[6] Lego maintains a large fan community based around building competitions and custom creations, and a range of films, games, and eight Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand.

[7][8] In 1934, his company came to be called "Lego", derived from the Danish phrase leg godt [lɑjˀ ˈkʌt],[9][10] which means "play well".

[2] In 1958, the modern brick design was developed; ABS subsequently replaced cellulose acetate as the manufacturing material five years later.

[19][23][24] A patent application for the modern Lego brick design was filed in Denmark on 28 January 1958 and in various other countries in the subsequent few years.

[28] In 1997, more than five million Lego pieces were swept into the sea when a wave hit a cargo ship off the coast of Cornwall, England.

[41] Primary concept and development work for the toy takes place at the Billund headquarters, where the company employs approximately 120 designers.

The company also has smaller design offices in the UK, Spain, Germany, and Japan which are tasked with developing products aimed specifically at their respective national markets.

"[56] Using a hydraulic testing machine, members of the department determined the average maximum force a 2×2 Lego brick can stand is 4,240 newtons.

[61][62] In 2021, the company said it would aim to produce its bricks without using crude oil, by using recycled polyethylene terephthalate bottles, but in 2023 it reversed this decision, having found that this did not reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.

These include Batman, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Marvel, Minecraft and Wicked.

[67] For the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Lego released a special Team GB Minifigures series exclusively in the United Kingdom to mark the opening of the games.

[71] The company also initiated a robotics line of toys called 'Mindstorms' in 1999, and continued to expand and update this range until it was eventually discontinued in 2022.

In the earliest iteration of the product, the program would be uploaded to the programmable brick via an infrared transmitter, while in later versions this was achieved via Bluetooth or a USB cable.

The international RoboCup Junior football competition involved extensive use of Lego Mindstorms equipment which was often pushed to its extreme limits.

Designs for these Lego prosthetics allow everything from mechanical diggers to laser-firing spaceships to be screwed on to the end of a child's limb.

Iko was the work of the Chicago-based Colombian designer Carlos Arturo Torres, and is a modular system that allows children to customise their own prosthetics with the ease of clicking together plastic bricks.

Designed with Lego's Future Lab, the Danish toy company's experimental research department, and Cirec, a Colombian foundation for physical rehabilitation, the modular prosthetic incorporated myoelectric sensors that register the activity of the muscle in the stump and send a signal to control movement in the attachment.

A processing unit in the body of the prosthetic contained an engine compatible with Lego Mindstorms, which allowed the wearer to build an extensive range of customised, programmable limbs.

[78][79] Lego's popularity is demonstrated by its wide representation and usage in many cultural works, including books, films, and art.

[91] In 2010, the European Court of Justice ruled that the eight-peg design of the original Lego brick "merely performs a technical function [and] cannot be registered as a trademark.

In 2021, a shipment of bricks delivered by clone producer Qman was blocked from passing through German customs due to concerns over the potential infringement of Lego's intellectual property.

[93][94][95] First launched in 1996, the Lego website has developed over the years, and provides many extra services beyond an online store and a product catalogue.

The app incorporates a variety of child safety features to provide a safe digital environment for children, including the protection of personal information and the heavy moderation of all uploaded user-generated content and communication.

[102] Merlin Entertainments operates eight Legoland amusement parks, the original in Billund, Denmark, the second in Windsor, England, the third in Günzburg, Germany, the fourth in Carlsbad, California, the fifth in Winter Haven, Florida, the sixth in Iskandar Puteri, Malaysia,[103] the seventh in Dubai, United Arab Emirates,[104] and the eighth in Nagoya, Japan.

Participants work through imaginary scenarios using visual three-dimensional Lego constructions, imaginatively exploring possibilities in a serious form of play.

Lego: The Adventures of Clutch Powers was released on DVD in February 2010, a computer-animated film made by Tinseltown Toons.

[128] It featured Chris Pratt in the lead role, with substantial supporting characters voiced by Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Alison Brie, Will Ferrell and Nick Offerman.

[136] In February 2019, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part was released, which was a direct sequel to the original film and starred Chris Pratt in the lead role.

[138] Lego has an ongoing deal with British multinational publisher Dorling Kindersley (DK), who have produced a series of illustrated hardback books looking at different aspects of the construction toy.

[139] Although no longer being published in the United States by Scholastic, books covering events in the Bionicle storyline are written by Greg Farshtey.