Interesting Facts
In terms of sheer revenue, Michelin is the king of tires. But when it comes to the number of actual tires produced, the No. 1 manufacturer is more surprising: Lego.
The toy company makes more than 300 million tiny tires every year, which is nearly 100 million more than Michelin, Bridgestone, or any other corporation whose considerably larger products are made for actual automobiles. Lego’s tire production peaked in 2010, when it made 381 million — enough for 95 million of its classic Batmobiles.
Though some may question whether Lego’s tires truly qualify for this metric, Guinness World Records is of the opinion that they “do fit all descriptions of a standard tire” and that the “rubber compound used for the Lego products would not be out of place on a domestic car.” The toy company — whose name comes from the first two letters of the Danish words leg godt, meaning “play well” — introduced its first cars in the early 1960s. Popular Lego cars today include the pink 2 Fast 2 Furious Honda S2000, the enchanted flying Ford Anglia from Harry Potter, and a yellow taxi serving the fair city of Bricksburg, among many others.
Numbers Don't Lie
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The bestselling Lego set of all time is the ______.
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The bestselling Lego set of all time is the Mindstorms RIS 2.0.
There are 80 Lego bricks for every person on Earth.
There are 68,000 Lego bricks produced every minute, which works out to 36 billion a year. According to the company, there aren’t just more Lego bricks than there are people in the world — there are, in fact, 80 bricks for each person.
With 8 billion people in the world, that comes out to about 640 billion bricks that currently exist (and counting). What’s more, Lego’s quality control is so consistent that bricks produced in 1958 would still connect with those made today, which helps explain why the toy has been so enduringly popular.
Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.
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