The Block

For the sheer genius of its simple design, the humble Lego plastic brick stands out as the most successful – and fun – children’s plaything of all time. Unless of course you stand on one. But painful or not, Liam Bartlett reveals there is one Lego statistic that is completely mind-boggling. In the 60-year history of the company, over seven hundred billion – yes billion – pieces of Lego have been made. And it all started with a Danish carpenter looking for a cheap alternative to wooden toys. Even more remarkably, these days the multi-billion-dollar Lego empire remains a family business, headquartered in the same quiet village where it all began.