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In 2015, Lego was named the world's most powerful brand.

Ooh!

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ

From their headquarters in Denmark,

the family-owned company has become a global giant.

Christmas is a time for some of Lego's boldest projects.

It comes out at 1.7 tons.

From the designers of best-selling Christmas toys…

You know, we had to put this in a robot,

and I think it ran for around 136,000 revolutions.

…to the multilingual Lego call centre

at its busiest time of year.

I know it's like a madness today, it's Black Friday,

but I'm sure that something positive will come out of it.

Step into the Christmas world

of those who worship the brick.

This size is about 18 pence.

We're talking about £90,000 worth of Lego.

Christmas brings on Lego-mania

in the most unlikely places.

Husband and wife Mike and Catherine have been building their Lego collection

for more than 40 years.

How much Lego do you think is in the house altogether?

Er, too much.

I say we've got too much and we need to stop.

And I say we never have enough.

Probably somewhere in the region of half a million bricks.

Let's have a look at our…

Mike and Catherine's Lego obsession

piques every year at Christmas time.

When they build a somewhat unusual centrepiece for their front room.

Pictures of the early models.

They build everything from a giant Santa to the local church.

That's very disappointing.

And even that great festive tradition,

a Christmas Dalek.

And this is probably our most famous model,

this is the one that went sort of viral all over the world.

We had people from America contacting us,

and China, I don't know what the Chinese made of it.

Because it was a Dalek

- with Christmas baubles. - Yes, a Christmas Dalek.

We're trying to get the kids more involved

because they were starting to get off doing models,

and we thought a Dalek would be perfect for them.

So that's probably the last one they got really actively involved in.

So this is our main Lego room at the moment.

It's taken over our living room ready for the Christmas model.

Their children may have grown out of it,

but Mike and Catherine certainly haven't.

This year we've decided to do a Christmas cake,

but then we can have lots of things on the top.

We've actually got on really quickly. It's quite easy building.

At the moment we've made good progress. Just a few evenings…

- We started a week ago. - Yes.

So this is literally one week's building.

Most of the Lego bricks in Mike and Catherine's collection

will have started life here.

In this state-of-the-art factory in Denmark.

One of five global production hubs for the toy-making giant.

In this plant alone, we turn about 80 tons of granulate

into about 72 million elements every day.

So if you add that up and include other factories,

we do about 60 billion elements in a year.

- Sixty? - Sixty billion, yeah.

We get the granulate small plastic pebbles.

We heat it to about 230 degrees Celsius.

It becomes like toothpaste.

Then you squeeze it into the mould.

Inside the mould you give shape to an element.

So once it opens again, gets in a bucket,

the bucket's picked up by a robot,

and the robot's taken to storage.

This factory works to full capacity

all year round to keep up with global demand.

But Christmas is the real test of the Lego machine.

Christmas is the time of year where we find out

if we have made the right products and we've sent them to the right stores

and if kids around the world actually also put Lego products on their wish list.

So a large proportion of our consumer sales

that takes place during these few weeks leading up to Christmas.

So it's an important time for us this time of year.

Christmas is also an important time

for Duncan Titmarsh.

He's one of just 13 Lego-certified professionals in the world.

And the only one in the UK.

He employs 27 people working all year round

building large scale models for corporate clients.

They've spent a lot of time thinking about plastic bricks.

My favourite Lego brick is a one by two brick

because with that you can build almost anything.

So I think I'd be one of those.

I'd probably be a standard two by four brick.

They're quite useful and they are the icon of Lego.

There's an old hinge plate which they don't make any more,

so a bit old-fashioned but quite versatile.

Probably a red square one.

Cause I think I'm a bit square.

I'd probably be a one by one because they're small like me

and when you put them together in a mosaic they're really pretty.

Not saying that I'm pretty.

This Christmas, Duncan and his team

are working on Lego's flagship London build.

A Lego steam train for Covent Garden.

Christmas builds are, for me, a bit extra special,

so we keep raising the bar in something

and making it a little bit better, a little bit different.

Controversially for Lego purists,

Bright Bricks are supporting the structure with a steel frame,

and each brick is stuck in place with glue.

Using anything other than

the Lego's natural ability to clutch together,

is generally frowned upon in the Adult Fan of Lego community.

But we're not frowned upon as a business,

or commercial aspect because they know

that we use it because we have to for the safety aspect.

The Covent Garden train will require 500,000 Lego bricks.

With every builder having their own particular favourite.

Probably something like a one by two inverted roof brick

just because it's a bit complicated.

It probably does typify my personality.

Two by three brick because it's short, stumpy.

It's my brick.

There's a one by one brick they came up with for The Lego Movie set.

It's long and it's thin,

and has extremely limited practical applications.

The job of keeping Lego high

on our Christmas wish lists falls to Rebecca Snell.

Lego's head of marketing for the UK.

There is, like, a weight on your shoulders

because Lego is one of the most loved brands in the UK.

Erm, and there is this expectation that comes with that

so, yeah, I do feel responsible.

A top priority for Rebecca,

is making sure that Lego is on a list

of top 12 toys this Christmas.

This list, known as Dream Toys,

is compiled by a consortium of Britain's top toy retailers

who meet in secret once a year.

Morning.

Morning.

Dream Toys is a big deal.

It's a very credible indicator

of what is gonna be on children's wish lists.

So we're really excited

to know if we've made it into that top 12.

I really do need to ask you guys the goal, really,

'cause what we're doing now is really quite confidential.

So, thank you.

The decisions made by this in no way sinister gathering,

are kept strictly confidential until the press unveiling in November.

Rebecca will have to wait to find out if Lego has made the list.

Lego has its roots in the small Danish town of Billund.

But these days, any Danish customer who rings the Lego helpline,

will be put through to this multilingual corner of Slough.

In this room, people are using 14 different languages

to talk about Lego.

What the consumer wants is just that

you are caring about their orders.

They don't really care so much if you are faster,

or you do things like fantastically well.

Of course they want that, but they want you to care about the order.

At the end of the day you cannot change what is already there in terms of stock,

or quantities, or maybe any other things that can happen.

But I think they just need some understanding of the situation.

Lego Customer Services expect 200,000 calls

over the period they call high season.

Thank you everybody for coming to the high season kick-off.

We're gonna see 200,000 calls globally

and also 165,000 emails globally.

But of course we're going to sell lots and lots more product as well,

so it's all relative to each other.

Okay guys, so welcome everyone to the Saving Christmas training.

We could have sets that may be temporarily out of stock

and we talked about emotions.

Okay, because this is the situations the customer is in

that might make a call challenging,

but sometimes it's just the state the customer is in,

and that's particularly important during Christmas.

Obviously we've got an opportunity

throughout this period to engage with all our consumers

and make sure that we put the smile on our kids' faces.

And remember, that you are key to saving the customer's Christmas.

We are like Santa Claus' little helpers, aren't we?

Here in Denmark at the world headquarters of The Lego Group,

more than 200 designers from 26 different countries

are busy developing the toys of Christmas future.

One of those leading this international team

is Vice President of Design, Matthew Ashton,

whose love of Lego started in his family home in Merseyside.

We were of the era you got a proper job, didn't you?

Yes, things like that.

- Making cakes-- - Not like my job.

No.

This is me when I was five

playing with my first Lego set ever,

I guess so that's the classic yellow castle.

Back then, you think Santa designs toys,

and Pinocchio's dad designs toys,

and Tom Hanks from Big,

and you don't meet anyone who's a toy designer,

or hear of anyone who's a toy designer as you're growing up

so I kind of veered in the direction

of either wanting to be a graphic designer or an architect,

or just something that is more common,

and you know, there is real work at the end of this.

It was Matthew's design team in Denmark

who worked on Lego's tie-in with this year's biggest movie release.

Whenever we work on movies we occasionally go

and see some of the sets and vehicles being built as well.

So, erm, which was like a childhood dream coming true

to walk into this giant,

erm, set where they were building the Millennium Falcon,

and to get to go inside the Millennium Falcon,

you're like, "Oh, my God".

It was an incredible experience

and of course it's also something that was super useful and helpful for us

- when developing the products. - Yeah.

So this model was a big challenge because the wings would slide in

so it's like hollow and the top half would slide in.

It's like, "Oh, my God, how are we going to create that in Lego?"

Because it's simply not possible to make the wings slide.

But then we came up with an idea.

Okay, we need the wing to kind of slide,

but instead of sliding inside the wing,

I have a little handle here in the back

and the wing can actually fold down like this instead.

So you more or less get the same result

that the wing is like sliding down.

And it's actually a quite cool function. Er, play function.

Very cool.

Yes, it is.

Developing the X-Wing,

the initial sketch I got from when you went to Pinewood

was literally on a Post-it note and that's what I was going from.

We've done X-Wings in the past

and we used a similar function on the previous one, erm,

but I just wanted to make it even stronger.

You know, we had to put this in a robot

and I think it ran for around 136,000 revolutions,

constantly to simulate a child doing this.

Probably not 136,000 times,

but just to see what would happen

if it would break apart or whatever

and that's to just make the best quality product we can.

I think it was two years ago I got the Darth Vader tattoo.

And then when I found out I was going to be working

with Episode VII, and I saw the new Storm Trooper helmet,

I was like, "Oh, that's a really cool design."

But I asked my tattooist to do a transition

so you can have the new one if you cover up this half,

and then if you cover up this half you have the original.

But I have another one booked for Christmas actually.

So I'm gonna get another helmet on the back.

So it's a work in progress.

Product development in our company is very complicated.

Say you've been talking to some designers,

and some of them work on projects that last maybe for one year,

but other projects are maybe on the way for up to four years

from the first initial idea until you have the product on the shelf.

So that also means the designers are now working on

what's gonna be on the shelves in 2017 and in 18 as well.

So it's a long process.

Not all Lego fans who dream of designing toys

go to Denmark to work for the company.

Thirty-nine-year-old Ben Jarvis has spent the last two years developing an idea

that combines three of his favourite things.

There's plenty of other people who are geeks like me,

and like Lego, and like robots, and like board games.

And they're gonna think, "My goodness, yeah,

the combination of Lego, robot, board games

"is just the most awesome idea ever."

Ben's board game is not endorsed by Lego.

And he's bankrolling the cost of production himself.

The design and prototypes have already cost £45,000.

You get a serious appreciation of why Lego spends

so much money developing each one of their components.

They have what they call the clutch

when you put together and pull apart Lego bricks.

It has to feel exactly the same

between every one of thousands of parts of which they're making millions of.

Unless you try and do it yourself,

you really just don't realise

how incredible it is that they manage to do it at all.

Ben has sold his family's business

to raise the capital he needs.

But his financial gamble will affect more than just him.

Daddy.

Yes? Hi.

- You know what these are? - A game.

That's right. Which involves?

Models.

Yeah, little model robots, isn't it?

When it's just you, it's a lot easier to say,

"Yeah, what the hell, we'll try that."

Erm, whereas when you've got someone dependent on you

you've gotta think about it and think "Well, if this goes wrong,

how is everyone else affected, not just how am I affected."

Ben has made a festive blunder

and he's in danger of missing the busiest sales period of the year.

Big retailers don't take Christmas stock in September.

Certainly not in October, November.

They want stuff like boxed games for Christmas in July.

It'd be nice going into Christmas

knowing that whatever happens

we know we're gonna survive another few months.

I don't want to go into Christmas sort of sitting there…

…the whisky in hand going,

"Mmm yeah, this is the last of our money I'm drinking here."

In Cambridgeshire, Mike and Catherine certainly haven't missed

their Christmas deadline.

They've been building steadily for a month

and have made impressive progress on their giant Christmas cake.

There's no sign of interest from their children,

but Catherine's parents are helping to add a final flourish to the top of the cake.

Well, we just started this yesterday,

when they came to visit for a week.

But it's a bit weak.

This structure is a bit wobbly.

And do you come to take part in the Christmas build every year?

Yes, about this time.

Finishing touches.

Well, it was always Catherine's favourite toy when she was young.

And we used to build sort of a two or three-foot-high Father Christmas

or something like that every year.

It's gone onto a different scale now.

When you're building, there's nothing else matters.

You're building and you concentrate solely on that

and it's, er, there's no stress to it at all.

Except watching to see if it's gonna fall over.

Yes. But we're gonna decorate a bit.

It's not very strong but it's like,

I suppose, a real Christmas tree.

Some branches will be better for the baubles than others, yes.

And it does wobble.

Just…

Oh.

But seasoned Lego builders are used to such setbacks.

Have you ever given up on one?

No.

I mean, you just have to look for different ways around the problem.

A hundred miles away in Hampshire,

another Lego Christmas tree is proving a conundrum

for the professional builders.

The Bright Bricks team are building

a giant Lego steam train to be unveiled

in Covent Garden at Christmas.

The design includes an eight-tiered Christmas tree

made from 10,000 Lego bricks for the train's last carriage.

How tall is it, Joe?

The tree itself is about six foot.

With the star at this sort of height here.

So it's eight foot in total on top of the trailer.

That's the star.

This time, it's the lights on the tree

that threaten to dampen the festive spirit.

You're suggesting going through the studs, it's a bit too wide.

Someone forgot to leave a space for the electric cabling.

And because the bricks are glued together,

desperate measures are required.

Lego purists, look away now.

I've learned, over the years, you can't plan for every eventuality,

something will crop up.

"Oh, I didn't think of that."

So you just have to drill it, you have to cut it, unfortunately.

I'd rather not, but at the end of the day, we have to.

And that needs to go back.

As the layers of the tree are lowered into place,

another problem arises.

The sections are not tightly secured.

One of the team comes up with a solution,

but Duncan is not impressed.

Duncan, do you think that little bit of give is okay?

- You don't like that? - No.

You don't like this idea?

I like the idea, but not cardboard.

As soon as it rains…

- Right, true. - …it'll turn to mush.

It's still gotta be practical, it's gotta be useful.

But this is what happens on larger builds.

Sometimes it's spur of the moment adjusting, making it work.

Kind of, but.

Slow it down, slow it down.

Yeah, just a little bit, it should help them run down.

That's an old builders trick, that is.

With time running out,

everyone is starting to feel the pressure.

Even the normally the unflappable Duncan.

I don't generally panic much anyway,

but occasionally you do sometimes get a realisation,

are we actually gonna get this done?

The big day for Britain's toymakers has finally arrived

when the results are announced for this year's top 12 toys.

The list will be released before 7:00 am.

And Head of Marketing, Rebecca Snell

is up early cramming in some last minute preparations.

I could be asked about anything.

You know, story of the brand,

how we're performing at the moment.

It's quite hard to remember everything.

Oh, my goodness me!

Erm, we have two sets in the top 12.

At the press launch, it's Rebecca's job

to be the voice of Lego.

What a great morning, so exciting.

- High five. - Yay.

With the media ready to pounce,

she fits in one last check of her notes,

and a rehearsal of her sales pitch.

This one consists of 1,005 pieces,

er, so it is a challenging build for nine to 14-year-olds.

There we go.

Oh, yes.

Practice makes perfect.

Right, this is Rebecca.

- Hi. Pleased to meet you. - Hi there. Nice to meet you.

I think we met last year actually.

Yeah, I wasn't here last year, but nice to meet you now.

- Nice to meet you. - It's fantastic.

I mean, obviously, it's a huge year for Star Wars.

What's great about it,

1,005 pieces.

- 1,005? Wow. - Yep.

- So it's a challenging build. - Keep people entertained.

It's 1,005 pieces,

so it's a really challenging build.

It's a great set with lots of pieces,

but also lots of really cool functions and features.

- When was it released? - These came out September.

September. And what has the initial sort of sales been like?

What's the initial pick-up been like?

- It's been good. Yes, yes. - It's been good? Fantastic.

While few sights can rival a choir

of singing children conducted by a giant Lego Stormtrooper…

at Catherine and Mike's home in Cambridgeshire,

they have created something even more Christmassy.

And pride of place in their living room

goes to their Lego Christmas cake which is finally complete.

The six-foot-wide cake, has made a significant dent

in their collection of half a million bricks.

What we're talking about 18,000, 27,000,

that's 54,000 bricks just to do the front.

Another 54,000 that's about 108,000.

Then you've got the top,

then you've got the supporting bits

so probably another 15, 20,000 there,

and that's just the cake.

How much is a Lego brick?

Well, this size is about 18 pence.

- It's 18p each? - 18p each.

So if half a million bricks,

you're talking about £90,000 worth of Lego.

If you bought it that way.

It'd be the most expensive way of doing it.

Yeah we can get it a lot cheaper than that.

£90,000 Christmas cake.

I know, but I mean this, a lot of this,

some of our bricks are nearly 50 years old.

If you had to guess

how much money you've spent on Lego across your life?

No idea.

We're talking tens of thousands.

Yeah, we've only had one car,

you know we've always walked or cycled to work

so I mean it's all relative what you spend your money on.

Those aren't important to us so…

I'd much rather buy Lego.

Hi, I'm Mike.

James, nice to meet you.

Word of Mike and Catherine's Lego build has spread

and there are already photographers knocking on the door.

So, yeah it's amazing, yeah.

Be looking at the fairy to start with.

With their children still shy of the attention,

Mike and Catherine enjoy the limelight for themselves.

Do you imagine, you two, that you'll carry on doing it?

Yeah, we're already planning next year.

We've got some ideas and some of the practices

from that Christmas tree we might,

might be next year a full size one.

But we'll see.

I don't know how long we'll carry on though, really.

Cause we've only got.

I mean, Christopher's, well he's 17, we've got another couple of years

before he hopefully goes to university, so.

What's that got to do with it?

The children have had nothing to do with it anyway so it's irrelevant.

- There might be just two of us. - We'll see.

Okay, big smiles and looking towards me.

Yes.

Oh, hello, it's Ben Jarvis here from Megaton Games.

They haven't come back to me.

- Oh, okay. - Let me just…

Entrepreneur Ben Jarvis is trying to sell

his brick compatible board game from his family home in Norfolk.

All right, you can go sit back down again.

His first big delivery from China is due later today.

How about we leave them there

and don't mess with the fridge too much.

We've ordered enough for 2,000 games.

No, more than that, 3,000 games actually so.

3,000 dice games.

No, there's 8,000 dice coming.

So it's a lot of boards. There's about 80 boxes.

- Eighty boxes? - Yes, 80 boxes.

So we've got to go move them and put them somewhere.

Ben is renting a lock-up garage just a few miles away.

But he's already anticipating a potential problem with the delivery.

I basically just sent the shipping company

an email yesterday morning just to confirm

the delivery's all on for this morning,

they said, "Oh, you've got a team there

who are going to unload everything, haven't you?"

To which I said, "No, I've got me and a five-year-old."

Yeah.

These game boards.

With two pallets of robot board games

ready to be unleashed on the Lego public,

Ben's pipe dream is starting to feel more like a business.

There's a million dice.

It's not quite a million dice, but it's quite a lot of dice.

Up until now, it's all intangible,

it's all just emails and money disappearing

out of my account and going to China,

and nothing much to show for it.

But now we've actually got stacks and stacks and stacks of stuff.

Now starts the task of trying to sell it all again

but at least we've got something to sell.

At Lego headquarters,

they forecast that 60% of their annual sales

will take place in the three months before Christmas.

The busiest single weekend runs

from Black Friday to Cyber Monday

when the customer services centre in Slough

expects to triple the number of calls and emails.

The night before Black Friday,

the management team are trying their best to spread some festive cheer.

Hopefully this is a way that when people walk

into the contact centre in the morning, they kind of get the Christmas cheer

because we've got the biggest tree in Lego, I think.

I can't decorate it.

Tomorrow, the contact centre

will have to deal with Black Friday customers

in 17 European countries,

and with additional overflow from the United States and Canada.

We've worked on this for months preparing,

hiring people, recruiting people, training people,

making the plans, working out how many calls we get,

what time of day, making the schedules,

the whole kind of machine that needs to get going

in order to deliver this.

Although he came late to the game,

toy inventor Ben Jarvis has managed

to get his brick-compatible board game into production.

He's secured a stand at a Lego convention in Swindon.

Ben has spent tens of thousands of pounds

to get his dream to this stage.

And tomorrow will be his first chance

to sell his game directly to the public.

It's kind of all or nothing now. It's got to work, so, erm…

'Cause we haven't got a plan B really.

But Ben hasn't always shown sound business judgement.

I quit a job in graphic design about six years ago

to go and build a full size manned missile

for a Hungarian escapologist.

Which turned out to be a complete disaster.

So, er,

I don't have the best track record

in terms of making business decisions as to what's the best thing to pursue.

The following morning,

hundreds of eager brick fanatics turn up for the show.

Ben has enlisted his friend Ian

to help with selling his game.

But the first task is to explain how it actually works.

It's like a giant game of robot chess.

Yeah, kind of, yeah.

It's robot chess with guns.

So the robots have to shoot each other

and whichever the last robot that survives wins.

- How far can they shoot? - How far can they shoot?

It depends… Depending on which guns you put on them

they can shoot further.

So if you give them bigger guns, they can shoot further.

17, 18, thank you very much.

You get these game boards

which are exactly the same size as Lego base plates.

You get four of those in the box and the idea…

Ben and Ian's sales technique seems to be working.

What I was telling you a minute ago, if you give it larger guns…

- Pull it… Approved card? - Yeah.

Yep, then it should all be done.

Fantastic, thank you very much, enjoy.

Have a good rest of the day.

We said if we sell ten today we were doing pretty well,

so I think we're going to sell ten within the next hour

I think, so yeah, it's going pretty well so far.

Need more energy drink.

Need to keep myself awake.

At the Lego customer service centre in Slough,

Black Friday has begun.

Yeah, I know it's very busy but the emails I'm getting are really nice emails

so everything actually nice and smooth, you know.

Good.

Nothing to be scared of.

Management are keeping a close eye

on the queue times across Europe.

At 1:00 pm, the phone lines will open in North America as well.

It's hard to predict what's going to happen

but we'd like to have people queue no longer than ten minutes.

Usually, it's much less.

Usually, we want them to get answered in 20 seconds,

but today we'd really like to able to answer everyone in ten minutes.

As soon as the lines open,

60 calls come in at once,

and the queue time for North America is at nine minutes and rising.

I can see there are currently 97 Americans in the queue

so we will see what comes next.

Hello, Lego Customer Service.

Good morning, Lego Customer Service.

Welcome to Lego Services, my first name is--

This is Star Wars set. Star Wars--

Good morning, Lego Customer Service.

I know, you know the…

Just please have a bit of faith in us.

I know it's like a madness today, it's Black Friday,

but I'm sure that something positive will come out of it.

The Black Friday deals have brought a spike in sales

and some stock is completely sold out.

We will move everything to get your Lego Dimensions set, okay?

She wants to make sure she gets the gingerbread house

and the VIP points and she couldn't get them.

Already, call numbers are 23% above forecast.

So far in Europe, it's 1,425 calls we've taken today.

In our first two hours in the US we have taken 849 calls.

But don't worry, I have your details here

and I will make sure everything gets dealt with today.

Let us do our work, you know, and we'll try to sort that out today.

Okay.

Okay, bye-bye, bye-bye.

It's just fantastic.

It always is a great buzz on Black Friday in the office.

It's kind of like the dress rehearsal for Christmas, really.

And it does just feel great.

And it's so busy and it gives you energy

and I think that's true for all of us, really.

I thought, today, I would struggle but I still have the smile on my face

so, you know, we made it.

I need to relax and do nothing for the rest of this evening.

Thank you for calling Lego Customer Service,

my name is Vanessa, how may I help you?

At Bright Bricks in Hampshire,

the Lego builders are working around the clock

as their deadline for the Covent Garden steam train approaches.

The design for Lego's showcase Christmas build

includes a number of ambitious new features

including a smoke machine.

It's a first for us.

So we've got a little test to do first to see how it works,

and how the smoke actually comes out.

Whoa.

And choo choo.

Oh, you've got it.

Whoa.

Well, the smoke machine works.

Apart from a few teething problems,

it's full steam ahead for Covent Garden.

Professional Lego builder Duncan Titmarsh

has completed the work on Lego's flagship Christmas build.

All that remains, is the delicate operation

of moving 1.7 tons of Lego steam train

across the cobblestones of Covent Garden.

Whoa.

Cross that way very slightly.

Stop. Go back to you.

The exacting precision it takes to build

with half a million tiny plastic bricks

is applied to every detail of the installation.

Can you move back the way you came?

- Here? - Yep.

Wow.

Lego have laid on some extra festive weather.

It's gone really well, a lot of people like it.

You see people walk past take pictures now, so.

Obviously it must be a hit round here which is what I like to hear.

Yeah, I think it's really great.

So yeah, I'm ready for Christmas now.

It's all gone well for the seasoned professionals.

But for those who are just starting out,

these last few months have been a steep learning curve.

Toy inventor Ben Jarvis has been rolling out

his brick compatible board game at trade shows up and down the country.

The reaction we've had has been brilliant and really positive.

It's just been, I've just not had enough time to really follow up.

I've got a list of 40 retailers I should've contacted and sent samples to.

I've just not had the time.

We're over the sort of bad bit financially

in terms of all the money's gone out.

It's probably been, I don't know, 80 or 90,000 quid I would have thought.

Something in that order

which is a lot more than we ever anticipated it was gonna be.

It's all money coming back in from this point on

other than ongoing costs of just surviving.

We've done enough to sort of, you know, survive through to next year.

I'm moderately hopeful at the moment, I would say,

is probably the best summary of my viewpoint.

Moderately hopeful.

Ben has got round to contacting one retailer.

The local toyshop two miles from his house.

This sort of feels a little bit more,

a little bit more real, actually,

handing them to, you know, a retailer.

- Richard. - Hello, Ben.

- We spoke. Are you all right? - I'm very good, thank you.

Yes, so the idea is, the idea of the game, I think I mentioned it,

it's sort of aimed at ages ten plus,

it's not really a sort of high-end geeky niche game.

We're trying to make it sort of something more mainstream.

Yeah, so if that's all right, I will leave it with you

and then I'll give you a shout and drop off some more bits for you.

Fantastic.

- Brilliant. - I'll stick it on the shelf.

Thank you very much, Richard. Thank you for your time and yeah,

I will speak to you in the next day or two.

Awesome.

From his point of view, I think it might be useful

as a selling point for him to be able to say to people,

"By the way, this is made locally."

People do seem to, sort of, warm to things that are sort of local.

Well it certainly applies to beer and cheese,

whether it applies to games, I don't know, but…

But I think it does.

The thrill of seeing your designs

in a toyshop window, is one Matthew Ashton knows only too well.

The Vice President of Design at Lego

is still drawn back home to England for Christmas.

So I've just popped back to London for a little bit

to do some Christmas shopping before I go back to my parent's.

Christmas is one of the times where you really feel like you need to be

at home with your friends and family and stuff.

So it's really nice coming back

and seeing the Christmas lights for the first time.

It's exciting. Nearly Christmas.

Even on holiday, Matthew still has his business head on

and can't resist a visit to a toyshop.

And of course, he heads straight for the department he knows best.

Maybe I'll do some of my OCD tidying up.

Every designer is like super excited

when they get their products on shelf for the first time

and you can go into a toy store, and see everything lined up like this.

And to know a year ago you'd been sort of working on it

putting those pieces together and puzzling it all together and then,

and then to see a kid pick that up off the shelf,

and potentially buy it, it's, like, so exciting

the first time you get to see that.

It's just so nice knowing that that's going to be part

of somebody else's childhood memories.

Just like Lego was for me.

So, it's cool.

So these are the products that my team work on along here

and, oh, this is actually one of the products that I worked on myself so…

In fact, this is the last product that I've ever designed

as I was working on The Lego Movie

and so this is Unikitty and she's like a hybrid between a unicorn and a kitten.

That's the last one that I've designed.

Hadn't had time to design anything else since then,

I leave the up to the rest of my design team.

Is it a personal thing, you know,

if somebody looks at that would they think that's a Matthew Ashton design?

Probably, yes.

I think this one's probably got my name all over it as well

just cause it's, well,

it's like one of our camper products shall we say so…

I'm quite good at cute when it comes to products.

Not necessarily as much, more of the sort of aggressive, action-packed stuff,

but the things I'm better at is

the cutesy things, I think. So, yeah.

He may be an expert in cutesy products,

but Matthew could never leave behind his love of a galaxy far far away.

Right, so this is the one I've got

on my very own Christmas list this year.

So this is the Millennium Falcon.

I'm gonna be building this on Boxing Day.

Who gets you that?

It'll probably be me.

If I ask my mum to buy me Lego

she's like, "No, no, no, that's not happening."

So, yeah.

For the toymakers and Lego builders,

their work is done for another year.

All the planning that's gone in the lead up to Christmas

gives way to the holiday season.

Choo choo.

With the cake building complete,

the scene is set for Mike and Catherine's family Christmas.

It's been a long year.

Everyone I've spoken to in the sort of retail industry

and in games and everything, they're all like

"Oh, I can't wait for Christmas."

Not because Christmas is particularly amazing,

it's just because they get to stop for a few days.

At the Customer Service centre,

workers hang up their headsets

and shut down their computers until Boxing Day.

And the CEO of this global manufacturing giant

marks his Christmas in a typically Scandinavian way.

Obviously, we're Danish company so Christmas is an important tradition.

I do lead the Christmas singing,

I open my office on the last day before Christmas.

I'm always the last person to leave the office on that day.

I simply wait for everybody to go home

knowing they've gone home to their families

usually very proud of everything

we've accomplished in that year and feeling maybe exhausted,

but also that something great has been accomplished.

And then I shut off the lights, and I drive home in the Danish darkness,

and think, "Ah, whew, another year where we made it."