If you’re like me and your kids are a little past the Lego stage, you might have five or six boxes of bricks hanging around the attic or basement or stuffed under a bed somewhere. But if you’re just starting out with Junior, you might be facing a $500-$600 bill to get all of the original Maker-style toys they will eventually want.

Enter Pley stage left, a “Netflix for Legos” startup that will rent you bricks by the month.

“Who wants to rent toys? Families across nations with kids between the ages of 3-12 as well as Lego aficionados,” Pley founder Ranan Lachman told me via email. “We have some 50-plus older members that still build Legos.”

The company was founded in 2013 and has shipped out 75,000 sets of Legos so far. Customers buy a subscription that entitles them to different sets and configurations of toys at three levels: $15, $25, and $39 a month.

The obvious question, of course — especially if Junior is really quite junior — is how sanitary is this model?

“Yes, they are sanitized to an FDA-approved level,” Lachman says. “Kids can literally lick the brick.”

Educational toys are expensive, Pley says, but also necessary for kids’ mental development and growth. And they clutter your house as kids outgrow them. While Legos is where Pley started, the company has just raised $6.75 million to move into other educational toys as well as to expand geographically.

Which makes sense, of course: If you create what is likely a fairly expensive marketing channel, having multiple products to flow through it will help with profitability. And given that while the company has had talks with Lego but has not signed any specific deal with the company, it reduces supply constraint risks.

“We are in conversations with Lego, but we are not affiliated with them,” Lachman told me. “We proved through a comparative study conducted among our members that our service actually benefits the Lego group, as we increased brand awareness by 40 percent and sales by 26 percent.”

The funding round was led by Allegro Venture Partners, with participation from Floodgate, Correlation Ventures, Maven Ventures, and Western Technology Investments.

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Writing for the Harvard Business Review, Colin Lewis lays out the case for using robots as a means of equipping people with essential problem-solving skills for the workplace.

Telecommunications company Ericsson turned some heads during an event at Mobile World Congress in 2012 by having various Lego Mindstorms robots wander around and do things. Mindstorms are a robotics kit developed at MIT Media Lab in the 1990s, and they make it relatively easy to build robotic systems outfitted with wheels and sensors for accomplishing a number of things. In the video from Ericsson's event (embedded below), you can see that the robots pick up discarded cups, water plants, and even organize socks by color.

Lewis offers the example of building robots that can crawl through a maze in a given amount of time. While everyone works on the same problem, they'll come up with different approaches, all using the same resources that everyone else has at his or her disposal.

Mindstorms came into being because of Professor Seymour Papert, a co-founder of MIT Media Lab alongside noted artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky. Papert's research indicates that training programs that have participants build robotics projects together can hone people into creative problem solvers who keep an eye on the goal at hand. Writes Lewis:

[T]raining programs using robotics influences participants' ability to learn numerous essential skills, especially creativity, critical thinking, and learning to learn or "metacognition." They also emphasize important approaches to modern work, like collaboration and communication. This form of learning is called constructionism, and it is premised on the idea that people learn by actively constructing new knowledge, not by having information "poured" into their heads. Moreover, constructionism asserts that people learn with particular effectiveness when they are engaged in "constructing" personally meaningful artifacts. People don’t get ideas; they make them.

Legos make a perfect baseline for teambuilding exercises like this — even if you never played with them as a child, you know what they are and how they work, and the programming basics can be learned pretty quickly. After you really develop some skills, you might build some robots like those that Ericsson showed off at MWC:

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Henrik Fisker, the founder of recently bankrupt electric car venture Fisker Automotive, is back in the public eye with his first motorcycle design.

Fisker made his name as a designer, creating worship-worthy cars like the BMW Z8 and Aston Martin DB9. The Karma Fisker, while riddled with reliability issues, is undeniably gorgeous.

Fisker Automotive never got off the ground, despite a government loan, and went bankrupt in November 2013.

The new motorcycle, dubbed the Viking Concept, is made for Lauge Jensen, the motorcycle company acquired in 2012 by Anders Kirk Johansen, the Danish businessman whose grandfather, Ole Kirk Christiansen, invented LEGO toys.

The 660-pound motorcycle's engine, built in Wisconsin, delivers 100 horsepower and will send it up to 130 mph and get 30 miles per gallon.

Looks cool:

SEE ALSO: BMW Explains Why Its New Electric Car Looks So Strange

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Right up there with how the gun on the original Duck Hunt game worked, why it hurts so much to step on a Lego brick is one of the questions we’re asked the most, so it’s high time we answered it. As anyone who’s done it knows, stepping on a Lego block is something akin to being shot in the foot by a knife soaked in wasp venom. In truth, this is an inherent danger of allowing a child to exist in your home.

While we’ll never know who was the first person to step on a Lego block and curse the day Kirk Kristiansen “borrowed” the idea of Lego bricks from the patented “Kiddicraft Self-Locking Building Bricks,” we can answer the question of why stepping on one of the little buggers hurts so much more than many other common household items. The answer partially lies in how insanely sensitive to pressure, pain and practically everything else our leg-hands actually are.

The soles of the feet are one of the more sensitive areas of the human body, right up there with things like the lips, genitals, eyes and hands in terms of how sensitive to touch and pain stimuli they are. If you’re wondering why our feet need to be this sensitive, it’s because our feet are constantly working to keep us balanced and the information from the nerves in them are vital for allowing the brain to adjust accordingly to keep a person from falling over.

But why is this such a major complaint of Legos and not so many other items? We mean, stepping on anything sharp and pointy is going to hurt, so why is it only Lego bricks that seem to be so often mentioned?  Well, according to Lego, there are enough Lego bricks to give every person on Earth 83 bricks each. So you’re bound to come in contact with one and, unlike sharp objects, people aren’t as careful to keep them off the floor; often that’s where kids play with them.  Just as important is that unlike many objects which tend to have some give to them when you step on them, a single standard brick of Lego can be subjected to approximately 4,240 Newtons of force before it deforms.

This means a single, lowly Lego brick can support weights in excess of 432 kilos (953 pounds) before it reaches its breaking point and compresses. So when you step on a Lego brick on a relatively solid surface, there is nowhere for the force you’ve just exerted to go but right back into your foot and into the huge cluster of nerves it contains. This is compounded by the fact that the bricks have little knobs, relatively sharp corners, and the soles of the feet are subjected to impact forces that can be equal to around 9 times our own body weight while moving; even walking slowly can produce impact forces equal to double your body weight.

For an example, a standard 2×2 Lego brick has a surface area of roughly 2.25 centimetres squared (for the sake of simplicity we’ll ignore the studs, which certainly aren’t going to help matters for your foot anyway). Let’s say a person weighing 75 kilos (165 pounds or 734 Newtons) steps onto it.

Now, the pressure on a given object is equal to the force applied divided by the area over which it is spread (P=F/A).  So even if that 75 kilo person were just standing on the Lego with one foot, rather than having their foot accelerating downward at some rate as with walking, this gives us 734 N/0.000225 m² = roughly 3,262,222 pascals of pressure! For reference, that is roughly 32 times standard atmospheric pressure, all suddenly forcing its knobbly, unforgiving way against one of the most sensitive regions of the body.

Of course, part of the rest of your foot will ultimately support some of your weight on the floor, taking quite a bit of the pressure off once that happens.  On the flipside, your foot will be stomping at some force downward skewing things the other way significantly (as mentioned, even walking slowly, the impact force can easily equal double your body weight, let alone if you’re walking quickly); so this is just a very rough calculation, that nonetheless demonstrates how stepping on a Lego brick can produce some relatively large forces on the area of the foot the Lego brick is contacting.

So, to answer the question posed, the reason stepping on a Lego brick hurts so much is a combination of how sensitive the nerves in our feet are, how much force our feet hit the ground with as we walk, and the fact that Lego bricks are extremely rigid, somewhat jagged, and small, ensuring that the force is efficiently directed back into a tiny area of your foot. May God have mercy on your soul if you step on a Lego brick that is on a tiled, rather than carpeted, floor.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:

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Bonus Fact:

• In the late 1940s, a company called Kiddicraft began manufacturing “Kiddicraft Self-Locking Building Bricks”, which were patented by Hilary “Harry” Fisher Page.  Kirk Kristiansen, the founder of Lego®, came across these bricks in a demo he was shown of an injection molding machine.  He then copied these bricks and sold versions of them under his own brand as “automatic binding bricks”.  It isn’t clear whether Kristiansen knew these bricks were patented or not at the time or just saw the potential of such a small plastic brick as a toy product when observing the injection molding machine demo.  Lucky for him, Page died without ever finding out Lego® had copied, and was selling, a version of Kiddicraft’s product illegally. Some 31 years later, Lego® acquired Kiddicraft when Lego® was preparing to, ironically enough, sue Tyco for illegally copying Lego’s bricks; hence, to strengthen their case, they needed to own Kiddicraft and the original patent.  In the end, they lost the case anyway and Tyco got to continue selling the bricks, which at the time were earning them about $20 million annually.  So the $3 million Tyco spent in the legal battle with Lego® ended up being well worth it.

References

For answers to more burning questions: BI Answers

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Just as “The Lego Movie” launches on DVD this week, the construction toy company has announced a new product called Lego Fusion, which lets you build real-world Lego creations and upload them to iOS and Android tablet apps so you can play with your creations in virtual worlds and games.

According to Mashable’s Lance Ulanoff, each Lego Fusion box comes with 200 Lego pieces, which you can use to build in play in virtual games like “Town Master,” where you have to build a town, “Resort Designer,” a racing game called “Create and Race,” and a game where you have to defend your tower called “Battle Towers.”

You can upload all of your physical Lego creations to become part of the game, but each creation joins the larger Lego community where others similarly upload their Fusion sets. This means you can race cars and battle towers with real players and their unique creations, or even let your townspeople visit other players’ towns.

Unlike other Lego sets, Lego Fusion comes with no build instructions — Master Builders familiar with “The Lego Movie” should know they don’t need instructions to make great things. But there are three general rules to follow: You need to build facades — 16 bricks wide by 16 bricks tall, in any shape or style — the facades must be built on a Fusion Capture Plate (a technology made possible thanks to Qualcomm’s augmented reality platform Vuforia) and each facade must include a door.

Once you’ve built your facade, Lego’s free game app can capture your structure by aiming your tablet’s camera at your creation on top of the Fusion Capture Plate. After you see a green marquee show up around your Lego wall, your Lego creation is recreated within the game, brick by brick.

After your facade’s in the game, you — well, a Lego character doing your bidding — can drop the facade in any spot and the game does the rest, building virtual bricks around your singular facade to create a fully-enclosed structure, which becomes the centerpiece of the Lego town you can create in the game. The building can then serve the townspeople in a number of different ways — Mashable’s Ulanoff said he created his building into a pizzeria — but the overall goal is to make all of the Lego people in your town happy.

Luckily for those who love to tinker with their creations, users can rest assured knowing their uploaded Lego creations are saved in the Lego Fusion game, so no matter what else you build, you’ll never lose your original designs. You’ll also be able to share those designs with gamers across the online Lego community. 

The Lego Fusion boxes Town Master, Create & Race and Battle Towers will be available in August, while Resort Designer will launch in September. All of the physical boxes will cost $35, but the Lego app for iOS and Android is free.

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What kind of Lego kid were you? Follow-the-instructions or anything-goes?

The latter group, those who weren't afraid to make a mess and improvise their own Lego creations, are today able to submit their unofficial Lego builds to the company itself for public consideration and a year-long round of public voting. If the build can successfully garner 10,000 supporters — essentially a vote of "I would buy this if it were on store shelves"— then Lego will investigate releasing it as an official set.

It's a system called Lego Ideas, and it looks a lot like Kickstarter. Each project displays its number of supporters and the remaining time left in its campaign to break the 10,000 supporters mark. Projects will often include multiple photos of the finished item, occasionally a story surrounding its origin story.

As an example, this "Back to the Future" Lego set was originally submitted to the company by user m.togami and is now a standard Lego item available for sale:

If your idea should go so far as to break the 10,000 supporter mark and get Lego's attention, here's what happens next:

Projects selected in the LEGO Review go into production. You give input to our professional LEGO designers, whose job it is to create the final set based on your project. Once complete, it goes to the factory, then it’s shipped around the world and released for sale. You’re featured in set materials, receive a royalty on sales, and are recognized as the product creator. Your supporters can now own the LEGO set they helped make happen on LEGO Ideas.

So check out the attached slideshow of our favorite things currently drumming up attention on Lego Ideas. If one of them catches your eye, there's a link below each picture that you can click to learn more on the site itself.

The first thing that bears mentioning is the variety of projects. They might be beautiful and accurate, like these trees ...

Check it out on Lego Ideas »

... or silly and absurd, like these horses with laser guns on their backs.

Check it out on Lego Ideas »

People make small homages to favorite movies, like this one to "Ghostbusters."

Check it out on Lego Ideas »

Environmental activists are throwing bricks at the Lego-Shell Oil partnership.

Since 2013, the two Dutch companies have been engaged in a very lucrative cross promotional exchange — worth an estimated $116 million — that has featured at least 16 million Shell-branded Lego sets sold in 26 countries.

Now, with Shell signaling its intention to drill in the Arctic, environmental group Greenpeace is leading the effort to get the toy company — which, given the worldwide success of Warner Bros’ “Lego Movie,” is more influential than ever —  to disassociate itself from the oil company.

See video: ‘The Lego Movie’ Builds Into Box-Office Smash

“Climate change is an incredible threat facing all children around the world, but Shell is trying to hijack the magic of Lego to hide its role,” a spokesperson for Greenpeace said. “It is using Lego to clean up its image and divert attention from its dangerous plans to raid the pristine Arctic for oil. And it's exploiting kids’ love of their toys to build lifelong loyalty it doesn't deserve. It's time for Lego to finally pull the plug on this deal.”

Shell and Lego actually worked with each other in a similar way from the 1960-90s, before Lego just began making toys featuring a fictional oil company called Octan. In an ironic twist, given the situation that has erupted, the evil Lord Business runs that fictional company called Octan in “The Lego Movie.”

If @LEGO_Group loves kids, they'll dump @Shell. Tell LEGO to #BlockShell➨ http://t.co/hNeK9GU30fpic.twitter.com/zDz2ERNjwZ

— Greenpeace (@Greenpeace) July 1, 2014

Ask @LEGO_Group to stop their partnership w/ Arctic driller @Shell➨http://t.co/8v2N6A1oUr#BlockShell#SaveTheArcticpic.twitter.com/qXuVHdFhmM

— Irina Tikhomirova (@IrinaGreenVoice) July 1, 2014

Hey @LEGO_Group don't let Shell pollute our kids' minds. #BlockShell at http://t.co/zpgDKvor0N Thanks @UHCstudiopic.twitter.com/FjzRq0YieZ

— Save The Arctic (@savethearctic) July 1, 2014

LEGO people letting it all hang out in a bid to stop a losing streak in the Arctic http://t.co/OtRiUObpXa#BlockShellpic.twitter.com/31xia0EwsY

— Greenpeace UK (@GreenpeaceUK) July 1, 2014

Paula Bear joins the tiny revolution. @LEGO_Group, are you ready for this? #BlockShellhttp://t.co/kIlcZYI56opic.twitter.com/EwWbVnXejc

— Greenpeace UK (@GreenpeaceUK) July 1, 2014

A #CriticalMass of LEGO protesters has displayed a banner at Piccadilly Circus #BlockShellhttp://t.co/OtRiUObpXapic.twitter.com/WTQblIPPAd

— Greenpeace UK (@GreenpeaceUK) July 1, 2014 

Help these tiny protesters get their message heard: sign to tell @LEGO_Group to dump @Shell➨ http://t.co/hNeK9GU30fpic.twitter.com/W8uY9im3r9

— Greenpeace (@Greenpeace) July 1, 2014

SEE ALSO: 15 Easter Eggs In 'The LEGO Movie'

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Greenpeacecreated a new PSA made entirely out of Legos to protest the toy company's decision to include a Shell logo on some of its products. The dramatic video is set to a slow ballad and features a lot of sad looking Lego people and animals drowning in oil while Shell looks over the scene. Greenpeace asks viewers to help end the partnership with Shell because the organization is "Polluting our kids' imaginations." 

In a bizarre World Cup themed stunt, McDonald's recreates highlights from some of the tournament matches using french fries. The latest installment of FryFutbol takes a brutal perspective on Tuesday's Brazil vs. Germany match. Essentially the members of the Brazilian team are bowling pins and Germany is the bowling ball.    

Havas Worldwide named Jason Musante as Executive Creative Director of its New York office on Tuesday. Musante comes from Anomaly where he worked as the Creative Director on the Google Glass launch. 

Publicis Kaplan Thaler will replace Grey as Red Lobster's new lead creative agency. Agency Spy reports that the first Publicis Kaplan Thaler campaign will run in 2015. 

Following the defeat of the Brazil men's national team on Tuesday, brands jumped on the chance to tweet their thoughts on the historic match against Germany.  

Common Ventures, an agency out of Australia, plans to manufacture a "Game of Thrones" line of wine called the Wines of Westeros. Each house featured on the show will have its own wine, reds representing the more "headstrong" families and white representing the "cunning" houses.

Eight agencies took part in The Ad Club's first ever "Brand-a-thon," according to Adweek. The New England based organization asked competing agencies to help brand nine start ups. The winning agency, Nail Communications, created a campaign for Spray Cake, a company that makes ready-to-bake cake batter that you spray from a can.   

Tiffany & Co started its global media agency review according to Ad Age. Ogilvy & Mather will keep the role of creative agency for the company. 

Previously on Business Insider Advertising: 

• Coors Light Causes Bomb Scare And Traffic Jam In Canada After Publicity Stunt Gone Wrong
• Air New Zealand Will Stop Using This 'Sexist' Safety Video Filled With Swimsuit Models
  
• Mobile, Video, And Real-Time Bidding Are Driving A Boom In Digital Advertising
  
• Microsoft Has Turned A Spotlight Onto One Of Its Coolest Execs, Office GM Julia White
  
• The Most Powerful Man In Advertising Says Creativity Is Dying In Europe And The United States
  
  

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Lego may be the world’s biggest toymaker, but it didn't get there by keeping its prices down. 

“I went to Toys 'R' Us recently to buy my son a Lego set for Hanukkah. Did you know a small box of Legos costs $60? Sixty bucks for 102 plastic blocks!” NPR’s Chana Joffe-Walt wrote in a 2012 article.

A quick Google search reveals that Lego products can be bought for a few dollars to more than $200 depending on the set. For instance, a Lego Minifigure, a plastic figure that measures just an inch and a half tall, costs about $4. The popular Millennium Falcon with 1,254 pieces goes for $179.99. In comparison, competitor Mega Bloks sells the competing “Halo” set with 1,161 pieces at retail for $68.

While Lego would not comment on how its products are priced – which it says is set by the retailer (never mind the wholesale price the retailer pays) -- a company spokesperson said the bricks are made with extreme precision, resulting in a higher-quality product. Still, Lego blocks are made from plastic, and their patents expired in 1989. If any toy company can make the bricks, then why do consumers repeatedly choose Lego?

“Lego spends a lot of attention on ‘clutch power,’” David Robertson, author of the book "Brick by Brick," told NPR. The term he invented refers to how every Lego brick fits perfectly with another, regardless if it was manufactured in 1968 or 2008.

The privately held, family-owned Lego Group has factories in its native Denmark, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Mexico and soon in China. No matter where or when the pieces are built, “the main thing is the bricks are the same,” Charlotte Simonsen, head of corporate communications at Lego, told International Business Times. Regardless of what set they belong to or when they were made, they will always fit together.

While Lego dominated the construction toy market for decades, Mega Bloks emerged as a competitor in the last decade.

The construction toy block company, which  was recently purchased by major toymaker Mattel (NASDAQ:MAT), makes bricks that look like Legos, can snap onto Legos, and are often a fraction of the cost. Still, Lego sales show most consumers opt for the pricier Danish product over the Canadian knockoff.

Dallas Slieker, a 30-year-old Lego fan, says his decision to buy Lego is rooted in quality.

“Other brands like Mega Bloks have greatly improved in the last five years regarding their quality, but still some parts don’t fit together perfectly, which is a distraction from the creative process,” he told International Business Times.

Lego is painstakingly precise when it comes to their production. Each block has three numbers inscribed on it which determines what mold it was made in and its placement in that mold. If a defect is found, the company can pinpoint exactly which mold is defective and correct the issue, Robertson explained. Defects are extremely rare. Just 18 out of every 1 million Lego elements produced are considered defective, according to BusinessWeek.

While the company may purchase new licenses for the Disney Princess, the film “the Hobbit” or “The Simpsons” -- to name a few acquired this year-- that may bring more children to their brand, it’s the most basic details that keep customers coming back.  

“I trust Lego parts to have consistent colors, even over several years,” Slieker said. “Other companies have different colors, even in the same set. Mega Bloks does some ‘swirly’ patterns that never match up.”

Lego’s longevity also plays a part in the mind of the consumer, Amy Shea, executive vice president at the research consultancy Brand Keys, told Daily Finance.

"The ultimate question comes down to, how would I feel about giving my grandson fake Legos? I wouldn't do it. Even if I thought they wouldn't know the difference, I would know the difference. The knockoffs just don't have that emotional meaning."

But Lego wasn’t always the toy brand parents opted for. In the early 2000s it struggled with sales, after venturing into other businesses and losing focus on its hallmark design. Lego's executive vice-president for markets and products, Mads Nipper, said, "With our arrogance, we thought being Lego allowed us to do anything."

Nipper told Bloomberg BusinessWeek the company gave product designers free rein, which resulted in complex models that made supply costs soar. The Lego City product, which once accounted for 13 percent of the company’s total revenue, plummeted to just 3 percent during that time.

"Management was to blame," Nipper said. "The same people who were doing crappy products then are making world-class products today."

By 2010, the company returned to its roots thanks to a restructuring effort led by the grandson of Lego’s founder. Sales rose more than one-third to a record $3 billion, with net profits $700 million. Today, the company is the world’s largest toymaker. It has made more than $2 billion in the first half of 2014 alone – up more than 11 percent from the year before -- partially due to the 2014 release of the “Lego Movie," which some saw as an ad for the iconic toys.  The blockbuster made $257 million at the box office, and Lego shared in some of that wealth. 

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Copenhagen (AFP) - Lego is making global domination look like child's play, as the world's biggest toy-maker puts the building blocks in place to lead rivals in Asia and buck an industry-wide revenue dip.

The Danish toys juggernaut overtook Mattel in the first half of the year.

That was partly thanks to the runaway success of "The Lego Movie," which sent children scrambling for the coloured bricks, and partly because parents fell out of love with Mattel's Barbie, seen by some as promoting an unhealthy body image and outdated gender roles.

All in all, Lego seems to be having fun.

"They've done something similar to what Apple has done, which is known as transcending a category," said Niels Lunde, author of "The Miracle at Lego," a Danish book about the company.

"They don't just make toys, they make the stuff toys are made of. A Lego brick is not just a toy, it's an educational material that stimulates children's creativity," he added.

The children's market isn't always an easy game.

More traditional toy sales face competition from an onslaught of video games and smartphone apps — many of which are free — leaving industry giants such as Hasbro and Mattel scrambling to come up with a digital strategy.

Lego, arguably, has gone the other way. 

In the 1990s, "they feared this primitive brick of plastic couldn't withstand the competition from the digital world," Lunde said.

They tried branching out into everything from video games to children's fashion, but this brought the group to the brink of bankruptcy, and in 2004 Lego heir Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen was forced to inject 800 million kroner ($135 million) of his own money.

Incoming chief executive Joergen Vig Knudstorp brought the company back to basics -- bricks -- but with the twist of earning licensing fees on things like Legoland theme parks, which were spun off and merged with Merlin Entertainment.

"Their turnaround came when they understood that this plastic brick is really a brilliant toy material," Lunde said.

By the first half of this year revenue had more than tripled since 2008. "It is a very satisfactory result that shows our significant growth in recent years in a tough economic environment," Knudstorp said in a statement.

- Differing fortunes -

Meanwhile, at Mattel sales continued to fall -- by 9.1 percent in the second quarter this year.

Barbie sales have seen double-digit losses in four of the five past quarters and the California-based group has been unable to compensate for the shortfall through other dolls, like the horror movie-inspired Monster High range.

Feminist criticism of 55-year-old Barbie isn't the company's only headache -- toddler toy-maker and Mattel subsidiary Fisher-Price posted a 17 percent sales drop in the period.

Perhaps the old adage of "if you can't beat them, join them" applies to Mattel's $366 million purchase in February of Canadian Lego-clone Mega Bloks. That may have been a wise choice as it prepares to face off with its Danish rival in the booming Chinese market.

"In China you have a nation of 'only' children and parents are willing to spend a lot," said James Button, consumer markets director at Shanghai-based consultancy SmithStreet.

"When you just have one child, parents aren't really sparing any expense," he added.

One difference with Western markets, however, is that Chinese parents are very focused on education, meaning toy-makers also compete for the time and money families spend on schools and extracurricular classes.

"Lego is going to play better with consumers because it does have some educational value," Button said.

Lego sales in China rose by more than 50 percent in the first half of this year and the company began building its first factory in the country. It also opened a Shanghai office as part of plans to make its management more international.

The Billund-based company continues to claim that digital devices cannot fully replicate the experience of playing with the bricks, likening it to the difference between playing football on a computer and on a pitch.

On the off-chance that preferences do change, the group isn't taking any chances. "We should see it before anybody else because we are at the frontier of the technology," Knudstorp said.

In August the company launched Lego Fusion, which blends real-world building with a smartphone app that interacts with the constructed models.

An online game launched in 2010, Lego Universe, also attempted to bring the real bricks into the digital era but flopped.

Still, the Internet is already changing how people play with Lego -- it is one of the top three brands on YouTube, where fans enjoy posting video clips of their own, unique creations.

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Stockholm (AFP) - The world's largest toymaker Lego said on Thursday it was ending a deal with oil giant Shell, bowing to pressure from a Greenpeace campaign linking Lego toys to Arctic oil spills. 

Announcing the decision to stop the multimillion dollar marketing deal -- which includes Lego sales in Shell petrol stations around the world, and Shell logos on the toys -- Lego chief executive Joergen Vig Knudstorp said "we do not want to be part of Greenpeace’s campaign".

Since July more than five million people have viewed a Greenpeace video on YouTube entitled "Everything is NOT Awesome" -- featuring Arctic Lego landscapes dotted with oil rigs, polar bears and children playing ice hockey -- until they are all drowned in oil. The only thing left is a Shell flag and the slogan "Shell is polluting our kids' imagination". 

"The Greenpeace campaign uses the Lego brand to target Shell. As we have stated before, we firmly believe Greenpeace ought to have a direct conversation with Shell," Vig Knudstorp said in a statement published in Danish daily Politiken, adding that the Shell deal would end when the current contract expires.

"The Lego brand, and everyone who enjoys creative play, should never have become part of Greenpeace’s dispute with Shell." 

The decision marked a major turnaround by the toymaker, said Annika Jacobson, at Greenpeace Nordic, as the Danish company initially claimed it had nothing to do with the environmental group's fight to stop Shell prospecting in the Arctic. 

- Signal to oil companies -

"This sends an important signal to oil companies that they will not be able to use other brands to gain social acceptance," Jacobson told AFP.  

Since the online campaign began in July, more than a million YouTube viewers have mailed protests to the toy company via a Greenpeace website. 

"We would not have achieved this without all the people that have signed our petition and asked Lego to stop the partnership -- so it's a victory of the people," she said.

"The same thing that happened to the tobacco industry is now happening to oil companies... They are totally dependent on not being pictured as 'bad' companies. They're dependent on these kinds of partnerships."

In August Shell submitted a new plan for drilling in the Arctic off the coast of Alaska, more than a year after halting its programme following several mishaps with drilling rigs and high-profile clashes with Greenpeace activists. 

Lego's announcement will make it harder for Shell to avoid negative publicity in the future, said Jacobson. 

A spokesman for Lego would not confirm the value of the co-promotion partnership which Swedish media reports have valued at around $103 million (81 million euros). 

The company also declined to say when the contract with Shell would end but Greenpeace Nordic believed it would be within 18 months.

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The First 'Star Wars: The Force Unleashed' Trailer is finally upon us and now the YouTube parodies begin.

One of the initial ones flying around the internet is a genius iteration. Somebody made a Lego version and it's pretty brilliant.

It comes via Snooperking on YouTube, and there's a lot of attention to detail here:

Watch the whole thing here:

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Filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller have created a very solid working relationship with the folks over at Sony. Not only did they make both of the incredibly successful 21 Jump Street movies working for the studio, but they also first directed, then produced, respectively, the Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs films for Sony Pictures Animation. Everything has worked out pretty great when the two sides have worked together in the past, so it makes a degree of sense that the company might be willing to trust the duo with piece of its biggest superhero property. 

The Wall Street Journal has learned from insiders that there are dealings going on behind the scenes at Sony Pictures that could wind up seeing Phil Lord and Chris Miller producing an animated Spider-Man movie. Any and all details about the project are currently being kept tightly under wraps, and it doesn't appear clear at this point if the film will ever actually be a thing, but the newspaper notes that studio executives are planning a major "Spidey summit" in January that is being planned to help work out what kind of future Spider-Man has on the big screen. 

As a big fan of Phil Lord and Chris Miller's, this idea definitely has me excited - and it should be mentioned that the two filmmakers do already have at least some experience working with superheroes. When the two directors made The LEGO Movie for Warner Bros., they not only included Batman as a lead character (voiced by Will Arnett), but also brought in Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and more in for bit parts. As producers of the prospective animated Spider-Man movie they would certainly be a little less hands -on, but it's pretty clear that they have an appreciation for what comic books have to offer the cinematic landscape. 

As of right now, it's not exactly easy to say where an animated Spider-Man movie might fit into the franchise's development at Sony Pictures. Because The Amazing Spider-Man 2 didn't perform up to expectations this past summer, the future of the web slinger on the big screen has been a bit hazy. As of now, the next film actually scheduled on the company's slate is Drew Goddard's Sinister Six - which will see some of Spider-Man's greatest villains teaming up for their own movie - and that one is currently dated for November 11, 2016. There have also been talks about doing an Amazing Spider-Man 3, a Venom spin-off (which Alex Kurtzman is attached to direct), and a female-fronted movie that will be set in the larger Amazing Spider-Man universe. At this time, however, none of those projects have firm release dates. 

What do you think of the idea of a Phil Lord and Chris Miller-produced animated Spider-Man movie? Tell us what you think in the comments below.

SEE ALSO: 15 Easter Eggs In 'The LEGO Movie'

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From explosives to LEGO bricks to actual human tears, artists in 2014 stepped away from traditional mediums to showcase their talents.

Here are 7 of the most unique exhibits that were on display this year.

Produced by Alex Kuzoian. Video courtesy of Associated Press.

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The surprising success of "The LEGO Movie" last February meant that a sequel to the much-loved animated hit was always going to be green-lit. "The LEGO Movie 2" is due to be released in three years time, and now Phil Lord and Chris Miller have teased further details regarding what the film will actually entail.

The duo, who co-wrote and directed the 2014 original, teased to Empire Magazine that "The LEGO Movie" will see a continuation of the live-action element present in the first movie, and revolve around how growing up into the pre-teen years changes a kid's perspective on toys. Said Chris Miller:

"Well, I don’t want to give you spoilers, but we were really interested in what happens to that boy who’s in the meta story in the first movie when he’s four years older. When he’s an adolescent how does that change his point of view?"

Meanwhile, this four-year gap would also give the follow-up the opportunity to place the likes of Emmett Brickowski, Wyldstyle, Batman, Metal Beard, and Benny in different circumstances than where we last saw them in the first movie. And while Miller didn't mention them specifically, hopefully some more of these characters will pop up during the adventure, too.

But if Abraham Lincoln, the Statue of Liberty, Superman and Wonder Woman can’t star, then I’d just be happy if "The LEGO Movie 2 "can extend the original’s superb "Star Wars" homage - since the scene below was arguably the funniest movie moment of the year: 

 At this point I would trust anything that came out of Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s minds. The writer/director team have been heavily involved in three of the most successful movie franchises of the last five years, in the shape of "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs," "21 Jump Street," and "The LEGO Movie". And while it’s disappointing that the pair are only writing The LEGO Movie 2 rather than directing it too, the fact that they are heavily involved in the construction of the film is enough to suggest their voice will still be prominent. 

The LEGO Movie 2 will be preceded by 2016’s "Lego Ninjago" and 2017’s "Lego Batman," as Warner Bros. look to turn the construction toy into a bona-fide cinematic franchise. Certainly Warner Bros. is confident that each of these installments will add considerably to the first movie in the franchise’s box office total of $468.1 million. That being said, it's extremely unlikely that they’ll be able to replicate the musical genius that was "Everything Is Awesome." 

SEE ALSO: 15 Easter Eggs In 'The LEGO Movie'

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Just a decade ago, Lego was on the brink of bankruptcy. 

The company was facing mounting competition from internet and video games, Jonathan Ringen writes at Fast Company. 

Lego was able to turn around business by exhaustively researching customers in its "Future Lab" run by scientific researchers. 

Researchers found a big difference between American and European parents, according to Ringen. 

"American parents don’t like play experiences where they have to step in and help their kids a lot. They want their kids to be able to play by themselves," Future Lab leader Anne Flemmert-Jensen told Fast Company. 

Meanwhile, European parents are more hands-on. 

"We see among European parents, it’s okay to sit on the floor and spend time with the kids," she said.

When Fast Company asked if it's possible that American parents wanted their kids to be independent, she replied, "That's one of many possible interpretations." 

These insights influence the assortments Lego offers in the two regions. American Lego sets are theoretically less complicated, because kids will probably need to assemble them on their own. 

While Lego's insight about American parents might be unflattering, it makes sense.

Europeans tend to have a longer transition into adulthood, with many young adults continuing to live with their parents until their late 20s. 

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Earlier this week, my colleague Nicholas Carlson posted about the "stretch Hummer of business cards" he was handed at Davos this year.

Here it is:

Not that I'm in the business of one-upmanship over my colleagues, but it got me thinking that I've received one better.

Back in April last year, I attended the Festival of Media Global in Rome and interviewed Peter Espersen, the head of global community co-creation at Lego.

At the end of the interview, he handed me this:

It's so on-brand, it's brilliant. And, of course, bears a resemblance to Peter. His email and phone number, which I won't share here, are on the back of the fully-working model's body.

You can even take his hair off.

And his head (sorry, Peter.)

The only issue is that this little Lego man doesn't slip into your wallet like a normal paper card, so it's easy to lose at the bottom of your bag. I've already lost little Peter plenty of times since that April trip.

Still, you have to give them bonus points for creativity: I won't be forgetting our meeting.

SEE ALSO: This Business Card Is The Stretch Hummer Of Business Cards, And I Got It At Davos

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Here's the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' trailer recreated using Legos and it is cleverly titled 'Fifty Shades of Bricks'. This was made by Antonio Toscano. Check out his YouTube channel here.

Video courtesy of Associated Press

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Last year Samsung had the undisputed best brand activation at the Oscars, with its star-studded selfie. This year, the title went to Lego. Everything was, indeed, awesome.

"The Lego Movie" may not have won any Academy Awards but it certainly provided one of the highlights of the night, as Tegan and Sara joined comedy music troupe Lonely Island to perform an epic version of the Oscar-nominated song from the movie, "Everything Is Awesome."

And that wasn't all: Questlove joined in on drums and Will Arnett (who voices Batman in "The Lego Movie") jumped on stage in a Batman costume (which apparently was the very same suit Val Kilmer wore in "Batman Forever".)

Here's the full performance:

Dancers from the performance then went on to hand out gold Lego Oscars to stars in the audience, including Oprah Winfrey, Steve Carell, and Meryl Streep.

Oprah's reaction was probably the social media meme of the night.

Emma Stone looked like she didn't want to let go of hers.

Plenty of other stars also posed for photos with their Lego Oscars.

Nathan Sawaya, the artist that made the Lego Oscars, was also active on social media throughout the night.

Lego's perfectly planned performance earned the brand 47,290 mentions on Twitter on Sunday night, according to Amobee Brand Intelligence, although that was boosted by the brand buying up Twitter ads. And now everyone wants their own Lego Oscar. Here's how to make your own:

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) -- The transformation of Lego, the Danish toy company famous for its multi-colored building blocks, reaped further dividends last year as it benefited from a successful foray into the world of cinema.

The privately-owned company, which over the past few years has moved beyond its multi-colored toy blocks, said Wednesday that its sales in 2014 rose 13 percent to 28.6 billion kroner ($4.3 billion), with the product line related to the early-year release of The Lego Movie proving a "significant contributor to sales growth."

Lego isn't just about kids building a house with an assortment of blocks. As well as making movies, it has a host of popular mobile phone apps and theme parks. And its traditional business has morphed too - most children, and their parents, build things like the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars and Batman's Copter to a pre-set outline.

Lego said demand was particularly strong in its largest market, the U.S., but sales also rose by double digits in Britain, France, Russia and China. Sales are expected to grow this year too, though no forecasts were provided.

Overall, Lego saw a 15 percent increase in net profit last year to 7 billion kroner ($1 billion) and said it invested 3.1 billion kroner in 2014 to locate production closer to core markets and upgrade equipment, including in China, Mexico, Czech Republic, and its core molding plant in Denmark.

Lego doesn't release quarterly figures. It is not publicly listed but has published earnings reports since 1997. It employs 12,500 people, up from 11,750 in 2013.

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