That's LEGO mania.

And this is a LEGO product now.

Everything is awesome.

That's because the company has become more than just blocks.

They have video games, movies, theme parks, all these activities which ultimately reinforce the core, which is the sale of LEGO sets.

All that content helped it become the world's largest toy maker, raking in billions of dollars every year.

Here's how the company uses licensing deals and media to expand its customer base and build its content empire.

This is the economics of LEGO.

LEGO is 90 years old.

It was founded in Denmark in 1932, and initially it was a company that made wooden toys, but then in the 1950s, it launched its trademark product, the one we all know now, the plastic LEGO brick.

Since then, LEGO has beat out Hasbro and Mattel to become the biggest toy brand worldwide.

In the first six months of 2022, the company's revenue hit 27 billion Danish kroner, or about $3.47 billion, up 17% from 2021.

And it's anticipating growing demand, so much so that the company's building two new factories in the U.S. and Vietnam.

LEGO has made the bricks the building blocks of its business.

LEGO is still essentially a toy company.

What they always say is that their core is still to make the plastic bricks for kids.

But of course, they do now do a lot more than that.

Some of LEGO's first moves into content started in the 1990s.

The islanders are right behind us!

When the company's sales slumped, it was trying everything, from new toys to electronics to theme parks.

Can you find the power?

Bionicle.

Bionicle came along in the early 2000s, and that was a time when the LEGO brand was actually in danger of becoming a little bit stale.

The Bionicle franchise featured buildable action figures and multi-platform storytelling.

Agile, determined, unstoppable.

The franchise built a content universe through comics, books, movies, and video games.

The bet proved successful.

In 2003, when the toy maker saw a 26% loss in net sales, Bionicle was its best-selling line.

And it really revitalized the brand and showed them a way that they could engage audiences with different types of content, with cartoons, movies, comics.

And it wasn't just original stories.

LEGO released its first sets based off of licensed material in 1999, Star Wars.

In 2005, it brought that into content with a five-minute short called Revenge of the Brick that aired on Cartoon Network.

It was a twist, of course, on the Revenge of the Sith, which was the Star Wars movie which came out at the time.

That really paved the way for the content partnerships which we've seen in subsequent years.

That LEGO twist has since been put to use on all sorts of franchises, like Batman, Marvel, and Jurassic World.

Really, we're now used to seeing not just the basic LEGO kits, but LEGO Star Wars kits and so on.

That's really an integral part of what LEGO does now.

So it's really the content has changed LEGO's identity.

We think of it as part of these popular franchises which we all know, like Marvel.

And licensed material was on full display on the company's smash hit, 2014's The LEGO Movie, which grossed over $450 million worldwide.

It held the top spot in the U.S. box office for three weeks after its release.

Superman, Wonder Woman, The Mermaid, Michelangelo, and the 2002 NBA All-Stars.

The goal of The LEGO Movie was to market LEGO to a wider audience.

I think it was a lot more successful than anyone imagined.

It was a very successful movie in its own right, a big hit at the box office.

That laid the template for a lot of the content creation that LEGO has done since then.

LEGO and Warner Brothers released three more feature films, the latest in 2019.

None earned as much as the first.

Of course, there is a risk of oversaturation.

LEGO doesn't want to do too much, but I think they're still very much at the stage of growing in a lot of markets.

Content has helped the toy maker break into new places, like China, where LEGO is growing its presence.

Of the 66 new stores it opened in the first half of 2022, 46 of those were in China.

Almost 42% of the company's 833 locations are there.

Movies and games assist in raising awareness of the brand.

The main challenge LEGO has faced in new markets like China is that the grownups, the parents, just don't really know about LEGO.

They don't have LEGO in their own backgrounds like a lot of grownups in the U.S. and Europe do.

And using licensed material in that content also helps reach more audiences.

Being part of these popular franchises like the Avengers, for example, is a great way for LEGO to reach out to all kinds of different generations, people across the world, people who don't necessarily even know LEGO.

Content is also a way for it to appeal to its adult fans, as the brand has been trying to do in recent years.

Find your flow.

Build with LEGO bricks.

Reality TV show LEGO Masters, for example, features adults building extreme creations out of the titular plastic bricks.

The original LEGO fans took to LEGO as kids, and they're now grown up, and a lot of those people are still very keen on LEGO.

And I think LEGO very smartly realized that a lot of those people would be willing to buy kits that are pretty complex, pretty expensive, and are designed specifically for grownups.

The company has its eyes set beyond just the two-dimensional screen.

Last April, LEGO and Epic Games announced a partnership to build a digital experience in the metaverse.

All of this content, certainly in the company's current thinking, the movies, the games, that all is there to support the core product, which is the same as it has been for decades, the plastic brick.