Everything's Still Awesome: Lego at 75
Not long ago, I watched my eight-year-old daughter place a toy she’d just built from Lego onto an interactive display and press a button.
“Let’s hear about your idea behind this masterpiece,” said an outsize virtual Lego figure on the screen in front of her, in response.
Nina explained she’s built a car that went around parks and picked up litter. It had an antenna and was charged by solar panels. The Lego figure – who was dressed in a white lab coat complete with a pen clipped to its pocket – scribbled along on his virtual pad as she spoke, blinking enthusiastically.
“You have really thought this through,” the figure announced. “What do you say we send it to the laboratory, to see what my colleagues think?”
Nina pressed a button and a digital likeness of her physical creation appeared on the screen and was “beamed up” into the ether.
We were in the Blue Zone, one of four primary-coloured areas within Lego House, the architecturally spectacular 130,00sq ft marvel in Billund, Denmark – part-visitors’ centre, part-creative playground – known as the “Home of The Brick”, a reference to the fact Lego originated in the city.
