Today’s word of the day, courtesy of Vocabulary.com, is ineluctable (https://www.vocabulary.com/word-of-the-day/), which defines the adjective as “impossible to avoid.” Dictionary.com defines it as “incapable of being evaded; inescapable” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ineluctable).

Etymonline defines ineluctable as “’not to be escaped by struggling,’ 1620s, from French inéluctable (15c.) or directly from Latin ineluctabilis ‘unavoidable, inevitable,’ from in– ‘not, opposite of’ (see in- (1)) + eluctabilis ‘that may be escaped from,’ from eluctari ‘to struggle out of,’ from ex ‘out, out of’ (see ex-) + luctari ‘to struggle’ (see reluctance)” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=ineluctable).

On this date in 1958, the Lego Group patented its design of interlocking bricks.

The Lego company was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891-1958). Christiansen was a carpenter. Initially, he made furniture, but the Great Depression, which was a world-wide phenomenon and not limited to the United States, hurt his business. So in 1932, he began making toys, naming his new company Lego. The name comes from contracting two Danish words, leg godt /lɑjˀ ˈkʌt/, which translate as “play well.”

After a warehouse fire destroyed some of the company’s inventory, the company looked to move toward plastic toys. Christiansen purchased his first plastic injection machine in 1946. Then he got the idea of making interlocking plastic bricks, which initially were called Automatic Binding Bricks, a not-very-appealing name for children’s toys, and the Danish (automatisk bindesten) isn’t much better.

According to the official Lego website, Christiansen had to convince his sons of the usefulness of these bricks: “’Have you no faith? Can’t you see that if we do this right, we can sell these bricks all over the world?’” (https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/lego-group/the-lego-group-history). In 1953, the Automatic Binding Bricks are renamed Lego® Mursten (Lego bricks), and the word Lego is printed on every brick from that point forward. In 1955, Christiansen’s son, Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, introduced the Lego® System in Play, allowing the blocks to be added to and added to. Christiansen said, “Our idea has been to create a toy that prepares a child for life—appealing to their imagination and developing the creative urge and joy of creation that are the driving forces in every human being” (https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/lego-group/the-lego-group-history).

So how successful has the Lego Group been. In 2017, after experiencing the first reduction in revenues since 2004, the Lego Group announced layoffs. But according to Insider Monkey, an investment website, the Lego Group is now the world’s largest toy manufacturer, with 2022 sales revenue of over $8 billion (https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/5-biggest-toy-companies-in-the-world-1147291/5/). I suspect that at least part of the turnaround at the Lego Group relates to the COVID-19 pandemic that forced people to stay home more. But I have no statistics to back that up.

There must be something addictive about Legos, at least for some people. For instance, my wife and my second daughter got interested in Legos a few years ago. The excuse was my grandson, but Lego sets have become the go-to gift choice for not only grandchildren but even children (all of whom are grown) and other family members. My sister-in-law has a display case devoted to put-together Lego sets. We have a Lego room in both my house and my daughter’s house. My wife takes Legos with her on car trips and “organizes” pieces. She also buys random collections of bricks from thrift stores and websites as well as the sets.

I do know one thing about Legos: they have changed my life in one particular way. I now wear something one my feet when I get up at night. Why? If there is one thing that is ineluctable about Legos, it is that some will be left on the floor. And my bare feet will find them.

The image today is from the Heads Up website of Scout Life. It’s a picture of a life-sized X-Wing from Star Wars, built out of over 5,000,000 Legos: “The X-Wing was built at the Lego Model Shop in Kladno, Czech Republic, taking 32 “master builders” 17,336 hours to construct” (https://headsup.scoutlife.org/the-worlds-largest-lego-model/).