...... Continuing the LEGO story
In 1960, another warehouse fire hit the LEGO Group and consumed most of the company's inventory of wooden toys. Godtfred believes that the plastic production line is strong enough to give up the production of wooden toys. As a result, Geftfred's brothers Gerhardt (then the head of wooden toys) and Karl Georg left LEGO to form an independent company." Bilofix". By the end of the year, the LEGO Group had employed more than 450 employees.
In 1961, LEGO wanted to expand sales to North America, but did not have the logistics capacity to do so. LEGO decided for Samsonite to start producing and selling LEGO products in US and Canada.
In 1961 and 1962, the first LEGO wheels came out, which expanded the potential of LEGO building blocks to build cars, trucks, buses and other vehicles. In addition, during this period, the LEGO Group launched toys specifically for the preschool market.
In 1964, cellulose acetate (the material used to make LEGO bricks) was replaced by the more stable acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS plastic), which is still in use today. ABS is non-toxic, resistant to discoloration and warping, and is more resistant to high temperature, acid, salt and other chemicals.
1964 was the first year that the instruction manual was incorporated into Lego toys.
One of the LEGO Group's most successful series is the LEgO Train System, released in 1966. The original train kit includes a motor, battery box and rails.
On June 7, 1968, the first Legoland opened in Billund. This theme park features exquisite miniature town models built entirely from LEGO bricks. The 12,000 square meter park attracted 625,000 visitors in its first year of opening. In the next 20 years, the size of the theme park has grown to more than eight times its original size, and eventually an average of nearly 1 million paying visitors per year. In 1968, sales of LEGO toys reached 18 million sets.
In 1969, the Duplo system went on sale. Duplo blocks are much larger than LEGO blocks, so they are safer for young children, but the two systems are compatible: Lego blocks can be neatly installed on Duplo blocks. The name Duplo comes from the Latin duplus, which literally translates to double, which means that the size of the Duplo brick is exactly twice the size of the LEGO building brick (2 × height by 2 × width by 2 × depth = 8 × volume brick).