Does anyone know about when lego stopped making basic bricks in USA

[SweetiePie88]

Today at the flea market, I bought a sealed( but a little roughed up) 1549 set, copyright 1992, for 5 bucks. To my surprise, one of the countries that the contents came from is the USA!!! am wondering if anyone knows when the "contents include parts from the USA" situation ended.

[coaster]

Sadly, it was probably either the box or instructions. As far as I'm aware, Connecticut was never more than a distribution/packaging center.

[Capt. Stabbin]

Samsonite made lego parts in Colorado up untill the early 80's. I'm not sure on the exact dates.

[dr_spock]

You may want to read through this thread by LEGO Historian -> www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=83307

It appears that LEGO took away the Samsonite USA license back in the early 1970s.

[Capt. Stabbin]

I guess I was thinking about Canada. I had my date way off!

[LEGO Historian]

LEGO was produced in the USA from 1965-2007.

Although LEGO sales started in 1961, from 1961-65 all USA LEGO was produced at a Samsonite plant in Stratford Ontario Canada, with specialty parts imported from Canada. The LEGO boxes for the USA were produced at a Samsonite plant in Detroit Michigan. Then in 1965 all USA production was moved to a newly built plant in Loveland Colorado (just outside of Denver). This production continued until 1972, when the USA LEGO license was revoked from Samsonite because of poor sales techniques (they sold LEGO like they sold luggage, according to one critic).

Then in 1973 the USA HQ moved to Brookfield Massachusetts, and the following year to Enfield, where they had both production and offices in Enfield. They moved their production to Mexico around 2007, although they may have started some production there earlier.

Here is a 2006 article about USA LEGO production moving to Mexico in 2007...

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/manufacturing/2006-06-20-lego-layoffs_x.htm

Canada was a different matter. Just recently I've gotten a lot of info on LEGO in Canada from 2 Canadian collectors... and have added this information to my LEGO collectors guide.

But here's some info.....

LEGO was first produced in Canada at the Stratford Ontario Samsonite plant in 1961 (for the USA). It started producing LEGO for the Canada market the following year (1972). In 1965 the exports to the USA ended when the Colorado plant opened. In 1972 Samsonite of Canada did NOT lose their LEGO license like the USA subsidiary did. Canada was a separate entity within Samsonite, and TLG was more pleased with how sales were in Canada.

So Samsonite of Canada continued to be the licensee. Well in 1973 multinational Beatrice Corp. bought out all of the Samsonite Corp. And in 1985 the USA Wall St. brokerage firm bought (hostile takeover) the Beatrice Corp., and began dismembering and selling off the different parts of the multinational corporation. They sold off Samsonite as an independent entity again in 1986, but before that happened... TLG bought back the LEGO license for Canada. Well TLG wasn't quite ready to stop production in Canada, so until October 1988 LEGO production in Canada continued to be made by Samsonite of Canada (under license by USA LEGO subsidiary of TLG).

Then after October 1988 the Canada LEGO production ended in Stratford and moved to Enfield Connecticut. However, LEGO boxes in Canada still had a Stratford Ontario name on the LEGO catalogs until about 1992, and Canada had separate sets and catalogs until 1995 when the 2 countries started using combined USA/Canada LEGO catalogs. By 1990 Canadian LEGO catalogs no longer listed Stratford Ontario... but Markham Ontario (a suburb of Toronto) as the HQ for LEGO of Canada (which it still is). So when in 2007 the production of LEGO moved from Enfield to Mexico... it moved there for both USA and Canada.

LEGO.... they never made it easy to follow!!

So now I've added all this info to my collectors guide... whew....

[Jared]

  On 2/12/2015 at 4:02 AM, LEGO Historian said:

Wow, thank you for sharing, I always love learning about LEGO's history in my country! :D

Edited February 12, 2015 by Jared

[LEGO Historian]

  On 2/12/2015 at 4:56 AM, Jared said:

Wow, thank you for sharing, I always love learning about LEGO's history in my country! :D

Thank Jared!

For some reason Canada has always been the "stepchild" of the LEGO universe. The big markets were continental Europe, Britain/Ireland/Australia (same British LEGO licensee for all 3), and USA (Samsonite from 1961-72 and TLG from 1973-present).

But Canada had a long history as a LEGO licensee (1962-88), and there are a LOT of sets that have "Canadian variations".

For example... the 1975 era LONDON BUS SET was sold in Europe/Australia under the 384 number, and also in Canada, but in a different box, and the USA number back the was 760. This was shortly after Samsonite lost their LEGO license in the USA, and TLG was paranoid that Canadian sets might sneak their way into the USA, so they used unique set numbers for the USA from 1972-79 for the same sets.

Since Canada has a smaller market than either USA or Europe.... the Canadian versions are more valuable than those sets produced elsewhere.

That's the type of information that my collectors guide likes to zoom in on.

Also, I've recently obtained a copy of every Canadian LEGO catalog from 1976 to 1992, before being incorporated into the USA catalog. I'm trying to figure out how I can give those images as freebies for my collectors guide (as well as the first catalogs of 1962-65).

Edited February 12, 2015 by LEGO Historian