Source: Tweedaags Lego-festijn in Geleen breidt fors uit: beursvloer... - De Limburger / Laurens Schellen
Geleen - Bricktopia XL, the annual Lego event in Geleen, is going to expand considerably. The two-day public festival will be almost twice as large and will make full use of De Hanenhof conference center for the upcoming edition in December.
Board member Maurice Wijnen of the Euregional Lego organization Dutchbricks, which is organizing the spectacle in Geleen, confirms the expansion. “We are going to double the size of the trade fair, exhibition and construction floor in one fell swoop. In concrete terms, this means that we will have more than two thousand square meters at our disposal. You can certainly call that considerable.”
Record
Visitor numbers at Bricktopia XL in the Waereldsjtad show a strong upward trend. Despite the strict corona measures, the 2021 episode attracted almost twelve hundred paying visitors to De Hanenhof, in the last edition almost two thousand Lego fans from all over Limburg and the Euregio passed the cash registers. “An absolute record for our organization,” says the board member, who lives in Geleen. More than sixty exhibitors and dealers from home and abroad made their appearance. Wijnen is counting on at least 2500 paying visitors for the upcoming edition, which will take place on 9 and 10 December. The number of exhibitors on the exhibition floor is also expected to increase considerably. "I estimate that there will be around eighty."
Peak
The great public interest is synchronized with the renewed popularity of plastic building blocks and ditto figurines. In an earlier interview with De Limburger, the Dutchbricks board already mentioned a 'global peak'. The fact that Lego has been named 'toy of the century' speaks volumes as far as Wijnen is concerned. He also points to the growing number of domestic and foreign TV programs in which Lego creations are central. It is also striking that Lego fanatics are of all ages nowadays, where in the past the bricks were mainly labeled as children's toys.
License
Apart from the major expansion in Geleen, Dutchbricks has another happy event to celebrate. The association, which saw its membership more than double last year to over a hundred, recently won the official license from the Danish multinational. “This means that we are now also formally known as a real Lego organization,” Wijnen assures, not without pride.