In 1949, after decades of making wooden furniture and toys, Ole Kirk Christiansen's small factory in Billund, Denmark, moved to plastic and created the 'Automatic Binding Bricks', which would later be known as LEGO. When the company patented the tube system in 1958, LEGO became the dominant toy line worldwide throughout the 1960s and 1970s. When other competitors capitalized on the expiration of the company's patents in the 1980s, LEGO faced stiff competition until they reported their first loss in 1998. Poor business decisions with film licenses and the failure of the Jack Stone and Galidor lines brought LEGO to near-bankruptcy until Jørgen Vig Knudstorp took over the company and, by bringing it back to its roots, rejuvenated LEGO's profits. By the time The Lego Movie hit theaters in 2014, LEGO became the largest toy franchise in the world.
In 1983 Hasbro bought the license of the Diaclone and Micro Change toys from Takara, then commissioned Marvel Comics to come up with a story-line and character names for the toys. The result: Transformers. Despite Tonka releasing the cheaper Gobots line six months earlier, Hasbro's Transformers took the toy market by storm in 1984, raking in US$150 million that year. At the peak of the toy line's popularity, The Transformers: The Movie hit theaters to further capitalize on its success, but the film polarized fans and collectors with the death of Optimus Prime and majority of the original characters. As Hasbro took full control of Transformers from Takara by the late 1980s, sales declined until the toy line was discontinued in 1991. After the failed Generation 2 reboot, Beast Wars rejuvenated the franchise in 1995. In 2007, the live-action Transformers film solidified Transformers' position as Hasbro's flagship toy line.
In the Youtube video galaxy a new star has been born: the ASMR videos. It stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, and refers to the pleasant feeling that users associate with this type of digital content. The physical reaction also changes significantly from individual to individual and people reportedly experience a pleasant feeling of tingling in the scalp, which can spread to the shoulders and back, and usually be accompanied by a feeling of relaxation and generalised well-being. The intensity of the response can also be very strong, so much so that some have used the word 'braingasm', literally 'brain orgasm' to express the feeling. It's likely that you've already heard about it, but if not, this is the perfect opportunity to learn more about it. Especially because, for the first time, it seems that the benefits of ASMR videos have been scientifically proven.
The true, stranger-than-fiction, adventure of eight visionaries who in 1991 spent two years quarantined inside of a self-engineered replica of Earth's ecosystem called Biosphere 2. The experiment was a worldwide phenomenon, chronicling daily existence in the face of life threatening ecological disaster and a growing criticism that it was nothing more than a cult. The bizarre story is both a cautionary tale and a hopeful lesson of how a small group of dreamers can potentially re-imagine a new world.
Since the original series went on the air in 1966, the Star Trek franchise has had a history of ups and downs in the toy business - from AMT's faithful scale model kit of the USS Enterprise to Remco's obscure tie-in merchandise, to Mego's best–selling action figure line. Following Mego's bankruptcy in 1983 and a string of flops by Ertl and Galoob, Playmates Toys picked up the toy license in the late 1980s and sparked a resurgence in the franchise's toy sales. From the mid-2000s onwards, companies such as Art Asylum and McFarlane Toys continue to keep the Star Trek toy franchise alive.
Explore the hottest area of bioscience, genomics with stunning live image, quality CGI, the forefront research, and real human stories. Previously it was thought that only 2% of our DNA is meaningful and the remaining 98% is non-coding 'junk'. But today we are beginning to know how the junk part of our DNA works to decide our personal characteristics and tendencies.
By the time The Lego Movie hit theaters in 2014, LEGO became the largest toy franchise in the world.