Lego Minifigs Will Outnumber Humanity By 2019

Lego Minifigs Will Outnumber Humanity By 2019

The number of Lego people in the world will outnumber actual humans by 2019, it has been shakily established.

According to the cult comic XKCD, whose surprisingly robust maths has answered many intriguing conundrums over the years, more Lego minifigs than human children are produced every year.

From the launch of the plastic MiniFig in 1978, Lego was able to produce a massive 4 billion Minifigs by 2006.

Extrapolating forwards, XKCD has managed to work out with back-of-the-envelope maths that there will be 8 billion Minifigs - and humans - in about six years time.

As the comic notes, by that point we will be technically outnumbered - ignoring the number of Minifigs that have been melted, destroyed or thrown away since 1978, that is.

It's a neat figure, but the way in which it's been reported by national newspapers perhaps says more about our own sense of paranoia than Lego's current resurgence.

On the other hand, it was recently demonstrated that Lego figures themselves are angrier, more complex and arguably more paranoid than they've ever been. So it's not just us...

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