Lego facts

Businessweek.com has an article about how LEGO bricks are made. The article contains a number of interesting facts:

• in 2000, LEGO was named "Toy of the Century" by Fortune magazine as well as by the British Toy Retailers Assn., beating out such other classics as the teddy bear and Mattel's Barbie;
• the bricks produced today can interlock with those produced back in 1958;
• the bricks are so versatile that the LEGO Group has calculated that just six eight-stud bricks can be arranged in 915,103,765 different ways;
• LEGO is the largest tire manufacturer in the world, it produces 306 million tiny rubber tires a year;
• the production process is so air tight that only 18 of 1 million pieces are considered defective; and
• in 2004, the company launched LEGOfactory.com, where anyone can download a LEGO Digital Designer and build his own LEGO model. After that, you can either save it in a gallery or buy the pieces needed and have it sent to your home to build it in real life.

To take a look at how the classic LEGO bricks are made: click here for the slide show.