The Lego Group world's largest toy company by revenue, with sales amounting to US$2.1 billion, surpassing Mattel, which had US$1.9 billion in sales. On 11 August 2017, Lego announced that Niels B. Christiansen would become the new CEO, effective 1 October of the same year. The history of Lego spans nearly 100 years, beginning with the creation of small wooden playthings during the early 20th century. Manufacturing of plastic Lego bricks began in Denmark in 1947, but since has grown to include factories throughout the world. In 1961, Lego was managed by Samsonite until 1972 in the United States and 1986 in Canada.
Lego looking at different aspects of the construction toy. The first was "The Ultimate Lego Book", published in 1999. More recently, in 2009, the same publisher produced "The LEGO Book", which was sold within a slipcase along with "Standing Small: A celebration of 30 years of the LEGO minifigure", a smaller book focused on the minifigure. In 2012, a revised edition was published. Also in 2009, DK also published books on Lego Star Wars and a range of Lego-based sticker books. Although no longer being published in the United States by Scholastic, books covering events in the Bionicle storyline are written