Everything You Need to Know About the History Collection Tours at LEGO House
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A few days ago a new series of virtual tours of the History Collection located in the basement of LEGO House was announced. A similar initiative took place last year when LEGO House was first forced to close due to the pandemic, allowing online guests a rare view into some of the artifacts and stories from LEGO’s past.
This year, the virtual tours are returning and will follow the same pattern: every tour will last 60 minutes and will be repeated twice; one in the morning and one in the afternoon (Billund time). When they announced these new tours, LEGO also said they’re also going to cover topics not discussed last year, so it might be a good idea to attend these again even if you already did last year.
The tours have the same exact titles as last year, so we can expect a new and updated version of the same topics. Since every session includes a Q&A session (about half of the tour, last year) every session can be very different and unique.
LEGO History Collection Virtual Tours
Here are the dates and subject of the upcoming tours with abbreviated descriptions. Full details can be found and tickets can be purchased on the LEGO House website.
Tour 1: May 6, 2021
The beginning of the LEGO Group, 1932 - 1946
Wonder how it all started? The tour will touch upon the background of LEGO founder Ole Kirk Kristiansen and how he started the company as well as cover the ups and downs he had to endure in the company’s first years of existence.
Tour 2: June 22, 2021
Consolidating Plastic, 1947 - 1961
Want to know more about the big gamechanger for the LEGO Group? The game-changer happened in 1958 when the LEGO brick was introduced, but many other activities in the late 1940s and up through the 1950s contributed to creating the foundation of the company we know today.
Tour 3: August 30, 2021
Expanding the LEGO System in Play, 1962 - 1978
Wonder how LEGO System in Play secured great expansion? Learn more about how the LEGO System in Play was expanded up through the 1960s and 1970s, the background for creating the first LEGOLAND Park and who the first CEO/Managing Director to come from outside the owner family was.
Tour 4: October 11, 2021
Introducing New Ideas, 1979 - 2001
Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen and his many great ideas. We will look into the introduction of storytelling, how the appearance of the minifigure was changed, the introduction of our first brick-built IP products and more.
Tour 5: November 8, 2021
Crisis and Turnaround, 2002 - 2020
How do you make a turnaround in a giant crisis? We will look into the crisis and turnaround and other contemporary topics such as the AFOL community and sustainability.
Meet Your Tour Guide
The host will once again be LEGO Corporate Historian Kristian Reimer. I’m sure many of you are familiar with him since he tends to be the most public face of the LEGO Idea House (the company’s private museum, not the one in the LEGO House). If you don’t know him, here’s a good interview with him, hosted by The Rambling Brick’s Richard Jones earlier this year at Brickvention Australia Online.
Kristian is a very good tour guide, and I’ll digress shortly to explain why I feel this is very important for me to point out. In 2015, The LEGO Group introduced “LUG Tours” in Billund for recognized communities, and as a LAN Ambassador, I was fast enough to secure one of the very first tours for my LUG. The tour included visits to the Kornmarken factory and to the LEGO Idea House. Kristian was our host during the visit at the LEGO Idea House, and even though I only partly participated in his guided tour (we were also visiting the famous “vault” underneath the building at the same time and I had to organize groups), I was absolutely blown away by what I saw and the personable way he presented information.
It was that visit that really got me interested in LEGO history, and I’m not overstating when I say that that day changed my life. And it was, at least in part, thanks to Kristian. Sadly, those physical tours are long gone, but I keep hoping that The LEGO Group will bring them back in the future, somehow.
Since I’m mentioning the LEGO Idea House I suspect that some people might be confused or believe that it doesn’t exist anymore since we now have LEGO House with its history collection accessible to the public—but that’s not true. On the contrary, LEGO recently made renovations (especially in Ole Kirk’s House)—it’s now the LEGO Idea House and is more beautiful than ever! Its purpose is very different: it’s for LEGO employees and partners, and it’s generally supposed to be visited with a guide—while LEGO House’s History Collection can be visited individually, without the need of a guide (even though a guide is always welcome, like in these tours!). Here is a photo of Ole Kirk’s House which is just down the street from LEGO House.
Price and Content
There’s also one big difference in these tours, compared to last year. The bad news is that this time the tours will not be free like last year, but the good news is that they are actually rather cheap at 50 DKK (about $8/€7) per tour. I hope that the reason for this new “ticket” is for them to make these tours self-sustainable and to maybe make it possible to continue having them in the future—even in the post-pandemic world. We European people who travel a lot can go to LEGO House dozens of times per year—we’re lucky that way—but the rest of the world is not. So these online experiences, just like what is happening for all online events, might become a great addition to the “real thing” in the future.
I also wanted to briefly touch on the content of the tours themselves; last year all of the main topics of LEGO history were covered, also including some minor ones. For example, one detail I remember very clearly was when Kristian explained what “a LEGO historian does” including making cool new discoveries in their huge archives. One of these discoveries was a recently-found drawing (and the details that came with it) that helped them realize it had been Godtfred Kirk Christiansen in person to come up with the idea of the tubes inside the brick and that he had come up with the basic sketches for the system in a matter of days (as I mentioned earlier this year discussing the LEGO patent).
Here’s a quick screengrab of him explaining the drawing in detail.
Last year, I watched all of the online tours and I loved every minute of them. Of course, since I’m into LEGO history, the most interesting were the first ones about the early years. I suppose that most AFOLs would be more interested in tours number three and especially four. The 1970s - 80s are the years when most of today’s AFOLs were born and grew up, so there’s a huge nostalgia factor. Having said this, I would suggest to anyone to start from the very first ones. You will find them extremely interesting and informative. After all, even I was more interested in the stuff from when I was a kid at first… but that’s not true anymore!
The History Collection
Finally, I’ll explain a little how the History Collection is organized so you can better understand the tours and to also help you if (and hopefully when!) you visit in person. The collection is in the basement of LEGO House, and is basically built around a room shaped like a huge 2x4 brick. This 2x4 room in the middle has showcases of LEGO sets through time on the walls and in the center where the giant brick’s tubes would be.
Outside of this room, along the four sides, is the actual chronological exhibition (which is covered in the tours). When you arrive in the basement of LEGO House, you find yourself in an anti-chamber with a few LEGO moulds under the floor (visible through a transparent panel) which represent the old moulds that used to be buried underneath old LEGO factories after they’d been decommissioned. Then you see a huge LEGO logo built mainly with minifig accessories.
From there, by turning left, you begin the actual tour. It starts in 1891, the year when Ole Kirk Kristiansen was born, and from there you can walk through the years and decades in the area around the central 2x4 room. Facts about the history of the company and the people who made it are written in English and Danish along the walls. And there are dozens of displays with photos, documents and of course toys! They start with old wooden toys and end with today’s newest things.
There are also a few monitors showing old videos from the factory and offices in Billund in the 1950s and 1960s (and also later commercials LEGO produced). You can very easily spend hours down there. I know I’ve done that… and I can’t wait to set foot there again as soon as it is possible! It’s one of the places I have missed the most.
Here are a few images from the History Collection that I took before the pandemic. If these photos don’t make you feel like running there this very instant, I don’t know what could!
In the meanwhile, I will attend these new updated tours, and my hope is that you will too. So don’t waste another minute and go book! (A little ticketing help: when you select the date from the calendar, the page jumps up to the start and it seems like it’s not working. But it is, just scroll back down and you’ll find the link to proceed with the booking just before the calendar.)
Believe me, they’re worth it.
Will you attend the virtual LEGO History Collection tours? What would you be most interested in learning about? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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