LEGO Historian

The LEGO basic sets of the 1950s and early 1960s were all hand packed into the thin cardboard boxes, with a cellophane layer shrinkwrapped over the top of the lower box. The box top was never sealed, and therefore could be taken off to see the contents held in place.... Here are some images from my UK LEGO collector friend Chris Bull, and Dutch collector friend Jeroen Van Dorst... These boxes were always packed in a nice checkerboard layout... but not where the long 2x8 and 2x10 bricks were located... nor where the trans-clear bricks were located. However... a Dutch acquaintance (Jeroen) has this very interestinly packed early 1960s box where there is total mayhem in the packing... including a 2x4 black brick... which should NEVER be found in one of these sets. This box shown below obviously snuck past the quality control people. I kiddingly think that this shrink wrapped box was packed immediately after the Billund LEGO Employees Christmas Party... where the packer had a little bit too much potent Danish Cherry Kijafa Wine.... Actually, the LEGO basic set packers did not do the shrink wrapping... that was done at a separate work station. It could be that the person doing the shrink wrapping may have accidentally disturbed this one box, and the parts fell out. The parts may have been rushed back into the box with little rhyme or reason to where the parts were packed... and when a part came missing... it was replaced with a black 2x4 brick. But the Christmas Party anecdote makes for a better story!!

Just for reference... the only other countries that had LEGO Basic Sets (700/0 thru 700/6) with a local language box top were Denmark (System i leg) and Norway/Sweden... with identical (System i lek) box tops... A 1955-56 (no writing on the side of the box) Swedish/Norwegian type 700/4 set... Here is a 1957 image from the factory in Billund with a worker hand packing the checkerboard layout of 700/0 Basic Sets.... And here is a 700/3 Basic Set with the hand packed "checkerboard" contents....

Very nice models... love that desk!! Have you been tempted to add any of your own white bricks to the contents, in case you run short of a particular part, or want to make something larger... or is this challenge just within the framework of the parts in the existing set? I believe that the origins of the LEGO Architecture Studio Set had its origins in something that the TLG folks did in Oslo Norway about 5 years ago. They had over a million white LEGO elements and allowed folks in a public square build with the parts supplied by TLG... the results were displayed there... and there were some very stunning creations built very quickly. I tried to find a link to these photos, but could not find it. I was amazed because of the speed in which these creations were built... just by passersby of this display area. I guess when you reduce LEGO to just 1 color... it speeds up the time for building, and provides a result that is pure architecture, without the hassle of color choice or digging for more of a particular color, which all contribute to a slower build. One of the most interesting monochromatic white models was from the 1985 Centre Pompidou LEGO Exhibit in Paris... by a group of European architects... this model used over 40,000 LEGO elements.... This model has Classic, Neo-Classic and Post Modern architectural details all wrapped into one model. This image is from my 3000 page Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide. Gary Istok

Well 1957 was a very busy year for TLG.... in the first half of the year Netherlands and Switzerland came online with LEGO... and Germany came the year before (in March 1956). Germany was TLG's biggest market for many years to come... so getting set up was no easy matter... especially since TLG only had 140 employees by 1957. I've told this story before... but it bears repeating... LEGO Germany was started by Axel Thomsen. Axel was a Danish compatriot who moved to Sweden in the late 1940s. His talented wife Grete made some doll house furnishings for a young relative. The family raved over the quality of the little designs, and that gave Axel the idea of starting a Dollhouse making company called A/S Lundby. This was named after the town in Sweden that the company was located. Lundby dollhouses are very much a collectors item today, and have a strong internet following. When in 1955 Axel was offered the chance of starting LEGO Sweden, he sold his dollhouse company to his son, and concentrated on LEGO sales in Sweden. In 1956 the opportunity arose to be in charge of the larger LEGO Germany entity, and Axel and Grete moved to Hohenwestedt (in the far north, near the Danish border), the "LEGO Capital of Germany" from 1956-1999. Here is a picture from January 12, 1956... the "christening" of LEGO Germany... a dinner by Axel (far right) and Grete (far left) for Ole Kirk and Godtfred Kirk Christiansen and 2 other TLG officials.... Here are some of the first German LEGO basic sets of 1956-57.... A (new to) 1957 700/0 large basic set.... A 700/2 Basic Set.... A 700/3 medium sized Basic Set... of the older 1956 type without writing on the sides... The small spare parts pack boxes of Germany....

Another country that started LEGO sales in early 1957 was Switzerland. Switzerland was sort of a "whew"... or relief... for LEGO Managing Director Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, and his by then ailing father LEGO founder Ole Kirk Christiansen. When TLG started with the LEGO plastic building blocks in 1949, TLG was copying verbatim... the Kiddicraft Building Blocks of England, first produced by Hilary Page in 1947. Hilary Page had a copyright on Kiddicraft, but it was only in force in a few countries. Switzerland happened to be the first European country where LEGO sales started, and the Kiddicraft patent was in force. However, with the introduction of the new System of Plan, via the Town Plan (Town) System... LEGO had changed enough (even the end of the slotted bricks and thin windows/doors that fit into the slots in 1956) so that a patent infringement was not likely. Also in 1957 Kiddicraft was in shock from the suicide of founder Hilary Page that year. Apparently Mr. Page was overwhelmed by the demands of his company. Anyway... in December of 1956 Godtfred Kirk Christiansen went to Germany to return his father from a long holiday there (Ole was in very poor health, and was resting in the warmer climate of Germany). Ole and Godtfred stopped off in Frankfurt that December to have a meeting with John Scheidegger, the upcoming Director of LEGO Switzerland. At this December 1956 meeting Godtfred and Ole were showing off the new 1956 Town Plan Masonite Town Plan board and building models (these were all glued to the board). Also being shown are German 700/1 and smaller 700/5 sets. Image... from left to right... Godtfred, John Scheidegger, Ole... Construction building toys already sold in Switzerland (before LEGO) were often sold in canister sets. So Switzerland, unlike all other European countries, sold the LEGO Basic Sets (starting in early 1957) in cardboard canisters with zinc lids. The 1957-60 700/3A Swiss Canister Basic Set... with German and French writing... Then new canister designs were introduced in Switzerland in 1960. These matched the rectangular basic set boxes sold in the rest of Europe... with the International "LEGO System" label on the outside... Then in 1965 new LEGO sets came out throughout Europe... and the unique canister sets of Switzerland were permanently retired, in favor of rectangular LEGO boxes, as found elsewhere in Europe. Also, Ole Kirk Christiansen, who had been ailing for several years with health issues, survived to the 25th celebration of TLG on August 12, 1957. However, he did not live too much longer, having died in early 1958, at the age of 67. These images are found in Chapter 5 - LEGO Basic Set (1953-65) and Chapter 73 - LEGO Sales History by Country... in my collectors guide DVD/download.

Well I've sort of almost exhausted the LEGO Norway/Sweden/Finland topic, although I'm still getting new images for my LEGO DVD literally every week! Now to focus the LEGO world to the heart of middle Europe... where LEGO has its' highest concentration in the world... especially in Dutch and German speaking Europe. After LEGO bricks were introduce in Denmark (1949), Sweden (1950, and again 1955), and Norway (1953)... the next LEGO countries were Germany (March 1956), Switzerland and Netherlands (both early 1957). Lately I have been getting some absolutely stunning LEGO box images from my LEGO collector friends (thanks Francois-Xavier, Jeroen and Diana!), and these really bring out the beauty of the LEGO boxes back then. Let's start with the Netherlands... when LEGO sales started there in 1957, they mirrored the new LEGO sets in Germany of 1956. Basic sets were introduced in 8 sizes, all with the same/similar box top designs. These sets were (largest to smallest)... 700/0, 700/1, 700/2, 700/3, 700/3A, 700/4, 700/5 and 700/6. Some of these (700/1, 700/2 and 700/3 have set numbers (with different box designs) going all the way back to 1949. Others joined the ranks along the way. Here's the medium sized 700/3 LEGO set with a Dutch language top... shown of course are Ole Kirk Christiansen's 3 grandchildren Kjeld (known in the LEGO world as KKK), Gunhild and young Hanne. Here's a slightly smaller 700/3A box. Note: after the 700/1 thru 700/6 all were established by early 1953... there was a new "midsize" box introduced... well the numbers were used up... so TLG used a unique "3A" number to differentiate from the larger 700/3 and smaller 700/4 sizes. Here is a small Dutch 700/5 Basic Set.... And here is a Dutch language small spare parts pack box showing the same 3 children... From 1955-58 LEGO basic set and spare parts boxes (1955-60 in Denmark) were found in the local language. Among these German, Danish and Swedish/Norwegian are much more common than are the Dutch langauge boxes. These command premium prices over the more common boxes. For 700 Basic Sets (1955-60)) the local language writing on the box top was: Denmark: “LEGO Mursten” and “System i leg” Sweden/Norway: “LEGO Mursten” and “System i lek” Germany: “LEGO Bausteine” and “System im Spiel” Netherlands: “LEGO Bouwstenen” and “Systeem bij het Spel” Switzerland: “LEGO Bausteine” and “System im Spiel” & “LEGO Briques" and “Systeme dan le jeu” ("LEGO System" and "System in Play") Note: Unfortunately... because you cannot use a "/" in much of computer coding (it's a reserved character)... it causes problems for labeling the 700/x basic sets... so Bricklink, Peeron, Lugnet and other online databases have some serious issues with the labeling of these sets in their set online databases. These images are new updates to my LEGO DVD/download collectors guide... Gary Istok

Hehehe.... I had noticed that too... but the blue bricks did have the "X"... but not the "Q". Interesting! But I also had counted the number of bricks and that total is 86. This is way more than should be in a parts pack. The Nov. 1957 Danish announcement mentions 52 bricks... and the 1958 catalogs (of all countries) mentions only 50. So then I thought that this pack of red bricks was a double pack mixed into 1 box. But there would be way more than just the Q and X missing from a duplicate pack (many bricks are only here once)... so this may have been an original box... with some serious quality control issues (overcounting!!).

I sent a copy of these red Norwegian printed bricks to my LEGO contact at TLG Billund 3 days ago... to the manager at the LEGO Archive/Collections... and her response.... ----------------------------------------------- Dear Gary, Thank you so much for sending me the red letter bricks. I have never seen them before. As you know I am thankful to know as much as possible about the old products. I really appreciate your information. Have a nice day, Kirsten -------------------------------------------- So these LEGO printed bricks are unknown to the folks at TLG. Back in the 1950s LEGO Norway and LEGO Sweden were often independent of LEGO Denmark.... so some products that they produced were unknown to the folks back at the HQ in Denmark. I've been working with the folks in Denmark on getting their Archives more complete... and in the process they've been sharing with me some very rare LEGO items that are unknown (generally) to LEGO collectors worldwide. There's still a lot of things still to be discovered in the big wide world of LEGO... and if it was produced... I'll find it!! (With the help of LEGO collectors worldwide!) Cheers, Gary Istok

Well my German LEGO collector friend Lothar (never met a Scandinavian LEGO product he didn't like ) finally found a Finnish printed beam for the local 306 set. The 307 (VW Showroom) brick says "VW MYYNTI", and the 306 VW Service set brick for Finland is now (today) finally confirmed as "VW HUOLTO". This corresponds to the Finnish printed brick for the Esso Service 310 set... which is "ESSO HUOLTO". With the much more common 309 Church Set bricks with "ANNO 1762" or "AD 1762" or "1762" going for over $50 each... I would imagine that these rarer Finnish bricks would sell for well over $100 each... especially when seeing that the Norwegian box of old parts went for $4000+. The ESSO HUOLTO, VW HUOLTO and VW MYYNTI bricks all are very highly sought after (and rarely found)... ditto for Norwegian VW GARASJE bricks. The VW SALG (Sales) brick was used in both Norway and Denmark... and is MUCH more common. Anyway... the VW HUOLTO brick is now the last missing brick from my LEGO DVD/download Chapter 48 - LEGO Printed and Painted Bricks. Portugal had no Portuguese printed bricks (using those of other countries instead).... although sooner or later I bet someone on EBAY will offer an Italian "TEATRO" brick as Portuguese (which technically it could be)!

Here's an extremely rare advertisement for the very first USA Toy Fair where LEGO was prominently displayed... the New York Toy Fair of March 1962. LEGO came into production only about 6 months earlier... in time for the 1961 Christmas season in the USA. In my LEGO DVD/download...

Getting back to the VW Service Set. The earlier images were from sets of 1957-60. Here is a 1960-64 version that uses photography instead of artwork. In 1959 the inhouse LEGO Photography Department was established. This gave TLG an easy option of using photography for most all LEGO box images, starting in 1960. This particular image shows something I've never seen before.... This particular 306 box was in pristine brand new condition... never been played with. Unlike the 700/x Basic Sets of this era (which had the parts held in place via plastic cellophane over the inner box), these model sets had no cellophane cover... but the parts were held in place by tissue paper. This would explain a scenario that I had found very often with these 306-310 model sets... namely the boxes were taped shut, and this would explain the tape marks (missing paper) on the side of the outer box. This was a problem that I didn't find too often on the 700/x Basic Set boxes... where the shrink wrapped cellophane kept the parts in place inside...

The interesting thing about microscale is just how micro you use the scale. Many of the buildings shown here were extra dimintive in scale. Some micro buildings can be quite large. Here's a circa 1965 TLG glued Swiss Chalet display model (from my LEGO DVD/download)... as shown using 1x1x and 1x1x2 red classic windows.

Trans-clear LEGO bricks have not been produced in abundance in recent years. Anyone who has done large scale constructions with trans-clear bricks usually involve the addition of old bricks. Here's the dilemma in doing so... having a mix of colors of the trans-clear parts from different decades....

Well in posting many of images of Norwegian and Swedish LEGO items... I've sort of left out the VALUE of old non-TLG produced LEGO items. Some of these items have sold for quite a bit of money, even in used condition. Many of the rare parts shown in this thread were part of this early 2013 Norwegian auction lot... selling for over $4000 dollars!!! This lot included the Norwegian decal named beams, blue, yellow and red early classic windows, a set of very rare red based Norwegian road signs, rare red waffle bottom plates, and a large collection of early 1950s slotted bricks. But for $4000... it just shows the rarity and desirability of these old rare Norwegian parts!

Interesting point Splatman... I wonder if that's not related to a "prismatic issue" of the colors of the spectrum thru a light source... such as glass?

Question about illegal connections.... is it just "illegal" if it causes stress to the parts? What I'm getting at is this... when building the Leaning Tower of Pisa... there has to be some plates/tiles underneatht he structure to cause the lean... such as using some plates as a sloped ramp of sorts. Wouldn't these parts be also somewhat (at least) illegal? And what about the tower itself... isn't a 5 sided tower (using round bricks and other parts to make the non-90 degree anges) in a sense an illegal use of LEGO?? I see all of those attempts at making a multi-sided Roman Coliseum with round bricks used for the curvature of the sides... aren't they also an illegal use? Or am I mistaking not being on the the baseplate stud "grid plan"... as an illegal use?

Here's a different take on LEGO in a magazine.... here's a 1962 German magazine ARTICLE... (as opposed to ad)... and the article talks about LEGO in Germany. This image is of a LEGO designer in Germany building LEGO models. In March of 1962 TLG came out with LEGO wheels... so this image had to be from soon thereafter... since there are a lot of models with LEGO wheels in this image.... (from my DVD/download)....

I was reading this thread with interest... and it suddenly hit me... I was just posting on the Norway... Sweden... Finland thread about a 1236 Garage Set that used slotted LEGO bricks of the 1949-56 era... and because windows and doors fit in between the slots of 2 stud wide bricks... this garage set only had 1stud thick walls. So the 2 windows were forced into a position that exerted a force onto the bricks, since the window was forced into place in a connection that it was not really intended for.... This is actually the first known example of the Illegal Connection... and it dates to 1955-56. In 1956 TLG remodeled the old slotted bricks so that they no longer had slots to fit windows/doors into... and they changed the windows/doors to have studs on top... and no longer had "wings" on the sides to fit within the slotted bricks. I just posted about this set 2 days ago... and more information can be found here... http://www.youblisher.com/p/729414-236-1236-LEGO-Garage-Set-of-1955-70/ From my LEGO Collectors Guide DVD/download...

The 1960-65 700K wooden box set. This set came out in 1960 in a plain wooden box (top image)... and in 1961 (middle image) it had a continental Town Plan top, both of which were imported to Britainl from TLG. Then in 1962 (bottom image) it finally came out in a UK style box, since it was produced there....

Well my Dutch collector friend Michel keeps finding more and more old Bayer test bricks... Here we have Trans-clear, Trans-clear-black, and Trans-black... Just how green is Trans-green?? Again from Michel (and will be in my DVD/download)... 8 shades of Trans-green... the upper right one is the closest to the newly released Trans-green bricks....

Let me do some digging around... I know I have at least one from circa 1985-87. But unlike my customer catalogs... my retailer ones are not all together....

One of the rarest LEGO sets was this set of Britain/Ireland/Australia... the 380 Village Set... This 380 Village Set consists of LEGO Town sets 344, 346 and 347, and vehicle set 603. But even rarer than this set is the 1979 Kelloggs promotional Village set... which consists of a 380 Village set... plus 2 additional house sets (326 and 345), as well as 6 additional vehicle sets, and a parts pack of UK style street lights.... only 2502 sets were ever produced of this rarity. This set consists of a big brown shipping box with the individual sets packed inside. This Kellogg's set is just one of over 100 promotional LEGO sets from my LEGO DVD/download chapter on promotional LEGO sets.

I didn't want to open a separate thread... but my all time favorites amog catalogs... are LEGO Retailer Catalogs. These are usually pretty hard to come by, and often give us a better information as to what is found in LEGO sets. Here's some examples... the 1972 USA Samsonite LEGO retailer catalog. This was an easy one... since there were only 8 sets at this time. In 1970 TLG filed a lawsuit against USA Samsonite (the licensee) for underperforming LEGO sales. The end was near in 1972 for Samsonite in the USA, the last regular year for LEGO sales, although sets on shelves could remain until the following year. In 1973 the first TLG produced LEGO sets were sold in the USA... distributed from Connecticut. But I love this page in particular.... it mentions "that due to production technologies, we are able to offer the consumer nearly double the parts at a lower price".... hehehe... someone is NOT telling the truth (Samsonite)... that the real reason that these sets are so cheap (so many huge sets at a cheap price)... is because that within a year Samsonite has to empty their factory inventory of LEGO parts... and the best way to do so is drop the price/part ration much lower... Notice how HUGE the word "Samsonite" is in relation to "LEGO"... this would never have been possible if it were not for the fact that Samsonite was on their way out for selling LEGO... and they no longer cared what TLG thought about the Samsonite LEGO boxes.... Here we see the 2 larger basic sets (a 737 and 917 piece set). By late in 1972... Samsonite was dumping LEGO parts into larger Sears and J.C. Penney catalog sets with over 1200 parts. Note also that the 104 set shows a model of a portable "Barrel Organ"... with pipes made of 1x6 and 1x8 LEGO beams... except these beams look kind of odd... they were supposedly retired in 1964 when TLG switched from hollow bottom beams to beams with posts underneath.... Samsonite had the older 1x6 and 1x8 beams (and waffle bottom plates) for a nearly a decade after they were discontinued in Europe. Why is that?? Because Samsonite bought the obsolete old LEGO molds from TLG, and continued using them, and often even re-tooling them for continued use... which explains why some USA Samsonite bricks and beams have more than one LEGO font on the same bricks and parts... and not always going in the same direction!! There are so many little clues that retailer catalogs give us... that explain so much!! Images found in my LEGO DVD/download.

Of all the LEGO model sets ever made... none were simpler and yet more complex than the 236/1236 LEGO garage set. First of all Town Plan model sets... it was introduced in Denmark, Norway and Sweden in 1955 in a (loose parts) rectangular box. In 1958 it came out in a flat box set that had all the parts held in place by inserts. This flat box version also contained a 1:87 type VW Bus. The difference in price between the flat box and rectangular box set is astonishing. The loose part rectangular box version was never worth more than $200, mayble $300 for an early box. But the flat box sets are so highly coveted that they can command up to $1000 each. The flat box inserts and 1:87 VW Bus contribute to this increased valuation. Here are the loose box versions.... (and this gets very complicated)... 1) Denmark, Norway Sweden (1955-58) as set 1236. 2) Germany, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland (1956-58) as set 236. 3) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Sweden (1958-60) as set 236. 4) Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Sweden (1960-67) as set 236. 5) Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Finland, Austria, Switzerland, France (1968-70) as set 236. And the flat box versions with the 1:87 VW Bus... 1) Denmark, Norway as set 1236 (1958-59). Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal as set 236 (1958-59). 2) Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal, Finland (1959-60). 3) Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal, Finland, Britain, Ireland (1960-65) and Australia (1962-65). After the 236 flat box sets were disconinued in 1965, all the flat box countries switched over to the rectangular box type, except for Britain, Ireland and Australia... where the 236 were discontinued. The complexity of this set is not just the set number and the box type and design, but also the contents, which were not always the same type of bricks or windows/door. Here is a complex writeup (from my DVD/download) of the 236/1236 sets... and some of the strange content changes... (Use the lower left arrow to zoom in full screen)... http://www.youblishe...Set-of-1955-70/

Well earlier in this thread I showed some Norwegian blue 1x1 alphabet bricks with gold lettering from a 1957-58 #1234 Alphabet Bricks parts Pack... Well just 2 days ago... another amazing Norwegian discovery came to light.... (thanks to my German LEGO collector friend Lothar, who collects old Norwegian LEGO).... RED Norwegian alphabet bricks in a #1234 parts!!!! Before this goes to my DVD/download... I have to do my customary photoshopping to iliminate "blemishes"... sad to see so many old LEGO items have been written on!! This is why my 3000 page Collectors Guide is a DVD/download only... to keep adding new discovered old rare items... and ship out a new version of the guide for free to current owners!! Now I have to contact my friends at the TLG Archives and Collections in Billund. This gives them something else to add to their Norway/Sweden collections records... which are sparse for the 1950s. I'm still anticipating the finding of LEGO classic windows/doors from Norway... in light blue and pink!! Cheers, Gary Istok