Jens Nygaard Knudsen, creator of the Lego doll, died

Jens Nygaard Knudsen, the creator of the world famous legopoppetje, has passed away. The Dane died on Wednesday at the age of 78, report from employees of the toy manufacturer. “He leaves behind a loving woman, three children, two grandchildren and more than eight billion little plastic people who have been brought to life in the imagination of children,” wrote Lego designer Mark John Stafford Friday on Twitter.

Knudsen has worked for LEGO since 1968 and was head of design at the company for many years. In 1978 he came up with the minifigur, the well-known modular, yellow plastic doll with movable arms and legs. LEGO could use human figures well. The houses and villages that could have been built with the blocks since the 1950s had remained uninhabited almost all the time.

The system

The minifig, as the famous Lego doll is commonly called today, was not the first attempt to get life in the Lego world. A few years earlier a family with round heads, lanky arms and immobile legs was introduced. They thought it was nice, but in terms of scale they did not match the rest at all. Way too big. It was up to Knudsen to turn it into a real Lego.

To turn a plastic figure into a serious lego character, he had to fit in better with what is known as The System within LEGO: the sacred collection of lego laws that have been making all those neutral, modular blocks since the invention (the patent is January 28) Applied in 1958 at two to two in the afternoon, the company proudly stated that they fit together. The laws were violated by that lanky family. Not only because their scale did not fit in with the System, but also because they left hardly any room for the imagination and enthusiasm of the child playing with it.

To create fantasy space, the first real minifig received no natural skin color and no recognizable gender. They started out as yellow astronauts, with a helmet that can go on and off and make room for clickable hair. Their hands are designed so that they can hold something, shoulders and wrists are movable. Their feet connect to the blocks, the legs bend to sit or walk. An enigmatic smile on their faces.

Eight billion

Lego dolls are no longer as neutral as the first minifigs. They have existed for years with other facial expressions, natural skin colors and a wide range of hairstyles, clothes, professions and accessories. According to BrickLink, a website that has mapped out all minifigs, 11,861 different variants have already been designed. There are even films and games made about the dolls.

“I don’t think I would have touched lego as a child if there hadn’t been a LEGO Minifigure,” wrote current design chief Matthew Ashton in response to the death of his predecessor Knudsen. “They were the entry point for me, giving all those other pieces of plastic a life, personality, inspiration and a story.” The fact that the world now has roughly as many Lego dolls as people, suggests that Ashton is not the only one.

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