IIRC Lego were originally intending to produce something entirely different with their newly acquired injection moulding machine. Then they discovered the successful bricks being sold by Hilary Page, pivoted into counterfeiting, and produced an identical rip off of product, packaging, marketing, and branding:

http://hilarypagetoys.com/Images/articlestock/article875_Ima...

Pretty sure there's a little more of the tale on the site.

I have a bit of a thing against Lego's popularity given how litigious they are, and how they themselves got started.