Toy World spoke to Marius Lang to find out how Lego has fared during lockdown and its plans for the rest of the year.

As widely reported throughout the lockdown, construction toys have been more popular than ever with families and kids wanting to engage in fun building projects at home. Marius Lang, UK & Ireland head of marketing at Lego, tells us more about how the company has weathered the past three months and its plans for the remainder of 2020.

“We know that many families turned to building with Lego bricks to help them through these difficult times and we’ve continued to see a strong demand for them,” comments Marius, “We’ve been incredibly inspired to hear so many stories of families enjoying playing with Lego bricks together at home, and to see some of the amazing Lego creations that are being shared by people of all ages on social media.”

As well as providing much-needed play value whilst the UK stayed home over recent months, The Lego Group has also continued to promote campaigns and lead charity initiatives to help some of those impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Marius explains, “Inspired by the magnitude of the impact of the crisis on children’s education, we launched our #LetsBuildtogether initiative to help keep kids at home learning through play. We created www.lego.com/letsbuildtogether and #letsbuildtogether across our social channels as a way to share building ideas, challenges set by Lego designers, retro builds and live build-a-longs with fans everywhere.”

The Lego Foundation also recently donated $50m to charity partners around the world who are helping with Covid-19 relief efforts. In the UK,  more than £200,000 has been donated to UK children’s charities to support local communities. Long-standing partner, Fairy Bricks, has donated more than 30,000 Lego sets to the children of NHS workers, as part of Lego’s commitment to give 500,000 Lego sets to children-in-need across the globe.

Whilst working to help those in need during this difficult period, Lego continued to trade online via Lego.com, as well as the online channels of its retail and grocery partners. Now that the high street, including Lego’s own stores, is able to reopen, Marius reveals more about what’s to come for the second half of 2020.

“We have an incredibly strong line up of products available during the remainder of this year, which presents us with many opportunities from both a trade and marketing standpoint,” Marius told Toy World. “We have just launched exciting new sets for Lego City and Lego friends, as well as a brand-new wave of Lego Harry Potter sets which will continue the success of this theme. We have more exciting campaigns launching over the rest of the year. We will be supporting and inspiring families with learning through play over the summer months, and lots of activity is planned for the launch of Lego Super Mario in August. We’ll also be continuing our Rebuild the World campaign, which aims to nurture the creative skills of the next generation. And let’s not forget, Christmas is creeping up fast…”

Find out more about Lego’s plans for autumn/winter 2020 in the July issue of Toy World, here.