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.