LEGO recently released a series of videos with some fun facts about the company, like that there are over a hundred LEGO bricks for everyone on the planet, or that LEGO is the world’s largest tire manufacturer. These little tidbits can be interesting conversation pieces, or could be even used in a a research project or presentation. Enjoy! 🙂
Here are some the facts that were mentioned in the videos:
- There are approximately 120 LEGO bricks for each of the world’s inhabitants.
- There are over 915 million possible ways to combine six 2×4 LEGO bricks of the same color.
- There are 53 different colors of LEGO bricks (not including retired colors).
- Laid end to end the number of LEGO bricks produced in 2014 would reach more than 24 times around the world.
- If you built a tower of about 40 billion LEGO bricks, it would reach the Moon.
- Every scene in The LEGO Movie can be recreated with real LEGO pieces, however you would need 15,080, 330 LEGO bricks.
- Children around the world spend 5 billion hours a year playing with LEGO bricks.
- Over the years approximately 760 billion LEGO elements have been manufactured.
- The LEGO minifigure is the world’s largest population with over 5 billion minifigures.
- Four unique elements make up a LEGO minifigure.
- In 2014 approximately 550 million minifigures were produced. If you would put them next to each other in a line, it would stretch approximately 14,000 km – exceeding the distance from Billund, Denmark to Singapore by 1,500 km.
- 183 unique LEGO minifigures appear in The LEGO Movie.
- The three actors who hold the distinct honor of having multiple minifigure likenesses are Chris Pratt, Harrison Ford and Alfred Molina.
- The body of a minifigure is the same height as 3 LEGO bricks stacked on top of one another, and the head is one LEGO brick high, making the minifig one and a half inches tall.
- There are more than 8 quadrillion possible combinations of minifigures that can be made, using all the unique minifig parts over the last 30 years.
- The word LEGO is made up of two Danish words Leg and Godt, which means Play Well.
- LEGO is the world’s largest tire manufactures with over 650 million tires produced in 2014 alone!
- LEGO DUPLO bricks are twice the size of classic LEGO bricks and are fully compatible.
What do you think? Was there a something about LEGO on the videos you didn’t know about? And is there some other fun fact that should be added to the list? Feel free to share in the comment section! 😉
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I did not know about 3/4 of those absolutely EPIC facts!
I knew a few of these, like the tire one. In 2018, the LEGO minifigure population is estimated to exeed the human population.
didn’t realize this showed up. There is a better version under this
Hm… I wonder if that’s a good or bad things. Should we be scared? 👿
I already knew a few of these, like the fact about tires. Did you know that in 2018, it is estimated that the minifigure population will exeed the human population, with 8 billion mini-figs.
http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/2018
Interesting. I knew quite a few, like five or six. But you spelt Duplo wrong, as DUBLO. =P
LOL! That’s funny. Probably because I had the word “double” in size in mind. 😀
Isn’t LEGO really actually the smallest tire manufacturer in the world? :p
Biggest tire manufacturer, smallest tires.
I’m proud that I know most of these facts, but upset because I’d like to learn something new. 🙁
Hm… let’s see… what other things we can find for you… did you know it was not LEGO, but Kiddiecraft that made the first interlocking bricks? They are the predecessor of LEGO bricks. A lot of people think LEGO was the first, but that’s not true. LEGO is a clone of Kiddiecraft. 😉
I did know that, but I didn’t know the name! I couldn’t find it any where on the Internet. Thanks for the fact! 😀
I am on a tropical island so please ignore all misspellings.
Also other actors that have more than one minifig are: Ian Mekellan, thr dude who plays Thranduil and Ronin, Orlando Bloom. Also I’m going to have to change my domain name so it doesn’t have LEGO in it, I’ll tell you guys what it is.
If you are on a tropical island you are allowed to misspell, because tropical islands are awesome. And no, you can’t have LEGO in your website name, otherwise LEGO lawyers will swoop down on you… even at your tropical hideaway. 😉
Yup my sis is getting married, we have a beach side small mansion. so now I’m changing all my name placements anf brain storming new names, any ideas? Also once we get back I order my huge order! out of 27 items 3 are personal 🙄
Well, most LEGO blogs and forums use “brick” instead of LEGO, so if you can’t come up with anything else you can always fall back to that, but if you can come up with something more innovative that would be even better. Wishing your sis a wonderful marriage! 🙂
There’s also Johnny Depp, he played captain Jack Sparrow and Tonto.
“Every scene in The LEGO Movie can be recreated with real LEGO pieces, however you would need 15,080, 330 LEGO bricks.”
It would probably help if you could defy gravity, too, for some of those fighting scenes. Hahaha, 😆
LOL! Yeah! 😀
Fascinating. I wonder, do these counts include every brick made, counting the multiples of all sets, older sets, and replacement parts, or just each set’s parts once? The minifig count must include clones from the same set, as only 647 unique minifigs were created in 2014, according to Brickset.
Also, I was at a clothing store on Sunday and found 2 nearly full boxes of Series 3 Mixels for $3.99 per Mixel. I bought only 2, as I’m saving for summer sets. But I did get Mountain Hut 31025 and Dojo Showdown 70756 as late B-day gifts. Haven’t built either yet, but my Parisian Restaurant is now complete. 😀
BTW, here’s another LEGO fact: So far, LEGO has made at least 135 new part molds in 2015. That number includes 22 minifig parts, but it’s still catching up to 2014. I sense too many specialized parts being made. 😕
I have been also wondering about all those new parts. Some of them are very useful and enhance the basic system, others seem to be completely wasteful. Either LEGO forgot the lessons they had to painfully learn previously, or they found a cheaper way to make new elements.
Yes, some of the parts are quite common and useful (there’s at least 3 already in over 20 sets, and another 4 over 10), but there’s a number of pieces that are almost exclusive. These are mostly in City and Juniors sets, and also the new Jurassic World dinos. 😐
Interestingly, in 2004, LEGO produced 2004 new parts (parts, not molds), which was the highest until 2011, and LEGO has made over 2000 new parts every year since then. And given LEGO’s recent popularity, 2000+ parts seems almost like a lasting trend that will not affect the company by much. Time will tell.
Those are huge numbers! As you said, time will tell if this is sustainable… 😕
“Four unique elements make up a LEGO minifigure.”
For this to be true, I’m having to guess legs, torso, head, and hat/hair, which I suppose makes sense since this is how they come in sets.
But because I’m That Guy, I would say 9: Left and right legs and arms, hands, torso, hips, head and hat/hair.
Glenn, yes, that’s what they meant in the video. Please note that LEGO considers the torso assembly and leg assembly as one piece that is not meant to be taken apart. That’s why you always get them fully assembled in all sets. The hands are easy to separate and swap out if needed, but the arms should not be ripped out of the torso, or the legs from the hips. It can technically be done a couple of times, and as a minifigs customizer I have done it, but it puts too much pressure on the joints and after a few times the limps will be completely loose, or the parts can even crack. So yeah, it is not recommended to consider those parts separate.
Just for the record… I’ve done it over and over, especially the arms thing (legs are a lot harder to pop out particularly on some of the newer pants!), and although I do have a few torsos/legs that are messed up, it’s not nearly as many as you might think. In fact most of the ones that are messed up seem to have had very little connection to the popping in and out, more just because they’re old or got smashed somehow, or something!
Of course with the legs, you are actually damaging the little clip that holds them in place, which is why after the first time it’s generally much easier to take them off again although if you ask me they usually still stay pretty snug.
The torsos I’ve had most trouble with, for whatever reason, are the ZX Ninjago torsos. I’ve got a couple of those split completely down the side and the funny thing is that I hardly switched the arms in those! I think all the other cracked ones are very old city/similar torsos (that I never use!).
Not switching legs doesn’t put too much of a damper on customization/minifig building, but not switching arms can be really limiting if you ask me!
Yes, I have also found that on the newer minifigs it is easier to swap out the arms and even the legs. They seem to be made of a softer plastic than old minifigs. You do need some skill to change the arms and legs though; do them in the right angle, right pressure, etc. And as I mentioned, they are not intended to be changed. So in general I tell people not to do it, unless they know what they are doing and clear about the consequences. This especially applies to kids. I have found that if you show kids the techniques, they happily start ripping out arms and legs from minifigs and thus potentially damaging expensive minifigures. They themselves will likely regret their actions when they get older, when they see all their favorite minifigs with floppy arms and cracked torsos.
I have naively showed the technique of changing out arms on minifigs to a 7-year-old who was over at my house. This was a LEGO fan I trusted with my own collection as he was clean, organized, and a talented builder. We regularly built castles together. I told him that this is a technique that should be used very sparingly, but half an hour later I have found him ripping out the arms of some of my most expensive minifigs. My heart just stopped. I will NEVER-EVER-EVER show the technique to a kid EVER again. I like kids, but on that day I saw what they are for real; cute little destructive monsters. 👿
Hahaha, okay, hint taken. I will not be telling my five year old sister about that. 😉
Then again I never really let her play with anything I value because you’re right, letting a kid mess around with minifigures is just asking for them to be lost or broken!
I remember when I was younger (which is probably where most of my damaged torsos came from) I had a lot of trouble getting the right angle to pop the arms back in. In fact most of my siblings couldn’t do it at all, which was probably a good thing!
I remember when I switched the arms the first time. I watched a video on it, but I was so worried I will break something. Now I can get it easily, especially on the newer figures, but yeah the angle must be right. Nice to hear from you, BTW. Are you guys back in Chile?
Yes, we’re back! No more roaming around the country. Actually, I kinda miss it!
I’ve in fact been meaning to ask for a while, (but I’ve had a lot of writing to do for school!) if you’d be interested in me doing an article on the Symphony of Construction (http://paulvermeesch.com/symphonyofconstruction/) rounds, which I find really awesome since it combines two of my favorite hobbies. Do you think that’ll work?
That would actually be awesome! I remember reading about Symphony of Construction a while back, so would love to hear your take on it. I think it would make a very interesting article. Just whenever you have time, since you mentioned you are busy with school. 🙂
Okay, sounds great! I’ve been sort of on a writing streak recently, so we’ll see if we can’t get that done soon!
120 bricks per person on average. Most of here will have to be sorry for quite a lot of people haha 😀