50 years of creative playing by Barbora Misakova

I clearly remember the times when I was at home and my brother was showing me how exactly I should work with every piece of our Lego to build a big house with two rooms and a nice red roof and some trees in the garden in front of this cute house. Honestly when most of girls used to play with Barbie dolls I loved Lego and all things you could do with it. And that's why it is no surprise for me to write that Lego celebrates its 50th anniversary. Lego is a line of building toys which consists of plastic bricks when ever y piece has its design consisted of studs and holes and if you are stacking one on top of another one you can build anything ranging from village house to replicas of well known buildings around the world. Lego is manufactured by Lego Company which was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen who was a Danish carpenter. The first piece of Lego was the basic eight-stud red brick which was at the end of 1940s sold in Denmark for the first time in history. After that it took about eight years till Ole's son invented and developed versatile brick which is a basic of today's success of Lego. So you are probably asking where does lie this legacy of Lego? First of all it is the creativity what Lego and its toys offer to the kids. They can not only play but create! They don't have to play with dolls where all they can do is to put some clothes on it and then off. They work with colorful bricks which hold together so well they can build anything they want from barn to sky-scraper. Their plays are more gamesome and it leads them to create something and so show their skills. After a big success of this toy brand it started to open Legoland theme parks and every of them receive more than 1 million visitors per year. After more than 60 years first bigger problems appeared & new kinds of toys started to attracting kids' attention more than Lego and it flashed on Lego's eroding sales. After this warning Lego Company think out the Star Wars revival which led to creating video games as well, but it didn't help for long. In recent years is company getting down & numbers of stuff fell down in 4 years by more than 2000 people and Legoland parks were sold. That's why the Lego Company is planning only small celebrations. I don't know what you think and feel about it but for me it is a big pity that kind of creative ways of playing are displaced by others which are more hard then creative. Hope Lego Company finds some new way of attracting kids' attention and will rise again.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080128/wl_time/legocelebrates50yearsofbuilding;_ylt=Aiszq5gOJRYVcvF9N766IDys0NUE

by Barbora Misakova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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