As of November 2026, the best-known maker of toy bricks is the LEGO company. It is based in Billund, Denmark. It started in 1932 as a small carpenter's shop. Before plastic bricks, the shop made stepladders, ironing boards and wooden toys. The name LEGO comes from two Danish words, leg godt, which mean play well. LEGO was not first. Kiddicraft, a British company, sold interlocking plastic bricks with studs before LEGO did.
LEGO's first plastic bricks, from 1949, were called Automatic Binding Bricks. They had no tubes inside, so they did not hold together as well as later ones. In 1958 the tubes were added, and they make the bricks grip each other. LEGO calls this clutch power.
The first fully man-made plastic, Bakelite, was invented in 1907 by Leo Baekeland. The earliest LEGO bricks were made of a wood-based plastic called cellulose acetate, until the company switched to ABS in 1963.
ABS stands for acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. Plastic was chosen for toys partly because it is easy to clean and comes in many colors and shapes. ABS is a thermoplastic. It softens when heated, so it can be melted, shaped in a mold and cooled hard again. It is also tough and strong, and it can survive being dropped, which suits a toy. It can take any color and can have a glossy finish.
Toy bricks are made from tiny plastic grains called granules. The grains are stored in giant tanks called silos. They are sent to the machines through tubes. Color is added at the machine, so one plastic can make bricks of many colors.
Hot plastic is injected into one side of the mold, spreads through little channels and fills the brick-shaped space. Cold water flows through the mold to cool the plastic. Then the mold opens and the bricks drop onto a belt. Leftover plastic from the mold is ground up and used again almost right away.
Toy bricks stick together because the studs on top fit tightly between the tubes inside another brick. Bricks are built to be taken apart and built again. The brick has kept its design since 1958, so old bricks can fit new bricks.
Almost all the plastic in a LEGO factory is reused, as of a report from June 2011. Faulty pieces and the clear plastic used to flush a machine between colors are ground up and sold on. Very little is wasted.
Plastic that is thrown away can stay around for hundreds of years. Plastic made in the world grew from about two million tonnes in 1950 to more than 400 million tonnes a year (as of February 2026). About half of all the plastic ever made was made in the last 20 years or so (as of May 2025). Much plastic waste comes from places with weak trash collection, so how trash is handled matters as much as how much there is.
Most LEGO bricks are made of ABS, an oil-based plastic. LEGO says it is looking for other materials to use instead (as of November 2026). It says it wants more sustainable materials in its products by 2032. In 2021 LEGO unveiled a prototype brick made from recycled plastic drink bottles (PET). After two years of testing it chose not to use it, because it would not have cut carbon emissions (as of September 2023). By 2023 LEGO had tested more than 300 different materials, and some worked better than others.
Words to know
- thermoplastic: melts, then sets
- prototype: test model
- Bakelite: first made plastic
