A Good Foundation (LEGO Mursten)

You approach a large field. Wide and sparse but a luscious green, you walk through, believing yourself to be alone. This is not the case. You hear a faint shuffling behind you, and you step aside to see a small creature crawling through the grass. More shuffling even still- you turn around to see another creature, and another. With a start, you realize the entire field is bristling with them, tens upon hundreds of tiny beings of many colors worming their way through the green, seemingly to the same destination. You look ahead to where they appear to be going, and see a large tree situated on a hill.

At the base of the tree sits a man, cloaked in white and red. The tree is swarming with the creatures, and they move around the man who seems to treat them as pets. He cradles one in his arms, as another sleeps atop his head. Seeing you, he waves. You wave back. In an instant he gets up and starts collecting some of the creatures, who react with exuberance for what is about to happen. One by one he starts forming the creatures together into larger shapes, creating a strange  form. The many colors of the creatures clash together, the odd shapes jut out, but still the creatures throw themselves forward to be of use. By the end a towering structure looms over the tree, a hideously mismatched and bizarre shape. The craftsman looks at you. You smile. You don't quite know what it is, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter.

So this is it, then. The first LEGO sets.

There’s a joke that’s been around for the past couple decades or so about walking into the LEGO isle of a toy store wanting to buy a box of normal LEGO bricks and finding nothing but special themes and licenses, usually accompanied with the declaration that “man, LEGOs used to be simple when I was a kid”. More often than not, these are the sorts of sets people are referring to- basic assortments of various-colored bricks, with the bricks themselves being the simple 2 x 4 and 1 x 2 type arrangements, maybe with some slopes and plates thrown into the mix.

This joke is of course hogwash for anyone born after about 1955 or so, because what we’re looking at right now is literally the only time in the history of the company where the line has been entirely basic brick assortments. In a few years System will be introduced, and after that it’s a steady increase of play themes and genres, with licenses entering the mix in the late 90s. Plus, the standard basic brick assortments never really go away- even now it’s very easy to find standard boxes of bricks in toy aisles, plus lines like Creator are set up specifically to preserve that function of LEGO sets. The only thing that’s really changed is that the color and piece pallets have gotten substantially larger in the 60+ years LEGO bricks have been around, but that’s par for the course with these things.

The expanded brick lineup
of LEGO Mursten

Nonetheless, to many people this is the default state of LEGO sets, most likely because this is indeed where it all started. So let’s talk about that, then- these are the early sets released by LEGO, under the banner of “LEGO Mursten” (LEGO Bricks) after it was felt the “Automatic Binding Bricks” name was putting customers off the bricks.  The early sets featured only 2 x 2 and 2 x 4 bricks in a small selection of colors, with each brick featuring little slots in the sides into which could be inserted plastic doors or windows. As time went by more bricks of different sizes would be added to the mix, as well as thinner ‘plates’ that would be used as bases, and new studded windows and doors would be created, rendering the slotted bricks redundant (they would be phased out in 1956).

The early Mursten line consisted mostly of the basic brick assortments and supplemental brick packages, but already these early sets reveal aspects of what would come to define LEGO in the next few decades- the early inclusion of plastic windows and doors provide an intrinsic link between LEGO and architecture, which in itself would be part of what ensured LEGO’s lasting connection with adulthood as the years go on (note that a strong percentage of current adult-targeted sets are intricate buildings and pieces of architecture). The popular “10 cents/brick” value ratio that will be used by fans several decades in the future also appears to have gotten its start here, with individual bricks available to be purchased for around the equivalent of today’s 9 US cents. And the releases of LEGO “gift sets”, which provided enough bricks to build small red-and-white houses, would provide the basis for the upcoming LEGO System, and what would be its first and most long-running theme, LEGO Town (later CITY).

Examples of the 'gift sets' of various models of houses.

But perhaps the most important thing gleaned from the early LEGO Mursten sets are the creations themselves. Early sets adopted the Kiddicraft method of providing various illustrations on the box of the potential creations one could make with the bricks included- in Kiddicraft’s case it was stuff like a house, a windmill, a train, even a man sitting in a chair.

What is notable about these creations is that, well, they look pretty much exactly what they are- blocky representations of the objects being created. This is of course inevitable- the lack of slopes and plates at this point makes curves functionally impossible, and the restriction to basic primary colors means most creations are gonna come out a tad splotchy and mismatched. When people talk about missing the simplicity of LEGO, I suspect this blockiness is what they’re talking about. Each creation is certainly recognizable as the object it’s meant to portray, but there’s still a marked fakeness to it- an abstracted reality in which one is constantly aware of the artifices of their world even as they go about creating it.

Rather than disappearing as time goes on, though, this abstracted reality is going to be a driving point in shaping LEGO as the sets become more sophisticated and the themes more distinct. These Mursten sets may represent the absolute simplest form of what LEGO can be, but they still form the literal building blocks of what will become even the most complex sets available today. And over the course of the next couple decades we’re going to see how it is LEGO grows from these basic bricks to becoming the toy many of us recognize today. They’ve already got the bricks and the start of an idea and an aesthetic, now they to push it one step forward.

They need a system.

His work complete, the craftsman takes several more of the creatures and places them gently into a satchel. Slinging it over his shoulder, he heads out of the hills. He stops and turns around to see you rooted in place. With a laugh, he gestures for you to follow him. Hesitantly, you oblige, and leave the hills.

The Man Upstairs

Disorder yields to
order the fair place.

The dark clouds swirl up above, the ice melts to rain and floods down on the forest. You hide under a large branch for shelter, grabbing a particularly large leaf and wrapping it around you. The animals flee in terror. The clouds circle and twine until suddenly a crack of thunder roars, and a flash of lightning strikes the center of the forest.

Hilary (Harry) Fisher Page, born 1904 in Surrey, grew up with a love and fascination for building toys- stories are told of his father buying him scrap wood from the sawmill that apparently kept him busy for several years. After college, marriage, and a period of various business prospects including photography and timber, he founded the toy company “Kiddicraft” in 1932. Initially a struggle to maintain, the turning point came when Page began to seriously study child psychology, specifically in the realm of childhood play. As one source put it:

“…he used to spend the whole of every Wednesday in a different nursery school, sitting on the floor and playing with the children, to find out exactly what type of toys would be of the greatest interest to them.”

With this, Page began an earnest focus on creating toys that would be of specific value to children, looking at their interests and passions and crafting toys that would appeal best to those. Additionally, Page brought a determined focus to improving the quality of materials used in making toys, strongly pushing for plastic materials over the more traditional wood. These two focuses revolutionized Kiddicraft, and they began to see an output of new and creative toys- Among them, a patented system of “Self-Locking Building Bricks”.

The storm halts, as if it had never started. The climbers poke out from the trees, the crawlers swarm around confusedly. You peek out from your shelter. The forest seems safe. Cautiously you step out, keeping the leaf around you for protection, when you see something strange. The center of the forest, cleared of vegetation, laid barren from the blast. In the dead center is…nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The first of days appears.

The parallels between Page and Ole Kirk are of course obvious- both began their toy companies after a series of failed enterprises in the early 1930s. Both were intently focused on well-designed toys, both in the quality of construction and quality of play. And, of course, both have the building blocks to their name. And it’s not a coincidence, either- molds of Kiddicraft’s Self-Locking Building Bricks were included as example toys with the injection molding machine Ole Kirk bought for LEGO in 1947, and in the trial against Tyco in the 1980s Godtfred Kirk Christiansen admitted to receiving sample bricks from Page the same year.

The difference between them, then, lies in that. While Ole Kirk and Godtfred went on to adjust and patent Page’s design and subsequently make LEGO a household name, Page and Kiddicraft never achieved more than moderate success and garnered real financial trouble in the 1950s. And while both Ole Kirk and Page died within a year of each other, Ole Kirk died of a heart attack at 66, having created a large family and an even larger business that was on the brink of worldwide success. Page, troubled by the pressures of Kiddicraft’s financial troubles and fearing a collapse, committed suicide on 24 June, 1957.

The nothingness begins to grow. The tiny black spark billows into a large hole, enveloping all those around it. The animals bolt away, terrified, as the vegetation slowly crumples to dust and disappears. Tearing the leaf away from the branch, you run out of the forest as the blackness continues, always seemingly one step behind. You see the outskirts of the forest, it’s not too far away, you can see the sand, you’re almost there…

Down they sink
in the deep of abyss.

It’s hardly unsurprising this sort of thing lurks beneath the official corporate history of a popular brand. After all, these sorts of stories always can be found in ‘corporate histories’- from the infamous rights battle between DC and Shuster and Siegel, the creators of Superman, to the eliding of Raymond Cusick in the creation of the Daleks in Doctor Who, to the erasure of Ub Iwerks in the creation of Mickey Mouse. And at least in this case there seems to be no real animosity between Page’s relatives and the LEGO corporation- Kiddicraft never pressed charges against LEGO’s patent of the brick in in the UK, and LEGO later made the point moot by buying out Kiddicraft in the 1970s. And Page perhaps fortunately never found out about LEGO before his untimely passing.

But the point is that these things always happen in how we historicize events- a fundamental part of the construction of these master narratives is the elision of the people underneath. Even today, in the age of information and connectivity, we lose the names of people in favor of corporations and overarching figures. I mean, I can barely even find the names of any of the set designers who work for LEGO- it’s all just the face of the corporation. The epic drowns out and erases the everyday.

Part of it is that it’s just easier to think of things like that- easy, simple, black and white tales of gods and devils, angels and demons. Part of it is that we just like certain stories, and prioritize them over the ones we don’t like (so salacious details and insidious happening get washed over in favor of great men doing great things), but most of all it’s our need for conformity. For things to fit in easy-to-see patterns and recognizable traditions. We want the world to exist as we expect it to exist.

And too often this means the elision of the unusual, the oppressed, and the outcast. Our history books are filled with great white men because that’s what our society expects it to be- so the powerful women and minorities of history get ignored because they don’t fit with our preconceived vision of the past. What is strange, what is nonconforming, what is different, all get bent and tweaked to become like everything else. The banality of consumerism.

A new created world springs up.

So in the course of this particular history then, let’s erase the master narratives. Let’s get rid of the things that make this just like every other story on the planet, and dig a bit deeper. Let’s find the strange undercurrents and weird goings-on of the world and reveal them to the world.

It doesn’t mean we stop telling the story of the Christiansens, or of the Danish company that they created. But it means we stop being content with the official histories given to us and look a little closer. It means that when we endeavor to tell the story of the LEGO brick, we also endeavor to tell the story of Hilary Page.

You make it to the edge of the forest. You catapult yourself out of the grip of the nothingness and land headfirst into the sand. You turn around to face the oncoming force, but it appears to have been content to swallow up the forest. The center of the island is now nothing but a large, empty crater. Slowly, you pick yourself up. You have something in your hand- it’s the leaf that kept you shelter. It’s still quite big. Seeing an opportunity to be practical, you fashion the leaf into a small satchel that you sling over your shoulder. It’s good to be prepared. You have a long journey ahead of you.

Dusting yourself of sand, you walk across the edge of the island. You don’t know where you’re going. The world awaits your travels.

The story became poisoned and diseased. It’s time to tell a new one. Our journey begins here.

In the Beginning

You are nothing. You do not exist. You have not been created.

It is of course foolish to suggest that all stories start at the beginning. They start with the creator, and this one is no different.

And though the nature of the creator can in many cases be tricky to ascertain, this one is fortunately clear. The official story, at least, is known well enough- it’s told in history books, online encyclopedias, animated short films, DK visual dictionaries; it’s even available right on the company website.

So, in the seeming absence of other stories, let’s start there: With the three Danish men of one family who make up the main history of the company. Ole Kirk Christiansen, the carpenter who founded the company and coined the name; his son Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, who patented the famous brick building system; and his son Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, the one perhaps most responsible for many of the tenets that make the  brand what it is today. Together, the three of them form what can be said to be the official creation of LEGO.

A spark of light flashes: you fall into being. But it is not life yet. Darkness stretches across the world around you- the formless void of existence reaches on to eternity.

Creation.

The details of this creation, of course, are by now familiar, such that recounting them becomes a somewhat dry affair, as if this were simply a textbook. Which, fair enough, let’s play the part. Ole Kirk Christiansen was born near Billund in 1891 in the farming community of Filskov, the tenth son of an impoverished family. Christiansen began work as a carpenter in 1916 when he purchased a woodworking shop that helped construct houses and furniture. He married his first wife, Kirstine Sörensen, the same year, and would have four sons with her- Johannes, Karl Georg, Godtfred, and Gerhardt. With this life in place, Ole Kirk would persevere through an accidental fire in 1924 and the trials of the Great Depression to form the basis of what would become the LEGO Company.

Suddenly, from the darkness strews a multitude of matter that soars and envelops the void, reaching out through all of existence. Light shines from above and weeps down to the horizon, as strokes of earth creep forth from below. With a rumble the two meet and intertwine, forcing the darkness away. Wind bellows across the skies as liquid fire hardens to stone, and frozen ice melts to create the seas. Together linked, hardened, and formed, the world is created.

I could truthfully continue the rest of the history in this style, but there wouldn’t be much point. No, we know the story, and those who don’t would have an easy time looking up the details in the myriad of places online where they’re printed in full. As with any piece of history it gets retold so often that it simply becomes boring to hear. We know that after the fire and the Depression Ole Kirk began building miniaturized versions of his products, which inspired him to make toys. He started with simple wooden toys, though business was rough enough in 1932 that he ended up having to borrow money from his siblings to keep the business afloat.

We know that even as the business struggled he continued to make toys, with his son Godtfred assisting. And we know that he had a fierce commitment to quality and craftsmanship- as the legend goes he once forced Godtfred to return a shipment of toys and repaint each one himself when he learned Godtfred had skipped a layer of painting to save money. We know that as the business continued Ole Kirk often found himself having to sell toys door to door, often in exchange for food. And that as the toys continued they became more advanced and complex, and began to feature a wider variety of animals, such as elephants, goats, and of course, the wooden duck.

The primordial soup from
which all life begins.

You wake up and find yourself on a beach. The 
world lies before you, brimming with the potential for life. You take your first steps and move towards a nearby forest. As you brush past the growing leaves and branches, you see an assortment of new creatures, crawling and running and seeping through the forest. Above you, long-armed mammals climb through the trees and situate themselves on high branches. Below you, a strange mire moves slowly across the ground, as a swarm of insects scurries around you, anxiously hurrying away. The life you see is unfamiliar to you- the prehistorical beings that will soon form the rest of this world.

By this time the company had found its name, in another oft-historicized detail- the word “LEGO”, coming from an amalgamation of the Danish phrase leg godt, meaning “play well” (or, depending on how loosely you’re willing to interpret Latin, “I put together”).  And as the years went by wooden toys soon gave way to plastic, especially when Ole Kirk bought an injection molding machine in 1947. Wooden cars gave way to plastic tractirs, wooden ducks to plastic bears. Though the wooden toys continued to be manufactured well into the 1950s, they dwindled in comparison to the ever-growing plastic market. And once LEGO came out with the “Automatic Binding Bricks” in 1949 and they were patented in 1958, production on the wooden toys ceased altogether as LEGO moved towards entirely plastic toys.

Evolution.

Ole Kirk would unfortunately not live to see the toys become the massive worldwide success they are today, as he died of a heart attack in 1958, leaving the company to his son Godtfred Kirk Christiansen. But it was his perseverance and hard work that led to the solid foundation that the LEGO company has been built on after all these years. That’s the story of the creation. All familiar details, historicized to the point they exist as part of a larger master narrative: of a foundling company that, through hard work and creative thinking, became a worldwide icon.

So what is the purpose of recanting events such as these? What’s the point of engaging in a walk through history if the paths that are open to us are so well-worn and travelled? The point, it would seem, is to find something new to say. Something about ourselves or our world that is revealed to us through the path we take.

So let’s take a new path, then- a new foray into these oft-historicized events. And as it would happen, there’s a path already available to us. Because in the histories above, there’s something missing. A name that doesn’t come out in the midst of these stories- a secret buried underneath the master narrative.

The murmur of the forest grows uncertain. The climbers find shelter in the leaves, the insects scurry away even faster. There are stormclouds gathering above. Wind torrents around you, leaves fly about, and ice starts pelting from the skies. Something is not well up above.

The name is, of course, Hilary Page.

Just Imagine...

We are all born storytellers.

It's a uniquely intrinsic part of ourselves and our culture. On a surface level, we consume movies, books, plays, comics, and countless other forms of media on a frightfully large scale, ever digesting and regurgitating shared pieces of cultural heritage. But even on the smaller, more individual level, we live and thrive on the stories we create every day. The lives we imagine for strangers we pass on the street. The bits and pieces we assume and consider for the people in our lives. We use these stories as a means of processing the larger world we live in- by creating stories and histories for each and every part of our lives, we begin to make sense of that which is impossible to understand. And, more crucially, we create stories to better understand and better empathize with the people around us. It's what makes us human.

And one of the best places to find this is in our own childhood toys.

After all, most of us had a toy at some point in our lives. The beat-up doll, the well-worn stuffed animal- any scrap of a plaything that we engaged with as a child. We created stories and histories for these playthings, and they soon became real and material parts of our own lives, helping us through the more trying parts of childhood.

But perhaps the best example of this comes with LEGO, the highly sophisticated interlocking brick system that has for generations allowed children to literally build their own stories. With a bucket of bricks we could create spaceships, monsters, castles, and whatever else our imagination could conjure. With LEGO we could take our stories and meaningfully interact with them in our own lives. They became real, physical spaces.

This is a journey through those stories.

Over the course of this blog I'll be meandering through the history of LEGO on a theme-by-theme basis, journeying through the various worlds it's created (City, Castle, Pirates, etc.) and taking a look at the things they say about us and our own lives. I'll walk through each world as its own physical space, and we'll seep in the stories they're waiting to tell.

Often we'll be looking at storytelling's intersection with consumerism- the way in which corporations have seized some of the most fundamental stories of our culture and twisted them for gain and profit. Other times we'll look at its intersections with history- sometimes, perhaps even religion. But more often than not, we'll be looking at the way we use stories as a resistance. As a means of rebellion and upheaval, tearing down the corrupt structures around us and telling new and better stories to replace them with. This is a story about social change.

And make no mistake, this is an actual story. With you, dear reader, whoever and wherever you may be, at the center of it. As I walk through, you will be thrust into a world of heroes and villains, of wars and rebellions, of love and loss. You will see worlds lost in fire, and born again in hope. Cities will be torn apart and rebuilt, brick by brick by brick, until something new and beautiful has taken its place. Because the key to social change is rooted in the power of stories, and maybe by telling this story now, we can hope to make a difference.

Let's begin.