Where are the LEGO toys made?

Who is responsible for LEGO's transformation from a company that simply made colored bricks to a company that partners with other franchises to make movies, games, amusement parks, books, robotic toys, etc.?

• Answer:

  This is pretty tricky to answer because I'm not quite sure what you really mean to ask. I believe Poul Plougmann was the one in charge when LEGO extended to licensing with Star Wars (LEGO's first real license) and shortly after to Harry Potter and Disney. However, LEGO still wanted to do everything in-house under Plougmann.  They did their own video game design (which was pretty bad), they owned their own amusement parks (which they had to partially sell off later), they made their own clothing lines.  They tried a bunch of different things, avoiding partnering where possible.  And usually did pretty badly until their turnaround in 2007 or so. You mention a lot of other things, though-- movies, games, books, and robotic toys.  And those all have their own stories. They've been trying to introduce robotics for a long time.  They had robotics combining with LEGO going back to the 1980's under Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen (the current owner of the company), although the products were typically only available for schools under LEGO's educational division, Dacta.  They finally made a consumer-viable product (LEGO Mindstorms) in 1998. LEGO Books have been around a long time too-- Easily the 1970's, back when LEGO was owned by Godtfred Kirk Christiansen (Kjeld's father).  They've slowly expanded into a much wider variety of books, but they've had everything from choose-your-own-adventure books to sticker books to building idea books. Movies are relatively new-- The LEGO Movie is (to my knowledge) the first full length theatrically released LEGO-themed movie.  But they did another full-length animated movie in 2003 called Bionicle: Mask of Light, which I ... think was their first feature-length movie (but it never went to theaters). Games have been something LEGO's done a lot of, but that have never been widely available-- LEGO had several games that it made in the 1990's and 2000's in partnership with other companies.  In 2009, LEGO partnered with a renowned game designer (I can't seem to dig up the name) to design a new lineup of games that were a lot more widespread exposure-wise. So, the answer is really-- a lot of people, depending on what you mean.  LEGO's a pretty vast company, so there are a lot of people responsible!