Harley-Davidson LEGO

Yesterday LEGO turned 50 years old.  That’s 50 years of happy kids worldwide building anything their curiosity will allow from the famous stud-and-tube coupling system. 

In celebration of a couple members of the Posse turning “golden” this year I thought a LEGO tribute to Harley was in order. 

It started in 1947, when LEGO bought a plastic injection machine. The brick wasn’t invented until 1958, when the shape of the stud-and-tube brick was patented. LEGO sets have gone through much iteration, from the younger version, DUPLO, to the more sophisticated LEGO TECHNIC and LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT sets.  They have many different themes in LEGOLAND and the most successful line was LEGO Star Wars. 

For the more detail minded here are some LEGO brick facts from Gizmodo: 

• There are 62 LEGO bricks for every one of the world’s 6B inhabitants.

• Children around the world spend 5B hours a year playing with LEGO bricks.

• More than 400M people around the world have played with LEGO bricks.

• LEGO bricks are available in 53 different colors.

• 2.16M LEGO elements are molded every hour, or 36K per minute.

• More than 400B LEGO bricks have been produced since 1949.

• The LEGO bricks sold in one year would circle the world 5 times.

• There are 55,600 LEGO videos on YouTube.  

I don’t remember my first LEGO “build”, but if you do then feel free to add comments and share the story of what you built.  

Harley-Davidson LEGO photo courtesy of Jonathan Eric Hunter’s (LeGogh) LEGO MOC Collection.