Star Wars was the first Lego license — 25 years later, it’s stronger than

If you are a Star Wars fan, Jens Kronvold Frederiksen may have crafted your childhood.

A design director at the Denmark-based Lego company, he has spent the past 25 years creating Lego Star Wars sets.

“I went to my boss and said, ‘Hey, you need me on this product line,'” Frederiksen told CNBC. “For me, it was just like a dream come true. Star Wars and Lego together, two things I love.”

Frederiksen is not the only one. Since 1999, fans have rallied around the license, scooping up everything from Darth Vader mini figure keychains to $850 Millennium Falcon sets featuring more than 7,500 pieces. The brand has also grown to include half a dozen video games and a slew of animated content on Disney+. It also now has its own home on Epic Games’ popular online game platform Fortnite.

The Star Wars license was the first of its kind for Lego, which had never created an official product line tied to licensed intellectual property before. In fact, the Jar Jar Binks mini figure was the first ever to feature a custom head sculpt instead of one of Lego’s iconic round faces, Frederiksen said.

Now, Lego Star Wars has become a blueprint for the company’s other brand deals — think Harry Potter, Batman and Marvel’s Avengers.

“We were creating themes, but we weren’t always necessarily connecting those with the deeper story,” said Jill Wilfert, head of global entertainment partners and content at Lego. “And I think for us really seeing that unlock, and how it really allowed people to open up their imaginations in a different way and express their creativity in a different way, is I think what Star Wars did for us.”

Wilfert, who has been with Lego for 36 years, said there was a lot of trepidation at Lego prior to the Star Wars deal about doing any kind of third-party licensing.

“Once we saw how well it translated and how people responded to it, it really did give us more confidence,” she said.

The Lego Star Wars collaboration came at a time of financial turmoil for Lego. In the early 2000s, the company was dealing with high debt, stiff competition from digital gaming platforms and a portfolio that had become too diversified. Lego was on the brink of bankruptcy.

Strong sales of Lego Star Wars as well as the Lego-owned Bionicle franchise helped keep the company afloat while it reduced its product lines and shut down noncore businesses. In 2005, the company launched a Lego Star Wars video game.

“It’s been hugely successful and continues to be successful today as a gaming franchise,” said Paul Southern, senior vice president of third-party commercialization and franchise development at Disney. “It created the world.”

Two decades later, Lego Star Wars remains one of the top-selling brands for Lego and the company sees strong sales even when there are no new theatrical releases tied to its product.

The privately held company…