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 This production continued until 1972, when the USA LEGO license was revoked from Samsonite because of poor sales techniques (they sold LEGO like they sold luggage, according to one critic).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....

Sorry to take... FOREVER... to get back here... been real busy working on the next version of my LEGO Collectors Guide download.... I keep getting more and more and more info from people... 7 new chapters (in addition to the 73 already in it). Anyway... the 1306 (VW Repair Set) was sold in Denmark (with a "VW GARAGE" printed 1x8 brick), in Norway (with a "VW GARASJE" 1x8 printed brick, and in Sweden (with a "VW SERVICE" printed 1x8 brick). Are you sure it is a 1306 set, and not a 306 set? Because the 306 set (sold in all of Europe starting in 1958) came with "VW LEGO" on the box. Here is an early Norwegian 1306.... Here is an early Danish 1306.... Here is an early Swedish 1306 (right) and a 306 set... which replaced the 1306 in 1958, and was sold in all of Europe from 1958-60 (left).... The 306 set always had VW LEGO on the box top... but the bricks inside were different... by country. So this box top is just generic. TLG decided after introducing the 1306 in Denmark, Norway and Sweden in local boxes that this was getting out of hand... so they switched to a common box top that was used throughout all of Europe that had VW LEGO on the box, but local language bricks inside. VW SERVICE and VW GARAGE are the most commonly used, but there were also others. Anyway if you have a 1306 you have a very valuable set... if you just have a 306... you still have a very valuable set. With inserts and the two 1:87 VW Beetles... you could command up to $500 or more, depending on condition of the box, inserts and parts. Sorry to take so long!

Found another very rare LEGO 1:43 Truck.... from Iceland... where all LEGO items are assembled by an Icelandic Tuberculosis Clinic called "Reykjulundar". The Icelandic alphabet has 28 letters... it includes the letters "eth".... Ð and "thorn....Þ .... and one of these is used in the truck name..... This 1:43 LEGO truck is for an Icelandic fuel company (which still exists). This extremely rare truck dates to 1956-57.... Here is the logo for all LEGO items sold in Iceland from 1956-60s. Any LEGO box with the REYKJALUNDUR name on it is worth BIG MONEY!!! This is mostly because Iceland only had about 200,000 people in the 1950s... so it was a very small country, LEGO wise!!

Probably the most expensive part on Bricklink "should" be an Opel Kapitän vehicle of 1957. It was produced by LEGO Norway, but never put into production. As of now there are 9 known, including 1 green, 1 orange, 2 red and 5 yellow. Here are all 9 known examples.... These Norway produced LEGO autos were not put into production. I finally found out why just last week. It seems that only 2 passenger vehicles were put into production by TLG in the 1950s.... the 258/275 VW Bus... which had no glass... just plastic (looking like glass) all around the vehilce, and the (1957 introduced) VW Beetle, which was a 1 piece upper body vehicle made of clear plastic... and the metal looking portions of the cars were painted over. It was not until late 1961 that TLG (in the Development Center in Hohenwestedt Germany (near the Danish border)... developed a patent for a 2 piece top to LEGO vehicles... a plastic part to look like the painted metal... and a clear glass insert that snapped in place inside the painted part. It was this patent and discovery (at the Development center in Hohenwestedt Germany (below) that lead to 15 different LEGO autos and 7 LEGO Mercedes vehicles being put into production.... So anyway... the 1957 Opel Kapitän car was before its' time, and never made it past the prototype phase. So all 9 known examples (several damaged) are very highly collectible... some worth over $7000 each. More new info for my Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide....

Oh gee.... I forgot all about this thread....or was that Dementia.... ... and where were my manners... if anyone wants a steep senior discount (even if your within 5 years of eligibility of AARP )... for the "Bible" of old time LEGO...my unofficial Sets/Parts collectors guide.... (see my latest special in Eurobricks Bazaar)....send me a message! I did want to add a comment.... for those of you whose early years go back into the 1960s.... although ABS replaced Cellulose Acetate in 1963 in continental Europe, Britain, and Australia.... Cellulose Acetate continued to be found in many USA/Canada LEGO sets until as late as 1972. So what you remember as LEGO elements with poor clutch power.... could have been CA parts that were already loosing their shape....

Special offerings... along with my Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide as desktop computer download.... you get these free... 1) my Unofficial LEGO 1:43 Chevrolet Trucks/Wagons Collectors Guide (1952-57)... a $7.95 value.... 2) a copy of my REGINA MAERSK model instructions. The Regina Maersk was the first LEGO Maersk ship.... sold as a glued display model in continental Europe in 1959-60... a $.4.95 value.... My Chevrolet Truck Guide banner.... The REGINA MAERSK model... that building instructions, contents list, a copy of the original 1959 model, and a copy of an original 1959 retailer order sheet for the model.... All this plus the 2800 page collectors guide (as a desktop download)... for only $29.95 (no shipping charges, no customs worries!).... http://legocollectorsguide.weebly.com/

Gotta agree with Maersk blue.... I was lusting after that color for many years.... what with only a stingy assortment ever available in any Maersk set. it was only because of Bricklink that I ever got a decent selection of Maersk blue.... and now with the color on the promotional Maersk sets switching to Medium Azure.... the Maersk blue parts will gradually be disappearing from online inventories..... My Maersk blue REGINA MAERSK ship (the 0751 LEGO model design dates to 1959)... next to the fabulously expensive 1650 Maersk Line Container set....

Thanks Kalgreen... for those wonderful images!!! (Here is a repost of one of them.) Here are 3 LEGO executives (back and far right)... the bearded architect Bjarke Ingels (middle)... and the LEGO Kristiansen/Christiansen family members. The family members are (left to right)... Agnes Kirk Kristiansen, Camilla Kristiansen, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, Edith Kirk Christiansen, (architect), Sophie Kristiansen, Thomas Kristiansen. It was nice seeing the 90 year old grand dame of LEGO... Edith Kirk Christiansen at this festivity! She turned 90 on May 29th of this year.... and is the daughter-in-law of LEGO founder Ole Kirk Christiansen, and widow of Godtfred Kirk Christiansen.

I am not sure of the effect of a dishwasher on the printed LEGO bricks. You might want to try it on one of the bricks before you do a large number of them.

Hehehe... WoutR... all my friends have my collectors guide... but that doesn't mean that they've read it all.... One of them mused... "no one has THAT much time".... lol... They often ask me questions, and I sometimes say... "it's in chapter 48"... ... but I'll usually give them the answer anyway... Other times someone will ask me a very good question that I hadn't really thought about... and BAMMM!! ... a new item for a future update to the next version! ... and then other times I've gone into excruciating detail about some LEGO item in an Email.... and I can sense the glazed over look that they must be giving off when they read it!! With so much to study with LEGO's thousands of sets and parts.... I've long ago decided to leave some items for other folks that are studying them... such as your interest WoutR.... LEGO molds. Maxx3001, Arnoud and Joao were studying them, so I decided not to re-invent the wheel... and reference some of their websites in my collectors guide (ditto for Bayer and BASF test bricks). But when I am finished with upgrading my collectors guide into the 21st century (until circa 2000-2002), I will go back and study all the mold, plastic and color variations to LEGO parts. But I'm not there yet!

Canada was notorious for making some very unusual and unique LEGO items... especially during the 1973-85 era when Samsonite of Canada (a Beatrice Corp. subsidiary) was still producing LEGO sets in Bilingual (English/French) boxes and literature. This was after the USA LEGO license reverted back to TLG in 1972. One of the most interesting items was this oldest LEGO Space poster.... only produced in Canada in 1979... And also (unique to Canada) 0012, 0013, 0014 and 0015 Classic Space Minifig Packs.... Very interesting packs!!

Hehehe.... I bet we do.... there's Michel, Jeroen, Richard, Henk, and Diana from the Netherlands... Lothar, Olaf, Sven, Thomas and Kurt from Germany, Arild from Norway, Daniel from Sweden, Lasse, Ole, Erik and Kirsten from Denmark, Rohnny from Belgium (not always popular), Pier and Gianluca from Italy, Fernando and Joao from Portugal, Phil, Steve and Chris from the UK, Francois-Xavier from Canada, Yoshihiro from Japan, Jennifer from Hong Kong, and Eric, Chris, Jim, John, and Dave from the USA.... all mentioned in my collectors guide credits!

WoutR.... so you've talked with my German collector friend "Lothar".... a very nice guy... but doesn't speak English very well... although that's not a problem with me, since I usually communicate with him in German. Lothar digs up a LOT of rare items from Norway and Sweden... and even Germany. A very good friend to have!!

Rare LEGO sets and parts that you've never seen before!!

WoutR, I am LEGO friends with all the folks mentioned in your links. So I am familiar with these bricks. I won't even venture to guess as to the origins of these bricks... except that yes they are indeed LEGO or LEGO related. What makes coming to a concrete conclusion so difficult is the fact that one German LEGO collector acquaintance has been buying up old sets from Denmark, Norway and even Sweden. And unfortunately he has been mucking up the clues as to the origins of these bricks, by filling authentic Automatic Binding Bricks boxes with parts from other sources. So I can't make sense of all of this with him tampering with the evidence by filling some Danish ABB sets with Norwegian or Swedish contents... as well as Danish. Here is a German language cheat sheet (in my next collectors guide update), that shows many variations of the slotted bricks, as well as 2 clones...

Maybe someone should send Greenpeace an image showing the long roots between TLG and Shell.... The 373 Shell Oil Refinery Set of 1977....

WoutR.... here are some Norwegian Automatic Binding Bricks windows.... (to be in my next collectors guide update)....

I was contacted by a French journalist 2 weeks ago, who was interested in the relationship between TLG and Shell. Few folks realized that this went back to the early 1950s.... as did a relationship between BP and TLG, and also ESSO and TLG, and in the USA there was EXXON from 1978-1992. The Shell relationship went from circa 1952-57, and again from 1966-present. I gave the French journalist some images from my LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide, and also some old ones from my LEGO 1:43 Chevrolet Trucks Collectors Guide (1952-57). Here's the entire article in French, but you should be able to get an online translator... http://www.terraeco....mour,55921.html I think that getting LEGO involved in the anti-Arctic drilling hoopla is rather absurd...

Hey WoutR.... the similarities between the PRIMA set and that red box set (and some discussions with an old time collector) is what set me off on the wrong tangent about the yellow AND red boxes originating from Norway. As it later turned out... the yellow (PRIMA) boxes were produced by Geas of Sweden, and the fact that none of my Norwegian collector friends were able to find any red boxes... that made me re-think the whole Norwegian introduction of LEGO sets. That previous post was from 2012... and since then a collector found this set.... This is a Danish ABB set. And when I saw the image with the brochure.... it immediately told me that this was a very early (1949-50) 700/1 or 700/2 Danish ABB set. The red cardboard box that I had earlier thought was a 1953 era Norwegian box, was likely an earlier (1949-50) Danish 700/3 ABB set box.... that size being smaller than the larger 700/1 or 700/2 set. Sooooo..... It looks like the first Norwegian sets of November 1953 (when sales and production started in Oslo Norway).... were of this box type.... the 1953-55 LEGO Mursten boxes.... So, the next iteration of Chapter 2 of my Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide.... will contain quite a few corrections.... but at least I now have all the info going all the way back to 1949... including images of boxes and instructions!

OK... now for some more answers.... In researching the pieces to the puzzle about old LEGO... there are always a few false clues that are given to me... That was the case with PRIMA. Geas gives us a company name and town name in their catalogs... but PRIMA is totally silent. So I received a few images that really threw me for a loop! Here is one set... a 1957 700 wooden box set (with contents) from Sweden. This set should only contain LEGO parts... but it also contains PRIMA parts, which don't have LEGO on the studs. This was one of the things that made me think that PRIMA was produced in Norway... since A/S NORSKE LEGIO produced real LEGO parts for the Swedish market from 1955-61. And the original owner of this set became indignant when questioned about whether or not these parts were original. Well in retrospect, a genuine 700 (with contents) set contains only about 500-550 parts... not the nearly 1000 parts in this set. So these PRIMA parts may have been added to this LEGO set back in 1957 (when the original owner was a child)... but now I do believe that they are not original to this set. Real LEGO sets in Sweden were put together in Lerum Sweden (with parts from Norway and Denmark), near Göteburg, quite some distance from Gislaved, where the PRIMA sets were produced. So I do not believe that these sets had any natural connection between them. And here is a PRIMA set... which has real LEGO bricks and a 1955 Swedish LEGO catalog in it. Again, I thought that Norway must have had some input into this set... until later, when I came across another set that had the same identical glass water spots on the box top. It seems that this box shown here is a later reproduction... as is the 1955 Swedish catalog... So the originality of the bricks definitely fell into question. So this confirmed that PRIMA and LEGO Norway/Sweden had no relationship with each other... but based on my earlier catalog small print... PRIMA and GEAS did have a "smoking gun" connection.... However.... all that said... there had to be some continuing interaction between Geas and TLG Billund. And here is why... the later (circa 1954) PRIMA catalog showed these PRIMA parts that were introduced around the same time by TLG Billund... specialty LEGO parts. These parts molds were likely designed by TLG, and likely sent (without LEGO in the molds) to Geas for introduction of new PRIMA parts.... What is so exasperating about all of this is that there are no known records between any relationship between Geas and TLG Billund. Here are PRIMA macaroni bricks in 1/2 and 1/4 circle size... these were never produced in either green or yellow by TLG... but these bricks without LEGO on the studs were PRIMA bricks. Here are some Prima parts.... with the telltale waffle bottom square 4x8 plates in green and yellow... and also the half circle macaroni bricks in green. And one last thing.... the first Geas sets had 5 colors of parts... later reduced to 4 colors (no longer blue). Also these sets were likely made of Bakelite early on... and possibly later switched to Polystyrene... which likely continued production when the Geas sets switched to PRIMA....

WoutR.... very observant.... But since that was published, I had done a lot of other research and yes.... PRIMA was indeed made by Geas Konstharts of Gislaved Sweden. My next update (free to current owners) of Chapter 2 of my LEGO Collectors Guide (Chapter on Automatic Binding Bricks and PRIMA).... will reflect that yes the later (1952-55) PRIMA product was produced by the GEAS company. Here was the "smoking gun".... the same virtually exact printing (and printer company from Sweden mentioned at the bottom of the page).... shows that the same company produced both products.... 1950-52 GEAS.... 1952-55 PRIMA.... Both brochures were also produced by the same Swedish printing company in Varnamö, a town not too far from Gislaved... home base for Geas!! More info on this coming....

Here's another Space System mystery.... this time it was a mystery why this set was never actually released! The 1526 set..... My LEGO Collectors Guide chapter on Sets/Parts never released is littered with dozens of sets that were designed and prototyped... but never actually released to the public....

That little fellow is known to old time LEGO collectors as the "LEGO Gnome"... but I don't know what he was called in Danish back in the 1954-62 era that he was found in LEGO printed matter, and on LEGO boxes. Here's an example of the 700/3A Basic Set boxes of Germany.... (top 1956-57, middle 1957-58, bottom 1958-60)... these all have the LEGO Gnome on the box tops. The LEGO Gnome was no longer on box tops starting in 1960, and disappeared completely from LEGO literature by 1962.

For those of you who are going on vacation this summer to some place that you really don't want to go.... such as your in-laws.... or to the beach (lake-river-ocean) so that the kids can play..... Take along your laptop.... and since so many places don't have Wifi.... enjoy spending your summer at the family gathering or seashore checking out over 10,000 facts that you didn't know about LEGO..... from rare LEGO sets to rare parts, to rare advertisements, rare promotional items.... everything LEGO.... Still only $29.95.... with no shipping or custom charges, since you get it as a download from the cloud (only 6-15 minutes to download 688MB of data). Don't be stuck this summer without your favorite building toy at your fingertips.....

Yes.... one Space System set that has always intrigued me was the 1985 set 1968 (Space Express). This very rare set was a promotional exclusive set that had a very limited production... and yet was sold in quite a few countries. It was sold in France (at least the Vault image of it is in French), and also in Germany (as shown here in this German trade association advertisement).... And it was also sold in Canada, as seen in this Bricklink advertisement.... I am still trying to uncover more info on this mysterious set..