Danish Designer Who Created LEGO Minifigure Dies

This little figure became a symbol of the popular construction toy series.

Danish designer Jens Nygaard Knudsen, a LEGO veteran who worked as a designer for more than 30 years, has died in Denmark at the age of 78. In the 1970s, he created the popular LEGO minifigure, a figure with movable arms and legs. The minifigure is considered a true symbol of the construction toy series.

The death of Knudsen was reported on Twitter by LEGO designer Mark John Stafford: "On Wednesday, February 19, former LEGO chief designer and creator of the LEGO Minifig Jens Nygaard Knudsen passed away at the age of 78. He left behind a loving wife, 3 children, 2 grandchildren and more than 8 billion small plastic figures filled with life by children's imagination. Thank you, Jens."

The first LEGO figures appeared in 1974, but they looked very different from modern ones. At first, it was a family consisting of parents, a son, a daughter and a grandmother. A year later, more versatile figures appeared, but they still had no facial expressions or movable parts, and the main difference was the hats.

In 1978, Jens Knudsen decided to change the figures and introduced the first character of the LEGO Minifigure series: a smiling policeman with a car made from the construction set. The standard figure was "genderless," with yellow skin and hands with attachment points for objects.

Since then, many different LEGO figures have appeared, but the image created by Knudsen has barely changed. According to the company, almost 8 billion figures have been sold worldwide, and they have become part of pop culture.

Jens Nygaard Knudsen suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. LEGO chief designer Matthew Ashton also wrote on Twitter about Knudsen's death: "Extremely sad news: this week Jens Nygaard Knudsen (creator of the #LEGO Minifigure) passed away! Although I never met Jens, what he created played a huge role for me as a child, as it did for millions of other children around the world."