What country was LEGO invented in?
Last updated: January 28, 2025
Those colorful plastic bricks that have delighted kids and tortured barefoot parents started as a humble wooden toy workshop during the Great Depression. LEGO has grown into a global phenomenon that revolutionized playtime and spawned theme parks, movies, and video games. Where did this plastic brick empire first take shape?
What country was LEGO invented in?
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The answer is: Denmark
The Great Depression left Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen with zero furniture orders and a workshop full of wood. Rather than close up shop, he started cranking out wooden toys in his Billund workshop. This random desperation move accidentally launched the LEGO empire.
The name "LEGO" came along in 1934, combining the Danish words "leg godt" (play well). While wooden toys kept the lights on, Ole completely geeked out after watching an injection molding demonstration in 1946. He blew a ridiculous amount of money on a plastic molding machine, making LEGO one of the first companies in Denmark to jump into plastic toys.
Ole's son Godtfred figured out their famous interlocking brick design in 1958. A couple years later, their wooden toy warehouse burned to the ground. Instead of rebuilding the woodshop, Godtfred rolled with it and switched entirely to plastic toys. Talk about lucky timing. LEGO went absolutely bonkers worldwide, built their first Legoland park in Billund in 1968, and blessed us with those little yellow minifigures in 1978.
The Christiansen family kept control through three generations, building their small Danish workshop into a massive entertainment empire. A carpenter's desperate attempt to avoid bankruptcy by making wooden ducks somehow turned into a plastic brick revolution that completely rewrote the rules of playtime.