Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility | Hacker News Reader

Lego breaks ground on first US manufacturing facility

manufacturingdive.com

432 pointsthunderbong293 comments

It will be the first US Lego factory in a while, but here is some history:

> The first LEGO factory in Enfield opens in 1975 – a packing facility for LEGO DUPLO® bricks. The elements to be packed arrive from factories in Billund, Denmark, and Baar, Switzerland – transported to the US in container ships.

> The Enfield factory is constructed as a “conversion ready” building with open steel structures which can quickly be converted from warehouse to packing, packing to production.

> In 1980, LEGO Systems Inc. sets up its own molding shop in Enfield, starting with 10 molding machines. The factory is equipped with state‑of‑the‑art technology. One of the features is an air‑drying system for plastic granulate, which must contain no moisture when it enters the molding machine, as the finished bricks would otherwise fail to meet the LEGO Group’s high-quality standard.

> In November 2000, the LEGO Group announces its decision to close the molding plant in Enfield and in future mold LEGO bricks only in Europe. Shutting down the molding facility is a step in the LEGO Group’s plan to improve its financial results in the years ahead – preliminary accounting figures for 2000 are negative.

Before that, there was a licensing agreement with Samsonite.

[1] https://www.lego.com/en-us/history/articles/e-production-of-...

I came here to say this- I toured the Enfield facility, as LEGO sponsored my robotics team. They had a whole manufacturing setup there. Everyone was kind of pissed that they closed it when they did.

The same thing happens in reverse quite frequently. Tandy/Radio Shack comes to mind as a particularly nasty episode (gear received the day before they closed for warranty claims just disappeared because they didn't tell customers they were going to close). Ford had some factories close in different EU locations and many other examples besides, usually for reasons of tax venue shopping.

Large companies don't care about employees one way or another, if you're lucky you're a row in a spreadsheet somewhere and woe to you if your row, the column where you're totalled or the entire sheet ends up in the red.

LEGO Group had significant financial hardships 20, 25 years ago. It’s been mostly well documented that they made many different changes in strategy and operations, and have become wildly successful.

LEGO was suffering financial hardships at the time due to plummeting sales.

They had no way of knowing Bionicle was going to save the company.

Was it FIRST Lego League?

Enfield, not just for the Enfield rifle, or Royal Enfield Motorcycles, or Matchbox cars; but Lego too?

How did I miss that?

I suspect this is Enfield in Connecticut and not Enfield in Middlesex, UK which is where the Rifle and Motorcycle originated.

Small bit of trivia, but the M1917 Enfield rifle, used by American forces in WWI and a derivative of the SMLE from the UK, was actually produced in CT, but in New Haven not Enfield. :^)

The M1917 uses a Mauser action, and isn't directly related to the Lee-Enfield (SMLE).

And now they're moving to Boston. CT loses another multinational company, they just can't catch a break. Then again it is entirely the state's own fault for driving businesses away.

As I recall, Lego cited talent as their biggest reason for locating[0]. From the same source, the governor of CT says that state policy wasn't part of their relocation plans.

I hate to say it, but Lego is probably right here. CT and MA are very similar from a cost-of-living perspective and, all other things things being equal, Boston has a larger and more diverse talent pool, and is a more attractive place to live for retaining that talent. I suppose you could extrapolate that to state policies, that the state isn't doing enough to make CT an exciting place to live but that might be a bit too uncharitable. I say this as someone who grew up there; my mom even worked at the Lego plant for a brief period in her 20s, and liked it there. As a Lego-loving kid, I always took pride in the fact that all that magic happened so close to home.

[0]https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/lego-move-north-american...

> Then again it is entirely the state's own fault for driving businesses away.

What does that refer to? Honest question, never lived in the USA. Thanks for explanations!

Politics. Everyone blames The State for anytime a business does something they'd prefer otherwise (Such as building in location A instead of location B; regardless of merit)

But Boston as a choice is equally surprising.

The factory in Switzerland was closed shortly after that in 2002. Lego really struggled in the late 90s / early 00s.

They also had their main e-commerce development operation in Enfield at one point. I worked there for a while! Nice bunch.

Interesting learnings for me from this article:

- Lego operates multiple $1B+ factories around the world - they are not just a design and marketing company

- 1400 manufacturing jobs in Virginia expected - not just an automated thing. Anyone know what changed economically to justify the high US labor costs? Particularly compared to MX

- 100% Carbon neutral via on-site Solar in Virginia (not particularly sunny). No offsets shenanigans. Oil prices might be too high today if this is about to happen to most new factories in the world.

> Solar in Virginia (not particularly sunny).

I work with solar, not directly but we turn investor money into solar plants, and part of that is getting the most money out of them as possible. The amount of sun obviously matters, but the temperature matters more. The hotter it gets the less efficient the solarpanels become at generating electricty.

The efficiency starts dropping by around 0.5% for every degree celcius above 25 degrees celcius. In hotter climates, you can build solarplants differently, similarly to the one in that james bond movie I believe, not too sure as we don't do that, and I'm obviously not into the engineering part. I mean, I've read the manual of some solarinverters, but that was to get data out of them. Aside from that, solarplanes do actually generate power on cloudy days, not as much, but the only thing that really stop them is snow. The coolest thing about solar, is that it's very predictable. We can basically forecast our budgets for decades to come, because we know exactly how much energy we're going to be producing each month, and with the advances in storage, you'll soon be capable of storing excess power for nights.

Anyway, areas with 10-35 degree celcius are often better suited for solar power than hotter areas with more sun. That's not to say you shouldn't build solar in hot areas, but if you're planning where to put your solar powered factory down, you're likely going to take that into account. Along with a range of other things. I'd wager that logistics and taxes were more important for Lego.

They are also the largest manufacturer of rubber tires in the world

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/100909-la...

They're the "largest" manufacturer of tiny little toy car wheels that use a few grams of rubber.

It's a paid ad for LEGO, not a serious record.

As opposed to those serious Guiness records like "farthest eyeball pop", "loudest purr by a domestic cat", "most face flesh tunnels", "most tennis balls held in the mouth (by a dog)", "most eyebrow waxes performed in eight hours by a team", and "longest head massage chain".

Guiness has always been a half-commercial silly enterprise. It's literally founded by a beer brand to resolve pub trivia arguments.

>Guiness has always been a half-commercial silly enterprise.

No it is, in actuality, a marketing organization. They make all their money selling records. Their business is contracting with companies to come up with a marketable record, and then "observing" the client breaking that record, and then publishing that record. It's no different than those "award" companies that exist only to make up new awards to give companies.

It's the same as when JD power gave Chevy an award for "Highest Initial Quality", as if there is any customer value to a car that starts the best and immediately degrades.

>Guiness has always been a half-commercial silly enterprise. It's literally founded by a beer brand to resolve pub trivia arguments.

Oh, those are the same Guinness! I always wondered.

The point still stands: By no reasonable definition is Lego the largest manufacturer of tires.

It’s a fun piece of trivia. Jeez.

> Anyone know what changed economically to justify the high US labor costs? Particularly compared to MX

My understanding is the US:

1. Is more politically, economically, and frankly physically secure than Mexico.

2. Has cheaper energy

3. Has a better-trained manufacturing workforce for the kinds of machine Lego is gonna use.

Maybe they just received some good old-fashioned tax incentives? It's not always about geopolitics.

My guess is that Lego customers are also increasingly older.

I mean look at the millennium falcon.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/millennium-falcon-75192

https://i.imgur.com/vsxVnSJ.png

ages 16+

When I think of fancy lego, I think of something like this https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/lego-medium-creative-bric... because it has wheels and stuff, not just bricks.

I would have imagined "regular" lego was just different sizes of bricks, not even a sloped "roof" brick or wheels.

Also I think "made in USA" might help sales in the US and at the very least calms investors?

Investors?

LEGO Group A/S remains privately held by the family that started it in Denmark.

Tax incentives are geopolitics. That's why all the best sci-fi TV shows came out of Vancouver for a while and every movie and TV show for the last several years thanks the state of Georgia.

That’s just politics

Questions:

* Does the cheaper energy come into play with such a large onsite solar system?

* (From the point of view of a manufacturing company opening operations in the us) Does the US currently have a surplus of well trained manufacturing workers? I hear a lot of factory management/executives still complaining that the skilled labor they need just doesn't exist.

1. Yes, absolutely. There are very few developed countries with large population centres on or adjacent to strong solar potential, and fewer again if you limit them by others stuff Lego is looking for (e.g. workforce compatibility, market access).

2. That's probably true, but the US labour market is simultaneously huge, flexible, and well-educated. That gives it an advantage over most competitors.

Is this well educated labour force the part of the voter base of the two biggest parties across the pond? if yes then I wish the very best to the manufacturing trials there. We already have seen the quality of Us manufacturing recently with Tesla cars. The times that made in America was synonymous with good quality are long gone.

> Does the cheaper energy come into play with such a large onsite solar system?

Legos are made out of petroleum

And trees are made of wood. What's your point?

If the question was "what are Lego made of?" then this answer would at least make sense, but that's not what the question was.

For what it's worth, Lego has used a lot of different materials over the years, and not all of them have been petroleum based. To be fair, the majority of their new products are made from petroleum based plastics, including ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene), polypropylene, MABS (Methyl Methacrylate-Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene), PA (Polyamide, aka, nylon), POM (Polyoxymethylene), PE (Polyethylene), MTPO (Metallocene Thermoplastic Polyolefin), SEBS (Styrene-Ethylene-Butylene-Styrene, the material used for "rubber" tires and similar), and PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate).

There are efforts being made towards replacing ABS with recycled PET. Some kits may already use recycled PET.

I'll try not to set them on fire.

Mexico has political stability problems, for one...

....AND workers are dirt cheap and have nearly zero protections.

What? Essentially no US factory is paying less than $15/hour. Like $20/hour is more common. And they have to pay benefits. That's more expensive than most of Europe.

In Mexico you would be lucky to make $5/hour.

It’s highly automated but you still need people to watch the machines. Many Lego factory videos are available.

If this lets them source much of the plastic locally, it will save on millions of boxes being shipped across the ocean. That’s a huge reduction in carbon, even if the local manufacturing costs a bit more.

Also, the general container shortage and supply chain issues over the years have showed that you want to hedge your bets with a global supply chain.

Easy, build a container from Lego.

Let's not pretend they care about the reduction in carbon. They'd only care about reduced shipping costs.

Their product is literally made out of oil.

Apparently they've started phasing in pieces made of bio-polyethylene made from sugarcane. But I haven't found anything about what proportion of their bricks that makes up, and presumably they'd be publicising it heavily for PR purposes if it was a large proportion so I'm guessing it's not a very large amount yet.

Is making bricks out of oil as bad as burning it?

> Anyone know what changed economically to justify the high US labor costs?

Based on prices I've seen shopping for my nephews they seem to be a luxury brand now that can afford to. Lots of elaborate and expensive sets sold for $50-200. In my day they were closer to plain bricks.

I’ve posted before that Lego in the USA in the 1970s consisted of multi-colored bricks of different sizes. That’s it. And usually someone replies “You’re wrong” and points to some Lego mini-figure or elaborate kit that existed in the US in the 70s but in reality, I never ever saw one and neither me nor any of my friends ever had anything besides basic bricks. It’s like there is some alternate 1970s Lego reality that other children must have lived. Or revisionist history.

I think there were jet packs in the 1970s, too. But I never knew anyone who owned one.

The 90s are when fancy sets with specialized pieces REALLY took off. The 90s space stuff compared with the 80s was a big shift.

But that's still 30 years ago so Lego has been fancy pieces and custom kits for a couple generations of kids now.

> But that's still 30 years ago so Lego has been fancy pieces and custom kits for a couple generations of kids now.

You can get a 790 piece big box of Lego brand plastic building blocks on Amazon for $35. These types of collections tend to end up in yard sells, or passed around extended families because they last longer than a single childhood. The none-fancy Lego branded blocks still exist, and are still a common part of childhood in America. Lego just doesn't have to market them as hard, and the sale volume is naturally lower.

I think in 00s they didn’t abuse special pieces so much as they do now. Their sets looked more like “see what can be done with our pieces” rather than ”you have to buy this exact set because only it contains the pieces you need to build it”.

I agree it was mostly basic that early, but already by the 80's, LEGO ads were full of elaborate sets. Not nearly as elaborate as now, but certainly much more. The proportion of special pieces in each set were certainly much smaller, and made getting those special pieces a lot more exciting.

This [1] from LEGO Movie specifically plays on the 1980's space sets, for example, and I personally had quite a few of these [2] sets in the early 80's.

[1] https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/benny-s-space-squad-70841

[2] http://www.doubledumbassonyou.com/2016/02/19/lets-enjoy-a-lo...

Great! But the comment was about the 1970s.

> Notoriously Expensive Lego Prices Scale Linearly, Remain Constant Over Time

> If there’s one big gripe common among brickheads, it’s that the prices of LEGO sets are quite lofty (plus maybe not enough spaceships). But two disparate people interested in the plastique fantastique eschewed conjecture in favor of hard data, and found that LEGO prices scale linearly with piece count, and that on average, prices of sets have actually remained constant over the last couple of decades.

https://nerdist.com/article/notoriously-expensive-lego-price...

FWIW with some of the bigger sets they seemed to make it needlessly complex and tedious. You have to assemble little pointless pieces together that they could have easily delivered as one piece. If they really do charge per piece then it makes sense to me now.

They don't charge per piece. The price per piece is calculated backwards from the sets and number of pieces. Of course it correlates, but the price per piece varies significantly based on the size etc. of the pieces.

But LEGO has always favoured pieces that even when they look very specific usually have a significant level of reusability in other contexts. Hence "pointless" pieces that aren't actually pointless because their appearance is sufficiently generic.

You're right that there are lots of elaborate and expensive sets, but the basics are still available.

E.g. you can still buy loose bricks from LEGO, so can make it as simple as you like. If you want basic stuff packaged up, the LEGO Classic line has sets starting very small that consists of a batch of bricks and a small set of themed special parts. On the UK site at least they also have more than 500 sets under 20 GBP/25 USD (you can search by price) including a number under 10 GBP / $12, but the majority of these sets will be full of special parts simply because there's little point in packaging up the same small selection of basic bricks in umpteen different sets.

Overall, the price per piece of LEGO varies greatly by set (average per category of set varies from less than 20 cents to nearly 2 dollars per piece) because of different weighting of types of pieces, but the inflation adjusted cost of the basic/cheapest pieces have remained consistently stable [1]

[1] https://brickinsights.com/statistics/ppp

"Can afford to" is rarely a reason to do so. There's still more profit in choosing not to. So there must be at least a contributing factor.

How do you mean not particularly sunny? Even Boston is at a similar or lower latitude than Southern Europe, can imagine Virginia being even better for solar.

Have you ever been to Virginia? Have you compared it to the American southwest for sunshine?

You can find solarfarms in Denmark. Which latitude wise is in the middle of Canada. If there make sense here, why not Virginia?

I don't know much about solar panels, but just looking up sunshine hours it seems Virginia has a similar amount as Texas? And more than double as Billund.

If that’s “not particularly sunny” for solar energy, you would be amazed to see how many solar panels there are in Europe north of Mediterranean countries.

>Oil prices might be too high today if this is about to happen to most new factories in the world.

I don't imagine this will have much impact on oil as the solar is offsetting electricity from coal/gas/nuclear/etc.

> 100% Carbon neutral via on-site Solar in Virginia (not particularly sunny). No offsets shenanigans.

I appreciate no offset shenanigans but did they factor in the fact that their product is made out of petroleum?

I'd argue this is one of the okay uses for petroleum as it's converted directly into a high value product and not emitted as pollution. I assume people don't do a lot of throwing away of Lego bricks. Going into the future I predict petroleum will be used to make material products a lot longer than it's used to make fuel. Even after we stop mining petroleum we'll still be turning farm crops into the same material.

That’s a fair point, but it still requires the production of oil and means the material will practically never break down in a landfill.

You can make the same material by originating it from crops and it still wouldn't break down. Also the historical alternatives for this material in most applications are aluminum and glass which also will not break down in landfills.

The same is true of, say, concrete.

Not breaking down in landfill doesn't really matter as long as it doesn't leech pollutants into the water table or somesuch.

They also operate a respectable number of theme parks and hotels around the world.

https://www.legoland.com/

If I remember right, they were forced to sell the theme park business when they were in dire financial straights in the early 00s.

While Legoland still exists, it's now a license and the parks owned by a separate company

That is correct, but has since been bought back. Well it's a little more complicated, but it's 50% owned by the Kirky family.

Thanks! I had completely missed that development. TIL

Plastics - where are they cheap? That is the answer.

The plastics cost are relatively low for this product compared to many other products made of plastic. Lego is first and foremost a marketing machine (which they excel at) before they are an injection molding specialist (which they also excel at).

They've had their ups and downs over the years but the value add on 1 KG of ABS to sell for >> $200 is such that the plastic bit is almost an afterthought. Without the StarWars franchise and discovering adults rather than kids as a market Lego would be in an entirely different position today.

Did they discover adults or did those adults just grow up with Lego toys and never stop loving them?

Most people from the Lego scene were out of it for a decade or more and then sort of rediscovered it, usually in tandem with their own kids.

I'd bet a large sum that the price of licensing the Star Wars brand is a greater part of the cost of a Lego Star Wars set than all of the plastic in it.

I definitely would not be taking the other side of that bet, you can simply compare the per kg price of the branded sets vs the ones that are 'just' Lego.

Virginia is actually home to enormous amounts of solar. Not the least of which is Amazon production for AWS regions.

> 100% Carbon neutral via on-site Solar in Virginia (not particularly sunny). No offsets shenanigans. Oil prices might be too high today if this is about to happen to most new factories in the world.

No mention of exporting kWh during the summer days and importing during winter nights?

Still good as every kWh of solar is a kWh of gas not burnt.

> No mention of exporting kWh during the summer days and importing during winter nights?

Almost certainly a great deal of this.

But

> > No offsets shenanigans.

Means they're not entering some shady arrangement with someone else that is doing green things and doing accounting magic to claim it's about the same. It's much harder to play games when you're talking about netting zero on-site.

> Still good as every kWh of solar is a kWh of gas not burnt.

This is becoming much less true in many places with a lot of solar, e.g. California.

Is California not able to export electricity?

The lowest I see in thee last week was 3.1GW of natural gas for CISO. Similar amount to the lowest gas usage last June and July (2.7GW I think on June 19)

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/gridmonitor/dashboard/electr...

IIUC it's complicated.

Because the grid is, fundamentally, still storage-starved (though that's been improving in recent years), even with export the CA energy companies run into grid over-saturation problems on clear, sunny days. Eventually losses catch up with you pushing the power geographically far enough; they couldn't, for example, power the entire United States off of enough California solar.

So I naively suspect the issue is either exporting just saturates the adjacent grids too or other power companies are loathe to crash their prices by letting their grids saturate and therefore use whatever restrictions are allowed against exporting to keep CA's surplus off their grids.

A little local color from a resident of Virginia (Charlottesville): Late last year Virginia's Governor Youngkin took significant heat in the legislature and media for quashing a Chinese battery factory that was set to locate in the state.

https://www.virginiamercury.com/2023/01/12/youngkin-halted-f...

https://www.virginiabusiness.com/article/democrats-call-out-...

He said that supporting China's venture was not in the best interests of the U.S. in terms of security.

When the Lego factory was announced,

https://richmond.com/business/local/1-billion-lego-factory-i...

there wasn't a word anywhere about that proposed battery factory.

I'm just glad that we're bringing LEGO manufacturing back to the US.

For too long US builders have been subject to the geopolitical risks of Denmark, the Czech Republic, Hungary, China, and Mexico.

This is a strategic raw material, without which trains, helicopters, fire engines, pirate ships, and hospitals cannot be built. To say nothing of the dependence that US media IP has on continued fresh brick availability.

It's good to see US manufacturing coming back!

I think this was parody... but geopolitical risks of Denmark!?!

I'd be more concerned about Lego setting up a factory in a country with very poor labour laws compared to most countries in that list, than the stability of Denmark.

It's a little known fact that Sweden has been in the process of declaring war on Denmark.

As soon as they finalize the phrasing of the declaration and approve it through committee, probably in the next few centuries, all hell is going to break loose.

I heard the pirate shipbuilding unions are celebrating.

I mean, that's obviously driven by politics. They're an important economic driver in Florida.

Don't offend the Teamstarrrrrs, matey.

What are you suggesting? Lego isn’t a Chinese company.

They really need to work out their quality deficits first, a lot of recent mishaps have been inexcusable.

You can't sell a $600 display model(which is a ridiculous price in the first place) with very visible gate locations from the molding process and uneven colors. These are purely caused by cheap molds and plastic mixes - it didn't used to be this way, but somehow they decided that they had to start jeopardizing their good reputation for some cheap gains.

LEGO absolutely has a quality problem now.

I am in my 30s and I had never seen a LEGO defect, and I have seen quite a few bricks. In the past year, I have seen several in-person among the toys I've bought for my kids, and several more anecdotally around the internet.

Now I even see it here on HN.

the LEGO brand had an unassailable, invincible reputation for quality, and now, for what seems like the first time, that is being called into question?

I find this fascinating and worrying. Are all good things destined to cheapen and collapse in search of short-term profits eventually?

I’ve had two models in the past year have quality defects. In one, the parts weren’t of the right tolerance and it added a flex to the build that caused parts to pop off after a few hours. I’m the second I bought a set that straight up didn’t have multiple bags of parts necessary.

I am however, not sure that it’s entirely a cost saving measure as LEGO sent me a replacement kit no questions asked in both situations. It seems more like they are switching manufacturing techniques and working out the kinks, or I would have expected needing to provide some sort of proof of the issue

Pretty sure they switched to recycled plastics in the past few years; I would expect a few more years of issues, at least.

That may be it; specifically I am talking about molding defects, dents where the part was injected, sometimes quite sizeable ones.

Especially since Lego is expensive because of the high quality.

that's a shame. At least they're pretty good about sending you replacement parts for free

Yeah, it is. Sadly for a lot of these cases(e.g. the big 10307 eiffel tower) the parts you would get back are very likely going to look the same way, as the molds themselves are the problem and it's not usually a "bad batch". Might get more lucky with colors though.

This is bizarre. At the scales they produce they gain literally nothing by going thrifty on the tooling.

Which models are you speaking about specifically? Actually if I want to avoid the lower quality models, is there a list of Lego products sorted by year? I guess after year 2xxx they finally decided to cut corners and then feet, legs, etc.

Hopefully all American employees get the same treatment as European employees, rather than hiring a bunch of US-entrenched management and having them go "well this is an American plant, so we don't have to give you a minimum number of vacation days, and we only need to wage gauge you a tiny bit less than other companies in this space int he US for you to feel like we're treating you well".

It's so easy to open a plant in the US and then let them run it like a US company instead of a good company.

(And sure, Lego has has its fair share of employer scandal, but nothing on the level of US worker exploitation. So far)

It is striking how quickly the US turned into a backwater for all types of labor.

What's striking is that every time I talk about moving to Europe I have to cut my salary expectations in half. Talk about backwater expectations.

If you only look at salary, rather than "what you get to keep" based on total expenses, in turn based on factors like cost of living, cost of transport, cost of insurance, etc. etc., I have questions about your ability to budget. They money you get to keep, and what that buys you, is what matters, not the amount you start off with.

You won't be able to afford a dog walker and three F150 pickups, but you won't need to.

Then perhaps you're being paid too much compared to the other people in society

Or maybe 30k for a new grad software engineer in London is a joke.

What is your salary? Salary transparency empowers us all.

Europeans will do anything to justify their abysmal salaries, won't they?

>Current: Labor activism.

lmao

US software dev salaries are, way higher than European, even when subtracting "mandatory" payments usually paid through taxes in Europe, like child care, healthcare, pensions, maternity leave, housing costs (which to a degree is depressed due to property taxes).

Do you include professional jobs in “all types of labor?” Software Engineer?

Yes.

Most software engineers get marginal pay and benefits - nothing like FANG or whatever it is now get.

Is there any way to find a company that has those kind of benefits in the US? Or are the market forces in the United States just too harsh to allow for such a company to exist?

If I was looking for a manufacturing job with great benefits and fair treatment from management I'd look for someplace with a labor union.

The title is somewhat misleading. The story might be about LEGO's first directly built and branded factory. But it wont be the first LEGO factory in the US.

Back in the 60s/70s the company Samsonite had a license from LEGO to make (or at least package up) LEGO sets right here in US facilities. I know this for a fact because when I was a kid my father worked for Samsonite. He would often bring home bags of loose LEGO that he got free at work. Excess, floor spilled, perhaps flawed beyond tolerances, test batches, or simply perks for employees, etc.

We did buy a few sets here and there, retail. But the vast majority of my childhood LEGO collection was built up from these endless bags of loose unsorted LEGO my father brought home at the end of his work shifts.

Proof: https://www.google.com/search?q=did+Samsonite+make+LEGO%3F&o... https://www.lego.com/en-us/history/articles/e-production-of-....

Iirc the samsonite factories mainly did packaging of bulk bricks sent from Europe. But they may have made some of the other parts.

LegoLand California has a molding machine slowly making bricks, which I guess technically is a factory.

I believe some pieces were made in Europe and shipped to Samsonite in the US.

But some pieces were truly made in the Samsonite factory in Denver, using molds provided by LEGO corporate. I imagine the pieces that LEGO felt were most IP sensitive or tolerance critical were shipped in.

A cousin had a small Samsonite suitcase with the Lego logo on it, I was jealous.

I grew up in this tiny town of Chester, Virginia and moved to Silicon Valley after college. Seeing this factory and my hometown at the top of Hacker News is blowing my mind.

When I was growing up in Ohio, if you told me that Intel would have a chip fab half an hour down the road, I would not believe you. Still don't believe it.

Welcome to the club.

I wonder how much it hurts you in the interview if you call them legos instead of "LEGO (TM) bricks".

"Elements", not "bricks". A lot.

Do americans really call Lego bricks Legos? Based on the comments, it seems common enough, I always thought it was a plural like data

Americans do generally call them legos. The company hates it.

They are Legos, as in "go clean up your legos"

They are not actually Legos. I think most English-speaking countries know this. "Go clean up your Lego", "get the Lego out", "made out of Lego", "playing with Lego".

“After you finish eating your Eggos, don’t forget to clean up your Legos”

In terms of Lego vs Legos I think they hate both.

I wish Lego would just stick to Lego classic.

I don't like having to check all the pieces in a themed set are present when putting them back in the box after my child's finished with it. It's difficult to reuse the pieces for other ideas because I can't just commingle them with other sets because finding the pieces again to build that themed set would be more difficult.

Just following instructions has limited value anyway.

Lego is not the right brick manufacturer for your needs anymore.

Lego occupies the high-end market nowadays, where you pay $1,000-$2,000 for a franchise set (Harry Potter, Star Wars) that you can display in a glass showcase. You'll get robotics and some smart app functionality, along with a devoted following.

If you just want plastic toy bricks to let your kids' imagination run wild, there are alternatives.

I always had to clean up my own lego and if I got parts mixed and wanted to rebuild from the instructions later, you better believe I had to dig around for hours (probably less than 10 minutes, but I was a kid ;)) to find it.

I sympathize, but is this not just something you as a parent/consumer can control? i.e. why don't YOU stick to lego classic, and let lego do what they want.

I guess received gifts would be a problem, but it seems presumptuous that your way of doing lego is the right way.

The way I heard it, the copyright on classic pieces ran out, so Lego had to differentiate. Further, the co-marketing arrangements like Star Wars and Harry Potter have been lucrative, and probably saved the company.

I wonder if this kind of facility will enable a new generation of Americans in precision plastics manufacturing. I don’t think we have any other facilities of this kind here, except for maybe semiconductor facilities.

Who among us hasn't stepped on enough Legos to last a lifetime? Oh well, let's have some more <3

That sounds like an organizational problem, not a problem with Lego bricks.

You can never have enough Lego. :)

It's not an organizational problem... it's a swoooosh-playing-with-my-lego-thing-oops-a-piece-shattered-off-and-I-can't-find-it problem.

And then later, the lego piece waits for nightfall, and crawls out from the dark nook to the middle of the most inconvenient walkway for its moment to strike.

That is why I always assemble my LEGO in a pressurised cleanroom.

All this time I thought that it was house hippos playing with the ones I dropped.

I have stepped on 1 LEGO brick in my life, and it truly is enough for my lifetime.

Thanks to LEGO I learned that the callus on your ankle is layered like an onion.

I had far too many LEGOs as a kid, and left them around my room like a minefield. Did I step on one? Oh, no. I was jumping on my bed and jumped off when told to stop by my parents and unfortunately one ankle landed on the corner of a LEGO building I had made. A structure build like a little plastic brick shithouse, apparently. The corner gouged a nice right angle cleft out of my ankle a couple inches long. Hurt like the dickens!

I first stepped on my own LEGO bricks (usually blue bricks that were part of some space station). Now, I equally proudly step on the bricks owned by my offspring. It's wonderful that some fascination transcends generations.

As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.[1]

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego

That's quite a few pieces for every man, woman, and child on the planet.

I wonder how many cubic kilometers of plastic that is

Significantly less than one; probably just roughly a cubic hectometer at most. A cubic kilometer corresponds to about 1.6 x 10^15 1x1 Lego blocks, so over a quadrillion. 600 billion is only 0.6 x 10^12.

400 Lego 2x4s makes a kilogram. So let’s say a cool billion kilograms.

And since Lego essentially never is thrown away (except by spite or accident), that's more or less 1 megaton of carbon capture right there.

if they are made large enough, one may reside whithin, and eliminate the discomfort of treading upon them.

Fakirs will love it.

This makes it sound like there's quite the demand for Lego sets/bricks. Has their market (people who want to play with Legos) grown a lot? I stopped playing with Legos about 2 decades ago, so I haven't really kept up with any potential growth that they've experienced/predicted to experience.

My understanding is the company was pretty dead a decade or so ago, since then its had a massive revival after moving away from the family-run-inheritance model.

Three (anecdotal) things i've seen with Lego:

> Its a toy that old and young can play with together which is semi-intelligent/challenging. Parents and Grandparents seem to be the driver of sales for the physical product rather than the kids.

> They have brand deals with other popular IP which extends to Movies and video games, this is where you get your age 0-16 sales via brand recognition.

> The 30 year old man child demographic seem to bloody love this stuff. Think of it similar to lightsabers, Funco pops and novelty t-shirts.

Yeah, my neighbor is a 60 year old retired firefighter and he has thousands of dollars worth of Legos that he has bought and assembled. Basically everything they put out for star wars.

Yeah, the licensing aspect especially. Also, recognition of their fans by way of their fan-created sets. It’s almost unbelievable to me that it took them that long to have such a division.

Thanks for the answer. I had no idea that Lego had brand deals with other IPs like Marvel, which would definitely explain the drastic ramp up in sales.

It's amusing ?hat your GP comment is downvoted, but yes, LEGO pivoted hard in recent years, most notable with Adults Welcome.

There were some threads on HN if you are interested.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/categories/adults-welcome

Not only that but there are sets for things like FRIENDS, Seinfeld and The Office. Haven't touched LEGO in decades but I still bought two sets to build with my girlfriend, who is a huge fan of one of them. It's a pretty fun evening activity.

I the last 3-4 years LEGO has definitely decided to focus more on the adult market. There's a lot more 18+ big sets now than there used to be in the past.

Kind of make sense because a lot people who played with LEGO in their childhood in the 80's / 90's are now at the age where they are more likely to have disposable income and get back into the hobby.

>”We are working hard to reduce emissions at the Lego Group and are really excited about our plans to build this solar plant as we push towards a better world for our children to inherit,”

So they are offsetting all emissions by using solar power? Or is the solar a tangible bone to gnaw on while they make the typical meaningless moves like sponsoring a forest somewhere?

All emissions, unlikely. They'd need a battery at least. Some, like daytime lighting, air conditioning some other electricity use, quite possibly.

Why do you think forests are meaningless? They lock up some carbon, and produce some oxygen, and also usually lower the air temperature around.

> Why do you think forests are meaningless?

I didn’t say this and don’t think it.

I wonder how much of this is about getting closer access to relatively inexpensive US energy in general and petrochemicals in particular?

Oh come on. Can't the humans have anything fun?

On a somewhat related note. For the last few years I've been working on a website that tracks the value of LEGO sets and minifigures. For example here is a list of most valuable LEGO minifigures.

https://brickranker.com/rankings/minifigures

I’m so confused by Lego’s market share. They sell cheap plastic at insane premiums. Why is there not more competition?

Because they are the best quality, in every dimension, and when something is almost purely a hobby then many people are willing to pay a premium for a friction-free experience.

There are other brands that are just fine, but you will occasionally get missing pieces, poor fitment, poor/strange construction etc... With LEGO you'll not get any of those (except the occasional strange construction).

I used to buy ~50/50 LEGO/Clone, and despite improvements in clones, it's 95/5 now. The LEGO experience is simply disproportionately better relative to the cost.

It's simply worth it.

signed, Owner of A LOT of of LEGO kits/bricks _and_ clones.

Also, the "cheap plastic" thing is clearly said by someone who don't know plastic. NASA included a bunch of pieces on one of their Mars crafts to check the cameras since they knew the parameters of the LEGO pieces losing their color better than the cameras. LEGOs are durable.

Also, even if the unit cost of injection molding plastic might not be super high, the cost of making the molds is. I've heard discarded molds are used in the concrete for new buildings as a way to know where they are and ensure they're not suddenly in the wrong hands (although that might be a rumor)

all you'd have to do to a mold is overheat and deform it or crack it. Way easier and super easy to verify it. Suggesting someone dispose of it in concrete sounds like something the mafia would do.

I for one am glad the FBI was able to get Mafia mold crackers under control. I’m afraid the Mexican cartels may have taken over that business in recent years.

I’ll also add their design chops are top of market by a mile. The kinds of things master builders are able to put together honestly boggle my mind. It’s half the reason I buy a set: just to see how they pulled off an odd angled piece or some design flourish. Truly great craftspeople doing their best work.

Re: strange construction, I would actually posit that you will not get any strange construction because _they have laws against it_[1].

1. https://gameofbricks.eu/blogs/news/illegal-lego-building-tec...

That might be true, but it's still insane that a LEGO brick costs more than a small microcontroller which requires like 1000x the engineering effort if not more.

The free market is clearly failing here.

Pretty sure if you aren’t buying the microcontroller wholesale and in quantity, it will cost more than a Lego in a typical set.

At the production scale and yields both for low end microcontrollers and LEGO bricks, the costs are largely material-bound as engineering is amortized over tens of millions units

Yes, we still have the lego from my childhood. After nearly fifty years it is in excellent condition.

Why do CPUs cost $400 when they only have about $1 worth of sand, aluminum, and other elements in them?

Raw material cost is not a good proxy for end user value of finished goods.

People make this mistake all the time. “The iPhone sells for $999, but only costs $320 in materials!”

Well, sure. But you aren’t including shipping costs, storage costs, training costs, labor costs, marketing costs, office costs, employee costs, research and development costs, legal costs, patent licensing costs, wasted material costs, environmental costs, electricity costs, packaging costs, margins for resellers, distribution costs…

This isn't even the mistake. Price has very little relation to costs - except that most products can't be sold below cost, at least not for long.

The price of the iphone is a good example. All the costs that you name exist, but they are completely irrelevant. Apple sells the iPhone for a thousand dollars because enough people still buy them at that price.

All costs are personnel/employee costs in the end.

Office costs? Those are going to the office owners, who pay themselves. Patent licensing costs? Those are going to the patent owners, who pay themselves. Wasted material costs? Those are going to the material producers, who pay themselves? Electricity costs? Even those are going to the power utilities, who pay themselves. Power utilities pay workers to maintain the power network and buy equipment from manufacturers. Those manufacturers pay themselves. Packaging costs? Those are going to the packaging manufacturers, who pay themselves.

Even the costs of extracting raw materials from the ground? Those are going to the mining companies, who pay their employees to extract the materials, and to the companies selling them mining equipment, who pay their employees to produce the equipment.

but is a great proxy for internal manufacturing costs. Elon typically quoted raw material costs as a goal to push towards in all his products.

One major draw of Lego is their licensing of expensive creative IP. Look at the Harry Potter, Star Wars, DC, Lord of the Rings themed sets. Smaller competitors likely can not afford the same offerings. And Lego probably has deep enough pockets to ensure exclusive deals.

There's also something to be said for having such a dominant, established brand. Lego is a cultural icon, beloved by multiple generations. Picking up a knockoff kit is sort of like taking your kid to a random local theme park instead Disney World. While in theory the two options have similar features (rides! characters running around in costume!) they are of course not the same.

> One major draw of Lego is their licensing of expensive creative IP.

This is the real genius beyond the manufacturing (which other comments are correctly praising). Lego was/is the only brand that gets to make, e.g. both Mikey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, both Marvel and DC, etc. By making Lego versions of those properties, they've convinced those enormous IP holders that this does not compete with other products; Disney can't make Lego Star Wars themselves.

Lego's corporate accomplishment is to have elevated themselves to the status of a platform. And doing so while their product isn't software or hardware is pretty unique.

> Lego was/is the only brand that gets to make, e.g. both Mikey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, both Marvel and DC, Balenciaga and Ralph Lauren etc.

Fortnite does this too. They have DC and Marvel, Naruto and DBZ etc.

I am an adult who has built several Lego kits recently. These include the NASA Saturn rocket, the NASA LEM, a grand piano and a Fender guitar amp combo.

The plastic parts are more than just generic shapes; many of them are custom and designed for the specific kit. The plastic itself has a good feel and is durable.

The kits are unique and must have required numerous hours of research and development, prototyping and user testing.

The documentation is extensive, high-quality and complete. In addition to the instructions, there is nicely researched and presented material about the subject of the model.

If anyone is reasonably able to come up with a process to compete with the sum total of all of these elements, I wish them luck. I would also like to invest!

> The plastic parts are more than just generic shapes; many of them are custom and designed for the specific kit.

With Lego, it's surprising how often the parts are NOT designed for a specific kit.

You can look through the parts list at the end of the instruction manual. You'd be surprised how often they've re-used parts you'd think are specific to a kit. With Saturn V in particular, I was SURE the fairing must be a part specific for that kit. Turns out it's the spire from a Hogwarts castle kit. Okay, so that's the only other kit it was used, but still..

If you look at clone kits, they often have more kit-specific parts. I think this is counter-intuitively a part of a strategy based on low-cost. They spend less on extremely precise plastic molds, and designing a kit-specific part can make it easier for designers. They don't have to spend a lot of time thinking of creative ways to re-use existing parts. They don't need to have knowledge of obscure parts they could re-use either.

> The documentation is extensive, high-quality and complete.

And it's easy to find them online if you've lost them, and you can easily find missing parts of bricklink. So you can dump all your Lego in a box, save it for your kids, and be sure that they can still be used, and that you can rebuild the sets if you want.

I saved my Lego from my childhood. I recently took them out to play with my kids and they're still perfectly good. The only thing that doesn't match with modern Lego is the electric stuff.

> With Lego, it's surprising how often the parts are NOT designed for a specific kit.

OK, that is interesting.

I wonder if and or what the software used by kit designers looks like? Does Lego have a custom CAD system that references the catalog of existings parts? Are they any Lego employees here that are able to comment?

Yes we do :) and we are actually hiring engineers to the team that builds the software! ( LEGO Digital Designer ) https://www.lego.com/da-dk/careers/search?keyword=digital+de...

> With Lego, it's surprising how often the parts are NOT designed for a specific kit.

Mildly famously, frogs have been used for all sorts of things:

https://www.brickfanatics.com/five-best-uses-of-lego-frogs

There are, lots of em, but they aren't as good. LEGO charges a premium, but their manufacturing precision really is phenomenal. Also, LEGO's premium isn't that extreme. Their sets have worked out to about 0.10 USD per piece for decades, they've just gotten bigger and more elaborate.

The other brands also don't have the same brand deals, I can't get an X-Wing set from Mega Bloks, for example. Though notably you can only get Pokemon sets from Nanoblock, and the experience of assembling one will make you appreciate the work LEGO puts into their instructions and manufacturing precision.

This is true. My kids and I have sets from all various brands, including some Lego compatible (knockoffs) directly from China. Only the the true LEGO brand blocks have precision in every block. Their sets are the most satisfying when clicking together.

Tight tolerances and good quality control cost money.

I remember trying to play with my friends megablocks as a kid and they just wouldn’t stay together well

There are also some Chinese companies making decent compatible bricks now

For a long time, that was a function of patents: LEGO bricks actually have slightly concave pegs, like inverted cones.

Those patents only recently expired, which is one of the reasons they pushed so hard into licensing to distinguish their brand.

They use extremely high quality mechanical tooling. It's some of the most expensive plastic you can buy.

As someone who has many thousands of dollars in lego, and one who, in the course of my life has owned many many hundreds of pounds of lego....

Where the FUCK are they all? microplastic in the environment, no. it wast towed outside the environment to another environment where there are just fish, birds, sea and lego...

anyway... as much as I love lego, they need to curb their roll on the plastics they put into the environment. No, not that one. The one where the lego doesnt fall off.

I don't think Legos are a big environmental problem.

Seeing as they're expensive and the individual pieces have tons of value, people often resell them or donate them. Or even for those who toss them in the garbage, they are buried in a landfill. But it's hard to think of any kind of plastic that actually gets reused more than Legos are. My nephews are now playing with the same Legos I played with 40 years ago, together with some new sets. Not a lot of toys (or objects generally) you can say that about.

They're not a major concern for polluting the environment. The kinds of plastics that are of concern for pollution tend to be food-related (bags, utensils, lids) which people actively use and lose and discard outdoors (and blow away from trash cans etc.) and plastic commercial fishing equipment which is similarly used, lost and discarded in the ocean.

I believe they plan to switch entirely to plastic derived from plant sources within a decade.

My understanding is they are struggling with that.

I am the guy, who thinks, that Lego is heavily overpriced. But then I bought some competition products. No one of them had nice Lego experience where parts just fit. Earlier the parts used to fall off and now they are still enough different to cause frustration while building. So yeah, only Lego knows how to make it right and can get away with premium pricing.

The quality of the bricks is generally high, but set design is something they capitalise on. Instead of selling themed playsets with minifigures and encouraging kids to build new adventure worlds, nowadays they sell mostly pop-culture-referenced plastic display models with tiny finicky 1x1 pieces that are of not much use for general building. These models employ complex building techniques, but are not easy to turn into something else. They create an incentive for people to collect all the models rather than unlock creative potential.

I helped my kid put together a lego kit recently that did something interesting. It was a spaceship but the instructions were kind of a story, and there were parts where it just went “ok, now it needs to go faster, what can you add to do that?”, and there were lots of extra pieces (wings, boosters, other spaceshippy things) to allow for a bit of extra creativity. My kid loved it.

You can get knock-off or "compatible" bricks much cheaper from other companies but they suck. Lego bricks have incredibly good tolerances which allows you to build large structures without them going all banana on you, not to mention consistent holding power and material quality.

Get some Alibaba bricks and you'll see right away.

As someone with young kids who recently bought a $70 Lego set, it’s not just the plastic blocks, it’s a whole design. My daughter built this awesome Lego tree house with over a thousand pieces. She followed the instructions and built it step by step over a few days, which was fun for her in and of itself, and now that it is complete she continues to play with it.

So sure the plastic pieces are easily reproduced but clearly Lego does great work on architecting some really cool designs. (I have no affiliation with Lego company to be clear)

And honestly the pieces aren’t even that easily reproduced. Our son got a knock off brand as a gift and it was horrible to build compared to a LEGO set.

This is actually a trade secret of lego. They build to such tight tolerances that others cant compete in the interlocking... it is a known thing of theirs, and honestly - we should be building that into actual construction mediums

yeah 41703 and a lot of the rest of the Friends line is awesome

Consider Andrea's Theater School as well (https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/andrea-s-theatre-school-4...) though it's a little pricier ($100)

>Why is there not more competition?

I didn't downvote your comment but there does seem to be competitors unless I'm misunderstanding this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_clone#Brands

It's just that the LEGO is the most well-known. Probably due to the quality plastics, licensing deals (Star Wars, Marvel movies themed kits, etc), famous advertising campaigns, and so on.

Megablocks (??? I forget the name) has a licensing deal with transformers, Pokémon, and hot wheels. I think Halo also, still not a very strong competitor. They are sold at Fred Myer in my locale, but they keep distance from the Lego section.

I guess Lego has that Optimus prime set now, so maybe not exclusive to transformers anymore.

They were having more and more competition, and they focused on licenses: star wars, harry potter, etc.

Others can copy lego (with less quality) but the licensing deals protect them. Very wise.

Lego is also often the only game in town.

Star Wars' Kenobi TV show had this sleek black ship to transport the Imperial Inquisitors. Lego made a set of it. No other toy manufacturer has, so if you want to play with your own Inquisitor shuttle, Lego is the only choice. Why, I wonder? There are Star Wars toys that are not Lego, so why are those toy makers not jumping on the opportunity? I honestly don't get it. Unless Lego has a deal with Disney to be the only ones authorized to make toys of certain vehicles/scenes/characters.

I have a 5 year old who loves building blocks and legos. We are not even too particular about quality. When I buy blocks for my kid, I am looking for him to learn to have fun by himself without Mom/Dad becoming involved and that is very hard ask with lego competitors. We tried buying from lego competitors but then they are missing pieces or their instructions are lacking which is very difficult for a small child to deal with.

Lego pieces are unique in their extreme manufacturing precision. It's very difficult to replicate at a large scale. You're paying for their engineering.

You'd think that concept would be more popular here, but I guess the desire to consume overrides everything.

I think that engineering like Lego is gorgeous in and of itself. Like a Swiss watch at scale.

It's not cheap plastic, that's why it's a premium. They have plenty of competitors that actually do sell cheap plastic, they all suck to play with.

1) Entrenched market leaders

2) Leader in terms of quality

3) Good product design and successful branding deals

4) Difficulty of starting a dedicated competitor includes high startup costs (mold making is veeeery expensive)

5) There are competitors, but since startup costs are high even they aren't super cheap, and some have quality control problems, not as much piece variety, etc.

As mentioned the quality is amazing.

I've been playing with them for thirty years. Same set thirty years ago has the same quality and matches perfectly to the identical pieces purchased today.

Despite different types and audiences the quality remains.

Do you have kids? You can test this empirically: buy them some Chinese Lego-compatible sets and see what comes about.

(That said, you're probably better off buying second-hand, Legos don't really spoil with age.)

Apart from what the others said is the licensing too. They have exclusives from Star Wars to Doctor Who to Mercedes trucks. Hard to compete against that from 0.

Btw Aliexpress has countless chinese fakes.

If you look on Amazon or Aliexpress there is definitely competition, just not in stores. I have a few not lego kits that are fantastic.

Do you remember any of the brand names that was of good quality?

Just to add my own two cents: Cobi produces exclusively in the EU and with superior quality than Lego, albeit focused mostly on adult market with military stuff.

There is Mould King, Cada, Bluebrixx which also have more decent sets but you need to do your own research and specific sets. Newer sets are generally higher quality than older ones as Lego competition as drastically improved in recent years.

Iirc there are some that are literal direct ripoffs (exact same sets with a ELGO or some obvious ripoff brand) that appeared at a time, and were pretty obviously run off of a Chinese Lego line (I believe Lego got them shut down by winning a copyright case in China).

The quality of off-brand is way up in the last 20 years but it’s still not the same; they run the molds way too long.

look at where their focus lies - exclusive tie-ins to every possible mass-market cultural event. Sure, they make the best bricks, but they make their money with Star Wars, Super Mario, Jurassic Park, etc.

I’m really glad to see domestic manufacture of national necessities onshoring to the US.

Why isn't there an xkcd where a Lego engineer is trying to describe how he wants components to integrate, and cannot find the words.

The Legoland park was pretty disappointing.

We have a Legoland pass. We've spent two weeks there already this year. My kids would go every day if we let them.

It's not great for adults -- although my first time there was when I was 23 and childless and I loved it.

However, it's fantastic for my 6 and 8 year old, and as their parent I get extreme joy watching them have so much fun, and it's entertaining enough for me to not get bored.

I have a different take - kids loved it.

Though compared to say, Disneyland it’s certainly less built out.

A lot of parks closed rides and such during COVID. I wonder if LL did that too.

It’s not great, but I do think it’s best enjoyed by a child of a certain age. I’m gonna go with 7-11 years of age.

It’s not even close to Disneyland, but if your kid likes legos and they’re of that age group they’ll have a good time.

Disneyland has long waits for each attraction. Combine that with lots of sun and impatient kids and the result is an unpleasant experience.

That and the long forgotten characters of 100 years ago.

I really enjoyed it when I was a kid.

Just looking at the world they build for hours.

Will it be built out of LEGOs?

Injection moldiiiing

What is motivating companies like Lego to bring manufacturing back home?

Keep in mind, Lego is a Danish company. This is an investment in a foreign country.

Funny as it is, I wonder where the general mindset as this comes from, is it US media or even education?

I mean the idea that anything good comes from US and only US, rather than mankind overall and that >95% of human race doesnt live within US borders. A bit if humility and critical thinking also about ourselves goes a long way, especially long term.

To be honest The Lego Movie franchise was annoyingly American for my Danish taste. It doesn't surprise me that many people think Lego and other European companies are American when they behave and market themselves as pseudo-American companies and insert themselves in American socio-cultural issues.

Had no idea, thanks for the clarification

Funny how nobody mentions plastic pollution, which is the main output of this factory.

Given that Lego lasts for decades and that my kids are still playing with bricks that were sold in the 60's of the previous century the pollution part is a bit overblown. But yes, some of it will end up in landfill, but not nearly as much as you might think compared to say plastic bags, tie wraps and other large scale plastic products.

I'm not sure Legos actually contribute much to pollution. They almost never get thrown away as bricks generally get passed down to offspring. You rarely see Legos at thrift stores as they are so highly demanded and are snapped up quickly. These little plastic bricks stay in circulation for decades and will probably be loved by humans in a century.

If kids can't even have Lego we are truly lost. For many kids, their love of science and technology stemmed from playing with Lego. You are likely benefiting now from some of those things now. I am so tired of this anti-human, simplistic, single variable optimization that so many seem to subscribe to.

If Newton and Einstein hadn't played with legos, we would probably not even be having this discussion!

that being said, I did enjoy my legos

Are you seriously implying that I think Lego is universally responsible for all science and technology?

I thought the same. But Lego is arguably more sturdy and reusable than most toys available.

I wonder what the "half-life" is for various types and brands of toys. I would be surprised if it doesn't vary wildly.

Consifering how much plastics we use for once in restaurants and starbucks, or how much we use in cars or home appliances and dispose (=landfill) without second thought, this is miniscule.

Do you post same question on every Tesla or Apple thread? The added value between creation and landfill is what defines utility, and I'd say Lego is one of the better uses of it. The last thing I want to see is Lego forced to use some more eco-friendly material that lasts a fraction of plastics longevity, for higher costs, and questionable ecological impact down the line.

I suspect OP feels that everything "human" is bad, not just Lego.

Legos are a very creative and inspiring toy and art form. As a kid I got thousands of hours of imaginative play from them. There are far less useful things being made out of plastic in large quantities. I myself despise happy meal toys for the needless waste.

These Lego-like blocks let you build your own concrete walls - Block Moulds

https://www.blockmoulds.com/applications/

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