140 Fun Facts About Lego

Which video-game hero became an electronic Lego figure in 2020, with small screens for his eyes, mouth and chest?

Mario's figure has a scanner underneath that reads the coloured bricks and codes he lands on, so he reacts as children steer him through courses they build themselves.

What does the name 'Lego' derive from?

The Danish for 'play well' is 'leg godt'. The story goes that the founder held a staff contest for a company name, with a bottle of his homemade wine as the prize, and then picked his own entry.

What did Lego's 1958 patent add under each brick?

Hollow tubes under each brick grip the bumps of the one below, curing the early bricks' weak hold; a brick moulded in 1958 still locks onto one made today.

What material are modern Lego bricks primarily made from?

ABS replaced cellulose acetate in 1963; the older plastic warped and faded, while ABS keeps its colour and its clutch power for decades.

Who founded the Lego Group?

Ole Kirk Christiansen started the firm in 1932; his son Godtfred, who joined him in the workshop, went on to patent the modern brick in 1958.

Which video game got its first Lego set in 2012 after fans backed it online?

Minecraft Micro World came out of Lego's fan-voting site in 2012; the game built of blocks then got a minifigure-scale Lego range of its own in 2014.

The 1978 Lego minifigure improved on its 1975 forerunner by adding what?

Movable arms and legs set the 1978 minifigure apart from the 1975 figure, whose limbs did not move and whose head was blank; it also gained a printed face of two dots and a smile.

Builders nicknamed which Lego colour 'bley' after a mid-2000s change gave it a bluish tint?

Grey: Lego's 2004 sets swapped the old light and dark greys for bluish versions, to loud complaints from long-time fans, who shortened 'bluish grey' to 'bley'.

Which Lego theme was the company's first licensed product line?

Star Wars sets arrived in 1999, timed for The Phantom Menace; until then Lego had built only worlds of its own, and the licence has been renewed ever since.

What is the name of the programmable Lego robotics platform first released in 1998, developed with MIT Media Lab?

Lego Mindstorms was meant for children, yet company surveys found that most early hobbyists were adults; the line ran for 24 years before Lego retired it in 2022.

Who voiced Emmet Brickowski in The Lego Movie (2014)?

Chris Pratt voiced Emmet Brickowski, the ordinary construction worker mistaken for 'the Special'; Pratt played Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy the same year.

Which 2021 Lego set became the largest ever released, with 11,695 pieces?

The Lego Art World Map (set 31203) has 11,695 pieces, a wall-mounted mosaic of 1x1 tiles that lets builders recolour the oceans.

What was the trade of Lego's founder before he started making toys?

He was a carpenter whose joinery business, squeezed by the Depression, turned to wooden toys; a pull-along duck was among the early hits.

Which Canadian rival's Lego-compatible bricks survived a challenge at Canada's Supreme Court in 2005?

Mega Bloks won because Lego's patents on the brick had expired, and the court refused to let trademark law protect a shape that exists to make the bricks work.

How many ways can six standard 2x4 Lego bricks of one colour be combined?

About 915 million: the exact count is 915,103,765. For decades Lego quoted 102,981,500, a 1974 figure that only counted towers six bricks high, until a Danish mathematician redid the sum.

Which twin-sister duo sang The Lego Movie's 'Everything Is Awesome' with The Lonely Island?

Tegan and Sara never shared a studio with the comedy trio: Tegan recorded the lead vocal, Sara sent her backing vocals from her apartment, and the rap was added separately.

Which Lego theme, launched in 2001, featured buildable action figures with ball-and-socket joints?

Bionicle became one of Lego's biggest sellers of the 2000s and grew into a franchise of its own; a planned twenty-year run ended after nine, in 2010.

Which animated sitcom's 2014 episode 'Brick Like Me' rebuilt its whole town in Lego?

The Simpsons marked its 550th episode by having Homer wake in a Springfield made of bricks, where he must find a way out before he is stuck in plastic for good.

Which actor voiced Batman in The Lego Batman Movie (2017)?

Will Arnett's Batman proved so popular in The Lego Movie that he got his own standalone film.

Which Lego theme began life as 'Legoland Town' and is one of the company's longest-running lines?

Lego City evolved from Legoland Town, the present-day setting that sat beside Lego's 'past' and 'future' themes; the City branding arrived in 2005.

On which platform can fans submit Lego designs that go to review at 10,000 supporter votes?

Lego Ideas lets fans post designs; a project that gathers 10,000 supporters goes to an expert review, and approved sets are sold with the fan designer credited.

In the first half of 2015, Lego became the world's largest toy maker by revenue, overtaking which company?

Mattel, maker of Barbie and Hot Wheels, took US$1.9 billion in the first half of 2015 to Lego's US$2.1 billion, barely a decade after Lego had come close to bankruptcy.

In the licensed Lego video games, what do players collect and spend as currency?

Studs are the games' money, spent on unlocking new characters and hints; a character who runs out of hearts breaks apart and drops some of them.

Which rock duo's 2002 video for 'Fell in Love with a Girl' was animated entirely in Lego bricks?

The White Stripes' clip was shot brick by brick by director Michel Gondry; it won three MTV Video Music Awards and helped push the duo into the mainstream.

Which company, also behind Madame Tussauds, runs the Legoland theme parks?

Merlin Entertainments took over the parks in 2005, when loss-making Lego sold them; the Lego founder's family kept a stake and in 2019 joined the buyout that took Merlin private.

What is the Lego Group's company motto?

'Only the best is good enough' was coined by the founder in the 1930s, when Lego still made wooden toys; the Danish original, 'det bedste er ikke for godt', says literally that the best is not too good.

Which Top Gear presenter built a house out of Lego bricks for his 2009 series Toy Stories?

James May's Lego house stood in a vineyard, but a plan to move it to Legoland Windsor collapsed over the cost, so it was taken apart and the bricks given to charity.

What happened to the Lego factory in Billund in 1942?

It burned down in a fire started by a short circuit, which took the whole stock and every blueprint with it; the founder chose to rebuild out of a sense of duty to his workforce.

Which TV coffee shop became an official Lego set in 2019 after fans voted for the design?

Central Perk, the hangout from Friends, was designed by French fan Aymeric Fievet; Lego released it in 2019 to mark 25 years since the sitcom began.

What name did Lego give its first plastic building set, launched in 1949?

Automatic Binding Bricks carried an English name although Lego was a small Danish workshop; in 1953 they were renamed Lego Mursten, simply 'Lego Bricks'.

Which English university appointed the first Lego Professor of Play in 2018?

Cambridge gave the chair to child psychiatrist Paul Ramchandani; funded by the Lego Foundation, it comes with a research centre on how play shapes children's development and learning.

Which Danish architect designed the Lego House experience center in Billund, which opened in 2017?

Bjarke Ingels and his firm BIG shaped the Lego House as 21 overlapping blocks like giant stacked bricks, their roofs doubling as playground terraces.

Counted by units, Lego has been called the world's number-one manufacturer of what?

Tyres: Guinness lists Lego as the biggest tyre maker by number, with 381 million made in a single year; they are real rubber tyres, only small enough for toy cars.

Which former McKinsey consultant led Lego's recovery from near-bankruptcy as CEO from 2004?

Jorgen Vig Knudstorp became CEO in 2004 and orchestrated Lego's remarkable turnaround by cutting costs, selling Legoland parks, and refocusing on core brick products.

What do adults use the Lego Serious Play method for?

Business strategy workshops: teams build metaphors of their organisation in bricks to explore problems and open up communication.

Which Lego theme, launched in 2012, was specifically designed to appeal to girls?

Lego Friends swapped minifigures for more detailed mini-doll figures and gave its five girls names and hobbies; first-year sales ran at double Lego's forecast.

Engineers found the bottom brick of a Lego tower would be crushed under how many bricks?

375,000 bricks, a tower 3.5 km tall: Open University engineers squashed a 2x2 brick in a hydraulic testing machine until it gave way at 4,240 newtons, then worked out how many bricks weigh that much.

What is the name of the adult-targeted Lego line of detailed landmark models, launched in 2008?

Architecture grew out of the hobby of Adam Reed Tucker, a trained architect who modelled skyscrapers in Lego; the first two sets, in 2008, were Chicago towers.

Which Lego brand was renamed 'Explore' in 2002, only to get its old name back in 2004?

Duplo bricks, launched in 1969, are twice the size of standard ones in every dimension yet still lock onto them; the Explore label lasted barely two years.

Which English toymaker's self-locking bricks inspired the first Lego bricks?

Hilary Page patented Kiddicraft's Self-Locking Building Bricks in 1939, and Lego's 1949 bricks followed them closely; Lego bought the remaining rights from his family in 1981.

The TV building contest Lego Masters, since remade around the world, first aired in 2017 in which country?

United Kingdom: Channel 4's original ran for just two series, in 2017 and 2018, while remakes from Australia to the United States have run for longer.

What is the term for adult Lego enthusiasts?

AFOLs, 'Adult Fans of Lego', have become a market of their own; since 2020 Lego has marked the sets it designs for them with an '18+' label.

In December 2023, Lego and Epic Games launched a survival-crafting game inside which online hit?

Fortnite players could suddenly survive and build as Lego figures; more than 2.4 million of them were in the new mode at once at launch.

Which supercar did Lego Technic recreate in 2018, complete with a W16 engine and working eight-speed gearbox?

Bugatti Chiron: the 3,599-piece model was followed weeks later by a full-size Lego Chiron of more than a million pieces that could actually be driven.

Roughly how much horsepower did the 2,304 toy motors in Lego's drivable 2018 supercar produce?

About 5 horsepower: the motors managed a tiny fraction of the real supercar's output, yet they moved a body built from more than a million Technic pieces.

Legoland Florida opened in 2011 in which city outside Orlando?

Winter Haven's park took over the closed Cypress Gardens theme park and kept its botanical gardens growing inside the new Legoland.

Legoland's Miniland was inspired by its creators' visit to which Dutch attraction?

Godtfred Kirk Christiansen and park designer Arnold Boutrup toured Madurodam, the miniature city in The Hague, before settling on Miniland as Legoland Billund's centrepiece.

Legoland Windsor was built on the 150-acre site of what former attraction?

A safari park: Windsor Safari Park went into receivership in January 1992, and Lego picked its site from more than 1,000 candidates for its second Legoland.

Which luggage maker held the US licence to make Lego from 1961 to 1972?

Samsonite moulded and sold Lego bricks across North America; Lego, unhappy with the partnership, cancelled the US licence in 1972 and took over production and sales there itself.

What did Lego's owner begin building in 1961 to help sell toys around the world?

Billund Airport, begun by Godtfred Kirk Christiansen in 1961 and opened in 1964, grew into Denmark's second-busiest airport, right beside the factory and the first Legoland.

Lego heir Godtfred once boasted of saving money on a batch of wooden ducks by skimping on what?

Varnish: he gave the ducks two coats instead of the usual three, and his father made him fetch the boxes back from the station and finish the job.

Which family investment firm owns 75% of the Lego Group?

Kirkbi is the family office of the founder's descendants; it kept a stake when Lego sold the Legoland parks in 2005 and in 2019 joined the buyout of the company that runs them.

Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, who ran Lego from 1979 to 2004, is what relation to its founder?

Grandson: Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen appeared on Lego boxes as a boy, tested new models for the designers, and later took over the company his father Godtfred had run.

In 1997, a rogue wave swept nearly five million Lego pieces off a cargo ship off which English county?

The Tokio Express lost the container off Land's End, Cornwall, in February 1997; beachcombers have picked up the pieces, many of them sea-themed, for decades since.

Which NASA spacecraft carried three aluminium Lego minifigures to Jupiter?

Juno carried aluminium figures of Jupiter, his wife Juno and Galileo; the Juno figure holds a magnifying glass for her search for truth, as in myth she saw through the clouds Jupiter hid behind.

Which singer-songwriter's 2011 hit 'Lego House' had a video starring Harry Potter actor Rupert Grint?

Ed Sheeran cast Rupert Grint as a joke about how alike the two look; the song reached the top five in Britain, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand.

Lego's first minifigures with natural skin tones, in 2003, depicted players from which league?

NBA stars such as Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant were among the first minifigures made in a real person's skin tone; the practice then spread to licensed film characters.

Which character got the first Lego minifigure with a specially sculpted head, in 1999?

Jar Jar Binks's 1999 minifigure was the first with a specially moulded head instead of the standard cylinder; Yoda, C-3PO and Davy Jones later got sculpted heads too.

Lego's fan-submission platform was originally known by what Japanese-derived name?

Cuusoo is Japanese for 'daydream' or 'fantasy'; the site began in 2008 as a tie-up with a Japanese firm of that name and took its present title in 2014.

Which director lent his name to Lego's 2000 MovieMaker set, sold with a camera?

Steven Spielberg's set opened the Lego Studios line with a camera and editing software, so children could shoot stop-motion films of their own.

What was the first official Lego film, released straight to DVD?

Bionicle: Mask of Light (2003), distributed by Miramax, was Lego's first feature film; The Adventures of Clutch Powers followed in 2010 and the first theatrical Lego movie in 2014.

Who wrote and directed The Lego Movie?

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller limited every rig to the articulation of a real minifigure so the film would look like stop motion.

In The Lego Movie, the superweapon called the Kragle, wielded by Lord Business, is really what?

A tube of Krazy Glue with half its label worn off; the Piece of Resistance stuck to Emmet's back is the tube's cap, which is why it can stop Lord Business.

Which Australian studio behind Happy Feet animated The Lego Movie and its sequels?

Animal Logic animated everything by computer yet kept each figure to the limited joints of real Lego, so the film looks like stop-motion.

The Lego Movie earned its only Oscar nomination in which category?

Best Original Song: 'Everything Is Awesome' was performed at the ceremony but did not win, and the film itself was left off the Best Animated Feature list.

Which comedian voices the villain Lord Business in The Lego Movie and also appears in its live-action scenes?

Will Ferrell also plays 'the Man Upstairs', a father who scolds his son for mixing up his Lego collection; the boy's game in the basement turns out to be the story of the film.

Who voiced the Joker in The Lego Batman Movie?

Zach Galifianakis voiced the Joker, who is hurt that Batman will not call him his archenemy; Michael Cera voiced Robin and Ralph Fiennes Alfred.

Which martial-arts star appears in live action in Lego's 2017 ninja film?

Jackie Chan plays Mr. Liu in the live-action framing story and voices Master Wu; he also choreographed Wu's fights on camera for the animators to copy.

What fictional martial art do Lloyd Garmadon and his fellow ninja practise in Lego Ninjago?

Spinjitzu turns each ninja into a whirling tornado; Lego built the theme's first toys around it, mounting the ninja minifigures on spinners.

Universal took over the Lego film rights in 2020 from which studio, maker of The Lego Movie and its sequels?

Warner Bros. owns Batman and the other DC heroes who fill its Lego films, so the switch to Universal left a planned Lego Batman sequel stranded.

Piece by Piece (2024), an animated Lego biopic, tells the life of which musician?

Pharrell Williams wanted his story told in Lego, saying he sees the world like a Lego set, built from pieces that already exist; he took the idea to director Morgan Neville in 2019.

Lego's 1998 robotics line took its name from a 1980 book by which MIT educator?

Seymour Papert, co-creator of the Logo programming language, argued that children learn best by building things; a programmable brick from his MIT lab became the product's brain.

Which 2007 set opened Lego's Modular Buildings series of detailed, minifigure-scale street scenes?

Café Corner was designed by Jamie Berard after builders asked Lego for more realistic, detailed buildings; connectors in its base let later sets join into one street.

In 2022, Lego rebranded its Creator Expert line of adult sets under what name?

Lego Icons replaced Creator Expert in June 2022; Lego had already dropped that label from boxes in 2020 in favour of plain black '18+' packaging.

Mini-doll characters Andrea, Emma, Mia, Olivia and Stephanie live in which fictional Lego town?

Heartlake City was home to the five girls for a decade; in 2023 Lego relaunched the line with eight new characters to make the cast more diverse.

Lego Pirates (1989) was the first Lego theme to include which pieces?

Firearms arrived with the pirates' flintlock pistols and muskets, a step for a company that had long debated toy weapons; the theme also brought the first faces beyond the plain smile.

Lego's original three minifigure themes were Town, Space and which?

Castle completed the trio, Town for the present, Space for the future and Castle for the past; its first fortress was bright yellow, a colour later sets dropped for more realistic castles.

Who is the pizza-delivery hero of the 1997 game Lego Island?

Pepper Roni, the skateboarding pizza-delivery boy, must recapture the escaped Brickster; the 1997 PC game was developed by Mindscape.

The Lego Dimensions starter pack story stars Batman, Wyldstyle and which wizard?

Gandalf teams up with Batman and Wyldstyle in the 2015 toys-to-life game, which was wound up in 2017, a year short of its three-year plan.

BrickLink, the Lego resale marketplace, was originally called what?

Dan Jezek launched the site in 2000 as BrickBay; after eBay objected to the name it became BrickLink, and the Lego Group bought the site outright in 2019.

Lego Hidden Side (2019), set in the town of Newbury, used a smartphone AR app to hunt and capture what?

Ghosts: pointing a phone at the built sets revealed hauntings in augmented reality; Lego retired the line at the end of 2020, less than a year and a half after launch.

Lego Monkie Kid (2020) draws on which classic Chinese story?

Journey to the West supplies the Monkey King, whose golden staff passes in Lego's version to MK, a young noodle-delivery boy chosen as his successor.

Lego's Fabuland sets of 1979 were populated by what kind of characters?

Animals such as Edward Elephant and Bonnie Bunny made Fabuland the first Lego theme whose characters had names, and they went on to star in storybooks and a children's TV series.

Lego Speed Champions launched in 2015 with Ferrari, McLaren and which German marque?

Porsche joined the first wave with its 918 Spyder; the line later grew to more than a dozen marques and starred in a 2019 Forza Horizon 4 expansion.

Which Space Shuttle, built to replace Challenger, carried 13 Lego kits to the space station in 2011?

Endeavour flew the kits on STS-134 in May 2011, and astronauts built the models to see how they behaved in microgravity.

Every board game in the 2009 Lego Games line came with a buildable Lego version of what?

A die with rubber edges came in every box, and players could swap the tiles on its faces to change how a game played; board-game designer Reiner Knizia worked on the line.

Which British studio developed Lego Dimensions and the licensed Lego video games?

Traveller's Tales, based in Knutsford, was hired to make the first of the licensed games; when Lego left the games business, ex-staff formed Giant Interactive to publish it, and the two merged in 2005 as TT Games.

Lego opened its sixth factory, billed as its most sustainable, in 2025 in which country?

Vietnam's plant cost about US$1 billion and is planned to run entirely on clean energy; Lego planted 50,000 trees, twice the number it felled to clear the site.

In 2020, Lego announced it would replace the single-use plastic packaging inside sets with what?

Paper bags: Lego said in 2020 it would phase out the single-use plastic bags inside its boxes, saying children had written in asking it to drop the plastic.

Which film car became a fan-designed Lego set in 2014, timed for its movie's 30th anniversary?

Ecto-1 was designed by Australian fan Brent Waller and released for Ghostbusters' 30th anniversary in 2014; a set of the team's firehouse followed.

A robot built from Lego Mindstorms parts and a smartphone set a 2014 world record by solving which puzzle?

Rubik's Cube was solved in 3.253 seconds by CubeStormer 3 at a science fair in Birmingham, England. Its two inventors spent 18 months perfecting the four-handed robot.

A Californian schoolboy turned a Lego Mindstorms EV3 kit into a low-cost printer for which writing system in 2014?

Braille printers usually start at about $1,900, so Shubham Banerjee built his Braigo from a $350 robotics kit for a school science fair. He later showed a second version at an Intel developers' forum.

Lego Mindstorms' entry-level Droid Developer Kit was built around which famous film robot?

R2-D2 starred in the kit, which ran on a tiny brick called the Micro Scout with one built-in motor and seven preset programs. A Dark Side sequel swapped him for an AT-AT walker.

Which wireless link, added at a fan panel's request, let the Lego Mindstorms NXT brick talk to mobile phones?

Bluetooth was one of three features that four leading hobbyists asked for, along with a 32-bit processor and stronger motors. Lego had sent them early prototypes and listened on a private forum.

Because of its high $199 price, the first Lego Mindstorms kit was sold mainly through which kind of retailer?

Electronics stores such as Best Buy and CompUSA stocked the 1998 kit instead of toy shops. Even so, the whole first production run sold out within three months.

The Lego Mindstorms NXT kit's distance sensor measures range by bouncing what off objects ahead?

Sound waves pitched too high for people to hear bounce back from an obstacle, and the sensor times the echo. It can judge distances of up to 233 centimetres.

The 3 in Lego Mindstorms EV3 marks the third generation of brick, but the letters EV are short for what?

Evolution is the thinking behind the name, as the EV3 followed the RCX and the NXT as Lego's third programmable brick. It was unveiled at the CES show in Las Vegas in January 2013.

The Lego Mindstorms EV3 brick, with a faster processor than the NXT, runs on which open-source operating system?

Linux runs on the EV3's ARM9 processor, and the brick can also boot other systems from a microSD card. Hobbyists use that slot to load ev3dev, a Debian-based alternative.

The first Lego Mindstorms brick, the RCX, was coloured yellow and black to resemble what?

Construction equipment was the look Lego wanted because the kit was aimed at boys aged 10 to 14. Market research had said they were the likeliest buyers of computerised toys.

Which humanoid robot was one of four models with building plans in the 2006 Lego Mindstorms NXT kit?

Alpha-Rex shared the kit's software with plans for a car, a robotic arm and a scorpion. The set's 577 pieces included three servo motors and four sensors to bring any of them to life.

The clip-like hands of a Lego minifigure are shaped like which letter so they can grip tools and accessories?

C is the shape that lets a minifigure hold swords, cups, wands and hundreds of other accessories. The tops of the hands are as wide as a brick's knobs, so pieces can clip on there too.

Which towering Harry Potter character got an oversized Lego minifigure body with only the head removable?

Hagrid was too big for the standard figure, so Lego moulded the half-giant a larger body whose head is the only part that comes off. Skeletons and battle droids break the usual pattern too.

Lego's founder turned leftover parts from which faded 1930s toy craze into wheels for his toy trucks?

Yo-yos sold briskly for the young firm until the fad collapsed in the mid-1930s. The leftover parts were not wasted: they rolled out of the door again as wheels on toy trucks.

What is the official name of the small lever tool Lego makes for prying stuck plates and tiles apart?

Brick separator is the name, and it works as a lever: click its nose onto a stuck plate, press the ridged tail and the angled tip pries the piece free. Lego pitches it as kinder on fingers.

In 2018 Lego began moulding its leaves, bushes and trees from a soft plastic made from which crop?

Sugarcane is turned into ethanol and then into polyethylene, the bendy plastic used for Lego's plants. Those botanical pieces make up only 1–2% of the plastic elements the company produces.

Lego Technic's smooth beams with holes but no knobs on top, introduced in 1989, are referred to by which name?

Liftarms can be pinned side by side or hinged at an angle, and their holes also serve as bearings for axles. Technic sets made since 2000 rely on these beams and pins instead of bricks.

Lego pieces have been moulded in Denmark, Hungary, China and which Mexican city?

Monterrey is one of Lego's moulding sites alongside Billund and Nyíregyháza in Hungary. An earlier North American plant in Enfield, Connecticut, made bricks from 1975 to 2006.

Lego's earliest plastic bricks were moulded from which material until a more stable plastic replaced it in 1963?

Cellulose acetate was less stable and more prone to discolouring than its replacement, which also shrugs off heat, acids and salt. The change came five years after Lego patented the modern brick design.

Which Lego designer created the modern minifigure in 1978 with its interchangeable body parts?

Jens Nygaard Knudsen gave the figure a plain smile and two dots for eyes, with no gender or race, so that a child's imagination could decide who it was.

In Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, the Joker teams up with which villain who wants to become US president?

Lex Luthor springs the Joker from his cell because he thinks the clown's laughing gas can win him the election. Their scheme pushes Batman into working with Superman and the Justice League.

Which actor from the 1960s Batman TV series is playable as himself in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham?

Adam West plays himself, as does filmmaker Kevin Smith, and both can be unlocked as playable characters. The rest of the cast is filled with actors reprising roles from other DC films and shows.

Which alien villain tries to shrink the Earth and add it to his collection in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham?

Brainiac is such a threat that the Justice League and the Legion of Doom form an unlikely alliance to stop him. He had already slipped into the previous game in a cameo teasing the sequel.

A 1,619-piece Lego DC Super Heroes set with eight minifigures stages a breakout from which Gotham institution?

Arkham Asylum Breakout came from Lego's DC Super Heroes range, which launched in late 2011 and absorbed a Batman-only toy line sold from 2006 to 2008.

In Lego Batman 2, the Deconstructor gun that takes apart unbreakable black objects is powered by which substance?

Kryptonite powers the gun that frees the Joker from his cell early in the game. Batman later tracks the weapon by tracing stolen chemicals that can be mixed into a synthetic version of the rock.

Lego Batman: The Videogame borrows its soundtrack from Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film, scored by which composer?

Danny Elfman's brooding 1989 score plays throughout the game, while the Nintendo DS version adds music from Batman Returns. The designers leaned on the Burton and Schumacher films for the look too.

Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes was the first of its studio's Lego games to replace wordless grunts with what?

Spoken dialogue arrived together with the series' first open world, a Gotham City that players could roam freely. Earlier games in the series had told their stories without a single word.

Lego Batman: The Videogame was the first of its studio's licensed Lego games to have which feature?

An original story let the designers draw on the comics, the films and the animated series at once. Finishing each hero chapter unlocks the same events told from the villains' side.

In Lego DC Super-Villains, which tyrant is revealed on Apokolips as the Crime Syndicate's secret master?

Darkseid sent the Syndicate to Earth to find the last piece of the Anti-Life Equation. Michael Ironside returned to voice him for the first time since a 2006 episode of Justice League Unlimited.

Which evil counterpart of Superman poses as reporter Kent Clarkson in Lego DC Super-Villains?

Ultraman leads a gang of villains from Earth-3 who whisk the Justice League away and pose as their heroic replacements. His fake byline feeds the public a steady diet of false news.

In Lego Elves, Emily Jones steps through a portal into which magical realm of fire, earth, wind and water elves?

Elvendale is linked to Earth by a portal that five legendary elf sisters made so that elves and humans could learn from each other. One sister, Skyra, stayed behind to guard its far end.

What magical object, inherited from her grandmother, lets Emily Jones travel between worlds in Lego Elves?

An amulet from her grandmother opens the portal, which makes it a prize worth stealing. One villain wants it so that he can open a portal of his own.

The four main Lego Elves command fire, earth, wind and water, but what is their human friend Emily's 'element'?

Love was also the element of Emily's grandmother, one of five legendary elf sisters. She gave up her immortality when she moved to Earth to guard the portal from that side.

The second Lego Elves storyline, with a queen named Elandra and a training school, was about saving which beasts?

Dragons took over the theme in 2016, with sets including a lava cave, a sanctuary and a school run by a water elf. The heroes had to rescue them from an evil elf witch.

Which platform released the 2017 animated series that retold the third Lego Elves storyline in greater detail?

Netflix released the series on 1 September 2017, after three earlier specials had aired on Disney Channel. Shorter webisodes ran on Lego's own YouTube channel throughout.

Which Lego Elves villain, an earth elf named Cronan Darkroot, kidnaps Emily Jones's younger sister Sophie?

The Goblin King uses Sophie as bait, hoping to open a portal to Earth and bring back his lost mother. He turns out to be the two girls' first cousin once removed.

Which of the four main Lego Elves is the wind elf whose favourite pastime is building machines?

Aira is the tinkerer of the group, and her sets include a workshop, an airship and a sleigh pulled by two pegasi. Earth elf Farran has a crush on her.

Which fire elf turns evil in Lego Elves after drinking from the Shadow Fountain to boost her weak powers?

Ragana gains power from the fountain at the cost of her goodness and becomes the main antagonist. She keeps two shadowy pets, a cat named Jynx and a fox named Dusti.

In Lego Elves, the dark elf Noctura shape-shifts and commands a swarm of minions of which creature?

Bats do Noctura's bidding in the theme's final storyline, and seven of them have names, including Crase, Furi and Hippo. The heroes spend it freeing giant guardian creatures from her.

In Lego Elves, the giant Elemental Guardian of water, named Cory, takes the form of which creature?

Turtle is the form of Cory, one of five guardians of the diamonds that power all elemental magic. The others include a fire lion and an earth fox, and a 2018 set staged an ambush on him.

Which of the original five Lego Friends is a singer who dreams of becoming a pop star?

Andrea is the confident performer of the group, happiest at the centre of attention. Each of the five girls was built around one interest, from art and science to sport and the outdoors.

Stephanie, the sporty Lego Friend who treats everything as a competition, is especially fond of baking what?

Cupcakes are Stephanie's speciality when she is not training or racing her friends. Her pet dog is called Dash, a fitting name for a fitness fanatic's companion.

Mia, the outdoorsy member of the original Lego Friends, had a pet named Twister that was which kind of creature?

Rabbit by species and Twister by name, the pet belonged to the group's sarcastic defender of the wilderness. Each of the five girls had one, including a dog called Dash and a hamster called Rumble.

Which media brand partnered with Lego in 2020 on Friends sets about jungle rescues and protecting wildlife?

National Geographic teamed up with Lego on sets such as Baby Elephant Jungle Rescue and Panda Jungle Tree House. The range was built around environmental issues instead of everyday town life.

Long before the toy line arrived, Lego first used the name Lego Friends in 1999 for what kind of product?

A PC game for Windows carried the name first, following five girls who played in a band. Lego described it as an experiment that grew out of research into who was buying its toys.

Autumn, the campfire-building adventurer among the Lego Friends of 2023, was born with which condition?

Limb difference is part of Autumn's design, one way the 2023 cast set out to widen who children see in the toy box. The new characters also span a range of skin tones, cultures and neurodiversity.

Lego relaunched Friends in 2023 with help from an institute named after which actress?

Geena Davis lends her name to the institute that Lego worked with to make its eight new characters more diverse. Unlike the original five, the new line-up includes boys.

Which Lego line of doll-like figures, introduced in 1994, was the direct forerunner of Lego Friends?

Belville used figures that could not be customised, a limit the later mini-dolls did away with. Lego had courted the same audience even earlier, with Scala jewellery in 1979.

Which inventor of the Segway co-founded FIRST, the group that launched a Lego robot league for children in 1998?

Dean Kamen started FIRST in 1989 with Woodie Flowers to get students excited about engineering and technology. Its league for 9- to 14-year-olds began the same year Mindstorms went on sale.

In 2004 Lego launched which extra-large brick for children aged one to three, bigger even than its preschool blocks?

Quatro bricks were four times the dimensions of a standard brick, as the name hints. They were made to stack together with Lego's other preschool blocks.

Which late-night talk show host appears as himself as the player's guide in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham?

Conan O'Brien acts as the game's guide, and the developers also announced him as a playable character at New York Comic Con in 2014.