Happy 89 years! ​🎂​

guest blog post by Kristian Reimer Hauge, Corporate Historian 

Today marks the 89^th birthday of the LEGO Group. To celebrate our powerful and loved brand, we’re reviewing two vintage stories that prove we’ve been championing creativity and Learning-through-Play for decades! 

Turning yoyos into wheels
When sales of his best-selling wooden yoyos suddenly dropped in the 1930s, LEGO Group founder Ole Kirk Kristiansen couldn’t afford to throw out the large number of unsold yoyos he had in stock. Instead, he showed a great deal of creativity and imagination – two of our company values – by cutting the yoyos in half and using them as wheels for other products. 

Learning traffic rules 

Did you know that one of the first LEGO® products to contain pieces made of plastic was actually a board game, Monypoli? The game was launched in January 1948 in partnership with the Danish Traffic Safety Council. Monypoli seems to have been the beginning of a long and lasting LEGO focus on teaching children (of all ages) about traffic rules in a fun and inspiring way.… A few years later, in 1955, came the first LEGO Town Plan, which was also launched in a partnership with the Traffic Safety Council. The LEGO Town Plan was actually the inspiration for the driving school that has been part of LEGOLAND® Billund since its opening in 1968. The idea was to create a large-scaled town plan big enough for children to drive around.