expensive LEGO set is the 2015 edition of H.C. Anderson’s Clumsy Hans - it costs more than $7,000.
14. The first LEGO minifigure was produced in 1978.
(Source: LEGOLAND Discovery Centre)
We are so used to the adorable LEGO minifigures that many people think they have been a part of the LEGO brand since the very beginning. In fact, the minifigures were introduced as late as 1978 - the first ever LEGO minifigure was the Police Officer Minifigure. (See image on the left.) The rarest LEGO minifigure is Mr Gold - it was released as a part of the Series 10 Collectible Minifigures in 2013. Only 5,000 Mr Gold figures were made.
15. In 2018, the LEGO brand started working with sustainable materials.
(Source: LEGO)
The era of the plastic is coming to an end. Contemporary brands all over the world have already started making changes and using sustainable materials in production and LEGO is no exception. The plan is to start producing LEGO parts only from sustainable materials by 2030 without compromising the high quality and safety standards.
LEGO art & inspiration
While children love playing with LEGO (in the meantime they develop their fine motor skills), adults play with LEGO for several different reasons. For some of us, putting plastic bricks together is a stress relief technique. Others collect the biggest LEGO sets, or LEGO-themed franchise sets like Harry Potter LEGO. (Let’s face it - those are irresistible!) However, the LEGO bricks have become a source of inspiration for many professional and amateur artists all over the world. (The most creative types of LEGO for artists are without a doubt LEGO Architecture and LEGO Technic.)
The BEST thing about LEGO is that you can literally do anything with LEGO bricks. And so many artists have been inspired by LEGO in so many different ways! We’ll cover just a couple, just to give you an idea.
Back in 2009, the BBC journalist built a full-size two-storey LEGO house for a UK documentary TV series called Toy Stories. The house was built in a wine estate in Dorking, Surrey (UK) and more than 1,000 people worked on the project. It was made out of 3.3 million LEGO bricks - the house had a working toilet and a shower. However, it was demolished after all the attempts to sell it fell apart.
There’s another LEGO House built recently. (This one however will not be demolished, though.) A full-size house built to represent the LEGO brick structure was built in Billund, Denmark. The House is filled with 25 million LEGO bricks. People of all ages who want to play with LEGO can visit the LEGO House. They say it’s the perfect play date!
Most recently, Ed Sheeran released a song called LEGO House featuring one of the stars from the Harry Potter movies - Rupert Grint (a.k.a. Ronald Weasley). Needless to say, it was an immediate hit! LEGO definitely stimulates creativity and learning!
Image © LEGO House
LEGO pick a brick [history of LEGO collections]
It’s a great advantage that anyone can go to the LEGO Store and purchase as many individual LEGO bricks as they want. It’s called LEGO pick a brick and users can select them out of a (very!) long list of products and add to their carts. Each brick is worth several cents and the variety, the colors, the categories are just awesome! And there are not just bricks, but all sorts of LEGO parts.
There are so many different LEGO collections to choose from nowadays, but of course, it wasn’t always like that. For example, not so long ago, back in 2014, the Lego Group partnered with Disney and they started producing Disney-themed LEGO. All sorts of Disney castles and Disney characters hit the shelves and so many LEGO sets based on Disney movies were released. (Yes, Pirates of the Caribbean LEGO is one of them. Actually, the first LEGO pirate theme dates back from 1989 and the first movie featuring the infamous Jack Sparrow came out in 2003.)
Let’s have a look at when the brand started producing some of their LEGO signature collections. It’s quite intriguing:
- LEGO Duplo - 1969
- LEGO Technic - 1977
- LEGO City - 1978
- LEGO Architecture - 2008
- LEGO Star Wars - 1999
- LEGO Harry Potter - 2001
- LEGO Batman - 2006
- LEGO Creator - 2007
- LEGO Ninjago - 2011
- LEGO Friends - 2012
- LEGO Minecraft - 2012
- LEGO Disney - 2014
Speaking of how diverse LEGO collections are, check this out:
LEGO museum
The LEGO Museum Praha, located in Prague, Czech Republic, is the biggest LEGO museum in the world. Visitors can see the 3,000 LEGO models divided into 20 theme parts - more than 1 million bricks were used in the assembly of the entire collection. The LEGO museum in Prague is the largest private collection in the world - it’s a property of a LEGO collector.
The LEGO collection inside the museum is extraordinary - there are Harry Potter themed LEGO, Star Wars LEGO, LEGO City, Lord of the Rings LEGO, and Pirates of the Caribbean LEGO. Some of the biggest and most expensive LEGO sets are on display in the LEGO Museum Prague - there are the famous Taj Mahal LEGO, the Death Star, and the Millennium Falcon. The collection must be worth thousands of dollars!
Apart from the store-bought LEGO sets, there are also custom-made LEGO collections in the LEGO museum. Visitors can see the Statue of Liberty, various castles and Ferris wheels. A full-size LEGO Terminator is one of the coolest assets of the collection. If you’re a LEGO enthusiast and/or collector and you happen to be in the Czech Republic, don’t forget to visit the LEGO Museum Prague.
LEGO video games
The list of LEGO video games is quite extensive - some of them are available on PC (Windows, Linux, MacOS), and there are those available on consoles (PS3, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One). The latest LEGO video game - Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (2021), is available on the next gen consoles PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
The first LEGO video games came as early as 1995 - 1997, and were only available on Microsoft Windows. The first LEGO game for MacOS was released in the year 2000 - Lego My Style: Preschool. Lego Racers was the first LEGO game available on Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color, and the original PlayStation. In 2011, the first LEGO video game available on Android and iOS devices was released - Life of George.
As of 2021, 85 video games based on LEGO have been released. They were all produced by the LEGO Group and published by several different companies. The current publisher of LEGO games is Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.
The Lego Movie
The LEGO movie is a media franchise based on LEGO. In 2014, the LEGO Movie computer-animated comedy came out and it was just awesome! (The characters were all LEGO minifigures, how cool is that!) The budget of the movie was $60-65 million and it made a worldwide gross of $468 million. A LEGO Movie Videogame based on the film was released the same year.
In 2021, there are already four LEGO feature films made. In 2017, two movies were released - The Lego Batman Movie and The Lego Ninjago Movie. And in 2019, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part was released.
Key takeaways
LEGO definitely stimulates creativity and learning! If you didn’t have time to read the whole article, no worries, here’s what you need to know:
- The LEGO brand is almost 90 years old.
- The revenue of the LEGO Group for 2020 amounted to $7.54 billion.
- The LEGO brick celebrated its 60th birthday in 2018.
- There are currently eight LEGOLAND theme parks - the ninth is still under construction in 2021.
- The latest LEGO video game is called The Skywalker Saga and it’s a part of the LEGO Star Wars video games.
- The most expensive LEGO sets go for as much as $7,000.
There’s so much more to the LEGO construction toys that meets the eyes. Today we dug deeper and discovered awesome information about the brand. How many LEGO facts did you remember from our article?
Visit TechACake.com for more awesome LEGO content every week!
Sources
- Statista
- CNN
- Statista
- Realestate in-Depth
- Statista
- Statista
- LEGO
- LEGO
- LEGO
- Britannica
- LEGO
- CNet
- Wealthy Gorilla
- LEGOLAND Discovery Centre
- LEGO
