The world’s most valuable toy company, Lego, no longer deals in just multicolored plastic bricks.
Lego has created a multimedia empire that runs on fans not only using Lego to build things, but as the basis for creating entirely new projects.
“There are people completely devoted to Lego — adults included,” said Here & Now media analyst John Carroll. “There’s one guy in Britain who has done a history of the United Kingdom in Lego. There are a whole series of what are called Brickfilms, which are stop motion animation films with characters made of Lego blocks.”
Consumers have emotional connections with many brands, Carroll says, but the emotional connection with Lego “takes it beyond a consumer brand and turns it into something else.”
Five-year-old Sam Sullivan, the son of Here & Now senior managing editor Kevin Sullivan, is a big Lego fan. When asked why he likes the little plastic bricks he says simply, “They’re fun.”
A Brickfilm by Sam and Kevin Sullivan:
Guests
- John Carroll, Here & Now media analyst and professor of mass communications at Boston University. He tweets @johncarroll_bu.
- Sam Sullivan, five-year-old Lego fan and son of Here & Now managing editor Kevin Sullivan.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
