With 8.8 percent of the global toy market within its grasp, Danish toy titan Lego lags only behind its US rival Mattel, according to recent reports.

Yet, just a decade ago, the iconic building toy company was rapidly losing millions of dollars and teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Lego's volte-face comes at an opportune time for the 82-year-old company to expand into Asia, where rising income levels and the spread of comfortable middle-class living standards - particularly in China - are creating a strong demand for children's products of all stripes.

Indeed, experts predict that Asia will soon surpass the US to become the world's largest toy market. It's perhaps little surprise that the privately held Danish company is optimistic about plans to expand its foothold in China, where local spending on toys and games grew by an average annual rate of 21 percent between 2007 and 2011, according to reports which point to figures from market research firm Euromonitor.

Lego took a major step toward achieving this expansion goal late last month, when it announced plans to build a new factory - its first in Asia - in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province. Due to come online in 2017, the factory (along with an accompanying distribution center in Shanghai) is expected to dramatically increase the availability of Lego products in China, where its sales reportedly doubled last year, while also lowering prices for local consumers.

Currently, Chinese parents could pay twice as much for the same Lego toy set as their counterparts in the US. This stark price difference, according to experts, goes back to distribution costs. As with many Western brands, existing manufacturing and logistics networks make it far easier for Lego to ship its products to American stores than those in China. The company's new manufacturing site along the Yangtze River should ease this price disparity, while also allowing Lego to place its products on more shelves across the country.

Lego's Eastern ambitions look well-timed, where sales of educational toys have doubled over the last five years, according to reports citing Euromonitor data.

However, this is not Lego's first concerted push into China. The company first entered the local market in the 1990s, but problems stemming from Lego's overly diversified business model at that time led to tepid sales in China and elsewhere. Adding insult to injury, cheap counterfeit Lego sets quickly became more popular with Chinese shoppers than the pricier - albeit higher-quality - sets produced by the Danish brand.

Lego isn't the only toy company which has encountered problems cracking the Chinese market despite enormous success in the West. Mattel's flagship Barbie store in Shanghai famously floundered in 2012 after some three years in operation. In the aftermath of the Barbie store's closure, commentators found plenty of reasons to explain its lack of success, although several analysts concluded that the feminine fantasy Barbie herself embodies is at odds with Chinese values.

But today's Lego is far more streamlined than in decades gone by. Moreover, its products hit many of the buttons that currently appeal with upwardly mobile consumers in China. Lego toys offer children the opportunity to be creative - a skill which many Chinese parents feel is underdeveloped by the country's memorization-oriented education system - while also developing design and spatial abilities.

Academically minded parents can also feel comfortable about Lego's educational value. This is particularly important in China, where Western notions about the intrinsic merits of play are relatively new. Cambridge University's Engineering Department incorporates Lego blocks in its classes, while the company-affiliated Lego Foundation is already working with local students in China - in fact, Lego bricks were recently used by PhD students at Tsinghua University to build an inexpensive atomic force microscope.

If Lego can successfully establish its base in China, it will expose one of the world's oldest and best-loved educational toys to one of the world's largest consumer markets. Lego's moves to cut cost and bolster its educational credentials should please not only the iconic Danish firm, but China's increasingly affluent consumers as well.

The author is an intern with the Global Times.