The 2017 Budget speech has been built with bricks by the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Sciences (Gibs).Instead of only depicting numbers and figures, Gibs used innovation through Lego to illustrate the impact that this year’s Budget will have on South Africa’s diverse nation. Gibs used its inner “master builder” and created an easy, original and understandable summary of the 2017 Budget using the brick-building toy. The video, framed through a TV news report, used Lego figurines, a parliament, some government buildings and even a newsroom - all built out of plastic Lego bricks in a bid to make the Budget more accessible to all South Africans. Lego props like fake money and even a safe were demonstrated to explain some of the figures announced during the long-awaited speech delivered by Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan on Wednesday. A yellow figure standing in the Lego parliament wearing glasses and a smart black suit with a silver tie represented Gordhan while MPs were dressed in plain black, different coloured smart suits, dungarees.
Some were dressed in red, representing the EFF. Several buildings were built to represent the SA Social Security Agency, universities and even a farming area. They were used in the video as examples to summarise certain aspects of the speech, including the money that will be spent on social grants and NSFAS, as well as money that will be transferred to universities. The farming scene built out of Lego used brown platforms, scarce vegetation and plastic Lego bones to highlight that food inflation continues to be high due to the drought. A Lego tourist figurine holding a camera also stood in front of what looked like Table Mountain and Cape Town built from a range of bricks, while the budget for tourism was explained. Part of the brilliance of the video was the diversity of Lego figurines used to represent all types of South Africans from varying backgrounds, from students, to the working class, middle-class, adults and children and the wealthy in the country. A fake bar and even a petrol station, all built creatively with colour and character from Lego, uses mock-alcohol and cars to illustrate scenes that represented the increase in the fuel levy and excise duty for tobacco and alcohol.
The importance of State Owned Enterprises and the role they play in the private sector was also displayed, using well-built Lego hospitals, police stations, ambulances and police cars dealing with emergencies and criminals. The video went viral across social media. Users praised Gibs, describing it as “brilliant” and “top stuff”.Lego USA, a Danish manufacturer of children's toys and games has been a family owned company since its' founding by Ole Clirk Christiansen in 1932. Lego USA believes in supporting children's creativity through learning and playing. The world famous Lego toys are made through safe, ethical and environmentally friendly procedures, so when you buy Lego USA for your children, you can be sure that they are playing with safe products. In 2013, Lego USA became the most valuable toy company in the world.Lego USA offers toys and games for boys and girls from under 2 years old to over 12. From Mini Figures to Bricks to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Lord of the Rings figurines, Lego USA has toys for everyone.
Whether you want to boost your child's creativity, enjoyment or learning, Lego USA has a variety of choices! Lego USA Hero Factory will inspire your children to become heroes. Discover the architect potential in your child with Lego USA Architecture for building the skyscrapers and cities of the future. Finally, test Lego USA's most successful recent collection, Lego USA Friends. Most of Lego USA products are under $75.Buy Lego in the USA and ship to your home country with Borderlinx. You pay cheap international shipping, tax & duties upfront, which you can calculate before purchasing with our shipping cost calculator. A number of services are available through Borderlinx to make international ordering from Lego USA hassle-free, including concierge, free repacking and consolidation services.BILLUND, Denmark – In a low-rise factory on the outskirts of Billund, a small town in western Denmark, robots stand holding trays at the ready as pistons spit out hundreds of pieces of Lego every few seconds.
The plant churns out 100-million of the brightly coloured plastic bricks every day and is set to increase output this year, in line with Lego's ambitions to dominate the global toy market. The Danish company could overtake Barbie doll maker Mattel as the world's biggest toymaker this year, analysts say, helped by its push into movie franchises, video games and smartphone applications. Most of its 25 box-set themes now have some digital content: Nexo Knights, introduced last year for example, comes with an app game. Yet, while Lego has embraced the digital age as more kids play games on iPads and smartphones, parents who fret that their children spend too much time staring at screens shouldn't worry: online is not the toymaker's ultimate destination. Rather, its digital push is aimed at bringing children back to its core product: the Lego brick, first produced in its current form in 1958. The driving force is extrovert, quirky CEO Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, appointed in 2004, a year after the company flirted with bankruptcy, and the first chief executive from outside the Kristiansen clan, Denmark's richest family.
He set about reviving Lego's core business, by firing consultants and hiring new designers to come up with higher-margin products that were up to date but still looked like Lego, an abbreviation of the Danish "leg godt", meaning "play well". One of the biggest toy companies on earth owes its turnaround to a child skateboarder - https://t.co/n8o8lQuzo3 — Jose Javier Garde (@jose_garde) March 9, 2016 The company now has 250 designers and launched 350 products last year. They included the Lego Dimensions box set, which puts together characters from Lord of the Rings, Batman and the Lego movie, allowing kids to build portals and vehicles which are transferred to an online game by placing the pieces on an electronic "toy pad". Announcing another year of record results last month, Knudstorp, 47, made a celebratory star-jump after Lego overtook My Little Pony producer Hasbro to become the world's second-largest toy company, with revenues of 36-billion Danish crowns (R81,5bn).
If the company's projections for high single-digit revenue growth this year prove correct, it will beat Mattel to take the No 1 spot, analysts say. "If you look at the toy market through 50 years, you'll find there's always Lego ... At the same time we recognise, to stay at the top of the wishlist, we need to do something new and exciting," Knudstorp said. "I think that's how we can continue to, not go fully digital, but leverage the digital technology as a way of making the physical play even more exciting," he told Reuters from his office packed with box sets and a large model of Darth Vadar's Lambada spaceship. Not constrained by reality Lego argues that some of its digital content is free and can be enjoyed without buying a box set, and so is not even a marketing tool. Rather, children are simply attracted to the "seamless play" between the physical and digital worlds. "The vast majority (of sales), with a capital 'V', comes from bricks," chief financial oficer John Goodwin said.
Stephanie Wissink, a US-based analyst at Pipe Jaffray & Co covering Mattel and Hasbro, said toy companies have had to shift their attitudes to digital play given that many children these days own several digital devices. "Initially companies went down the path of almost trying to convey to the parents that you're a bad parent if you let your kid play on a digital device," she said. Although that stigma has disappeared, the digitalisation is "not replacing a physical play opportunity, it's complementing it", she said. Ricco Rejnholdt Krog, a design director at Lego, says children are brought in weekly to test-drive products and twice a year the designers travel around the world testing themes and changes. "We're really listening, we're paying attention to what they say," he said. Designers made changes to a police station box set after a Chinese child complained there weren't enough get-away possibilities to make for exciting "cops and robbers" play, he said.