Learn the story behind LEGO®: from near-bankruptcy to the world's largest toy company

28 October 2021

It is hard to imagine a world without LEGO® these days. Almost everyone has played with it at some point or even still does. However, the versatile cube would have been a thing of the past. The video below, made by CNBC Make It, tells the story of the huge Danish company that almost went under at the beginning of the century, but fought back and became bigger than ever.

LEGO® was originally a product designed for young children to develop through play. The building blocks were in huge demand until the early 2000s. At the beginning of the 21st century, digital entertainment was booming and video games and television series, for example, became extremely popular. Children no longer seemed to have the time or inclination to play with the colourful LEGO® blocks...

LEGO® saw this development and decided to make a drastic change. The company started to focus mainly on digital entertainment and moved away from the product that made them famous. LEGO® started releasing LEGO® video games and even started its own production company. This turned out to be a bad decision. Because of the huge debt and disappointing sales, LEGO® almost went bankrupt and had to go back to the drawing board.

In the end the solution wasn't far away. After some research, LEGO® discovered that the LEGO® brick was still very relevant, but had lost its popularity. This popularity could be regained by linking the famous brick to the upcoming pop culture and digitalisation. That is exactly what LEGO® did, starting with Star Wars. Since the introduction of the first LEGO® Star Wars set, they have been the best-selling products from the entire LEGO® catalogue to this day. These sets proved to be very interesting for adults and started an important expansion of the LEGO® target group. Furthermore LEGO® started the TV-series LEGO® Ninjago and released the first LEGO® MOVIE. Both projects were a huge success and a new direction was taken.

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LEGO® Star Wars sets are the best-selling sets in the catalogue.

Where LEGO® has always focused on children, it was adults and collectors who still held LEGO® in high esteem. In the last years the company has grown enormously within this group, as we at ToyPro know only too well. LEGO® released new sets and started collaborations that would appeal to the AFOL audience. All of this has led to people building and sharing the coolest LEGO® creations themselves, which in some cases have even led to official LEGO® Ideas sets. LEGO® is happy to support and sponsor these content creators, because the builds they create make their product even more popular.

Today LEGO® is a financially healthy company again. The product range is huge and there is something for everyone: from DUPLO to LEGO® Technic. We would have been very close to losing our common hobby. Fortunately, it never came to that and now we can share this beautiful story with you!

Did you like this article and would you like to watch more of these short documentaries? Check out our article about 5 other interesting LEGO® documentaries you can watch at home! You can also follow our Facebook page and subscribe to the ToyPro newsletter! That way you won't miss out on any LEGO® news and you'll be informed as soon as we've found new great documentaries!

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