Dane Jens Nygård Knudsen, designer of the little figurine who has become a symbol of the famous game "Lego", died at the age of 78 on the West Coast of Denmark, according to one of his former colleagues yesterday.
"He had a great imagination and his head was full of ideas," his friend Nils Milan Pedersen told AFP.
Knudson has worked for the LEGO company since 1968, and in the 1970s he drew a small statue of two men and two moving arms raised in 1978.
The company decided to use it with neutral features on the face without mentioning its gender or ethnicity in order to unleash the imagination of children.
"This small statue was designed to breathe life into homes," his widow Marian told a TV station yesterday.