by Sarah Herman
This rare box, which contained just two 2 × 4 bricks (either yellow and blue or red and white) was distributed to retailers between 1958 and 1960 to help promote the new stud-and-tube bricks. © Maxx Kroes
Set 314, released in 1963, included the new large and small LEGO wheels and a turntable. © Alex Howe
As well as being the year the wheel made LEGO bricks mobile, 1962 also saw a significant change in the material used to make LEGO. Previously, TLG had been using cellulose acetate to make all its plastic products, but it was decided under the advice of Swiss engineer Hans Schiess who had been employed to lead LEGO’s process development lab in Billund that switching to acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) would provide the company with the reliable, quality product they were trying to produce. The change came when it was discovered that ABS was relatively inexpensive, easy to mold accurately in small measures, and was much more colorfast and durable than its predecessor. In 1963 the change began, phasing out cellulose acetate (at least in the European LEGO market) over the next few years. LEGO has been made from ABS ever since. German company Bayer has been the exclusive supplier of LEGO plastics for most of the company’s history. Interestingly, TLG supplied Bayer with molds for 2 × 4 bricks with which to test the plastics they were supplying LEGO with, resulting in a number of bricks produced by Bayer as samples. These bricks, while never sold, are highly sought after by some collectors as they are available in a variety of unusual colors (some bricks are translucent, transparent, or have a marbled effect).
An example of some of the unusual marbled effects found on these rare test bricks. © Maxx Kroes
In 1959, a year after the first stud-and-tube bricks had been released, a new Town Plan card board (200) that folded out and had metal heels to protect the corners replaced the earlier plastic and fiberboard layouts. This new board would be sold in Europe until 1968, and was the first style to be sold in the U.K. after LEGO began official sales there in 1960 (the U.K. board had a cloth section to support the folding midsection). The company’s interest in promoting road safety to children was strengthened by the realistic road signs and road markings on the town plan boards—different countries sold left- or right-hand drive versions depending on the real driving conventions that existed there.
In 1961 the U.K. was one of the first countries to receive a new series of 700 sets—each with a different picture on the box. Rather than radically change the contents of the gift boxes, they were simply updated with the new LEGO bricks. This was the same year TLG released the first Town Plan sets that came complete with a board. (The earlier wooden box town plan sets (700) had included parts to build a town plan scene, but only German sets came with a board on the lid.) A photograph on the box of the 712-piece Town Plan Set (725), available only in North America in 1961, depicted a red and white LEGO town not too dissimilar from the Danish catalog illustration seen six years before, and the use of more photographic images was soon commonplace across the brand, presenting a bright, modern image and replacing the more illustrative style of printing. This can be clearly seen in the supplementary System sets released in the early 1960s where a number of different box sleeves—each featuring a photograph of children playing with LEGO bricks—were used to sell a variety of parts. The contents of each packet were shown on the inner tray.
Godtfred was keen to modernize the image of LEGO toys so he hired a marketing manager and opened a photography department to handle the packaging and marketing materials for the company. In 1960 the cartoon mascot from the 1950s was scrapped and replaced with a robotic-looking figure built from LEGO Bricks. The packaging of the new 700 gift sets released in 1961 featured a gray LEGO baseplate as the backdrop with photographs of children happily playing with LEGO. These photographs were used not only on LEGO’s boxes, but across its marketing materials to help develop a recognizable brand across the various international markets LEGO was being sold in.
This impressive collection of 2 × 4 test bricks produced by Bayer shows the wide variety of colors they were produced in, some not available as LEGO bricks until much later. Letters (A–D) on the bricks indicate their clutch strength. © Maxx Kroes
1964 NEW YORK WORLD FAIR
By 1964 LEGO was gaining worldwide recognition, and had become a huge brand in Denmark. The 1964 World Fair in New York was the ideal stage to exhibit LEGO toys on a universal scale, so it was only fitting that the LEGO Group played a key role in the public image of Denmark presented there. The pavilion was targeting children with its Tivoli Gardens theme, and LEGO toys were available both in the exhibit’s shops (two exclusive sets were brought from Billund for the event) and to play with in the children’s park.
After nearly ten years of the original Town Plan sets, 1964 saw the release of a new series of basic sets (040 and 050) to incorporate the new building scale brought about by the introduction of LEGO 2 × 2 wheels and other components. As mentioned previously, these sets were packaged differently from their predecessors, with bright photographs showing children happily playing and building houses, planes, and windmills. The 1964 sets were also the first sets to feature proper building instructions. Prior to this, some basic instructions were sometimes printed on the inside of the box lid, but they were incomplete and for younger children incomprehensible. In the U.K., LEGO fans could pick up two different series of blueprints from toy shops for one penny each (one series consisted of blueprints to build a windmill, a boathouse, a London bus, and an astronaut). These blueprints had written instructions that included a shading code to decipher which color brick should be used and built the model up layer by layer, showing an illustration per row.
The new metallic edges can be seen on the inside of the System play board, which encouraged children to build a town of their own. © Alex Howe
An original 200 cardboard Town Plan board released in the late 1950s—a young Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen (future CEO and president of the LEGO Group, and Godtfred’s son) appeared on the outside. © Alex Howe
Originally, it hadn’t occurred to LEGO to include detailed instructions with its sets, but as its toys became more focused on the models you could build with them, rather than being just a box of bricks, LEGO Futura and the graphics department teamed up to produce instructions that, at the time, were unique to the toy industry. By showing an illustration of the growing model from an elevated angle, builders could see which elements had been added to from the previous picture, and position the correct bricks accordingly. With no words used at all, the instructions were universal and revolutionary—since then, most other construction toy brands have employed this instruction method.
The LEGO Group brought further clarity to its toys when it began to include a picture of a set’s contents on the box. Supplementary sets released in 1966, such as 432 (eight road signs) and 433 (Street Lamps), were the first to show buyers what they were getting with an illustration of the parts included, instead of just showing children building and playing with LEGO—this proved even more useful the larger and more complex the sets became. Today LEGO boxes detail all the pieces included and the number of each in an accessible parts index on the side of each box.
The popularity of the Town Plan reached its peak during the early 1960s. As the decade began to wind down, so did production of Town Plan sets and boards. The 1:87 model cars and trucks were being replaced by the LEGO wheel and all the building possibilities it presented—with that the scale of Town Plan became somewhat obsolete. New supplementary parts sets no longer featured Town Plan pictures, but came packaged in simple blue boxes with the LEGO logo and cellophane box fronts revealing the contents. Medium-size sets included pieces to produce a specific model such as a delivery truck (333) or a fire engine (336), while larger basic building sets such as those released in 1968 encouraged children to build anything from a rocket to the Taj Mahal. The focus on the Town System had shifted to a more general building creative aesthetic that incorporated new technology and ideas.
PROMOTIONAL SETS
As producti
on of Town Plan sets in the U.K. stopped toward the end of the 1960s, a promotional deal struck with Kellogg’s saw left over Town Plan boards and parts given away in cereal competitions. The 1967 “Win a Town” competition gave children the chance to win a set containing their own Town Plan board and an interesting mixture of parts including Esso gas pumps with Shell signage. Three years later, another competition appeared to “Win your own LEGOLAND.” The set available to entrants was similar to the 1971 Village Set with its fire station, two small houses, and an assortment of vehicles and trees. Kellogg’s was not the only company helping to use up surplus parts. Despite Town Plan sets being discontinued in North America by licensee Samsonite in 1966, once TLG began proceedings to revoke the Samsonite LEGO license in 1970, the company began producing a few large sets to clear out its inventory. Sears department store’s catalog was a regular retailer of Samsonite LEGO products, and exclusively sold an 842-piece Town Plan with an unusual dark gray board.
The LEGO wheel made the building of vehicles easier, such as this London Bus (313), and introduced a new, larger scale to the LEGO System. © Thorskegga Thorn
Street lamps were just some of the accessories available in the new supplementary sets of 1966; others included lettered bricks and road signs. These illustrated boxes were gradually replaced with cellophane-fronted boxes. © Thorskegga Thorn
A group of three LEGO-branded trucks released in 1967 included this blue “truck with flatbed”—the impact of these designs can still be seen in LEGO trucks today. © Jordan Schwartz
These two cowboys (210) released in 1976 were just some of the variety of figures the LEGO Group introduced in the 1970s. © Pieter Stok
The 1970s saw the Town System evolve from the rigid setting of the Town Plan boards, with 1:87 vehicles and free-standing signs and trees, to a more integrated building system incorporating Homemaker sets for dollhouse-style interiors, LEGO trains and the 1971 release of a selection of large base plates available in different colors encouraging imaginative building. There were some further attempts made at a larger town set, such as LEGOLAND Town Centre (355) and 1975’s Harbour Scene and Wild West Scene (364 and 365) that included some of the earliest LEGO figures, which all came with cardboard layouts. The introduction of these simple figures into sets brought new life to LEGO and with it some new settings such as a hospital (363), a station (148), and even a fuel refinery (149). The figures themselves varied in size and shape a couple of times through the mid-1970s, as LEGO designers tried to develop a scale and a suitable figure to populate the LEGO world. In the meantime, set designs became more detailed, and the true fun of LEGO building could be seen in sets such as 1976’s Police Headquarters (370), followed a year later by Texas Rangers (372) complete with cowboy hats and a cactus. The foundations were set for the contemporary minifigure that appeared for the first time in 1978, and with its arrival came a precise scale for all the houses, castles, and spaceships that followed.
Other figures, sometimes referred to as “stiffs” because they had no arms or legs, also started to appear, such as these rescue workers in a 1976 set. © Jordan Schwartz
Prior to 1976’s police station, small emergency service vehicles such as this 1973 police car (611) were released. © David Martin
With the company focusing more of its energies on the development of the LEGO bricks and the System toys, it made sense to market the wooden toys under a different name. In July of 1959 the BILOfix brand name was registered and belonged to all non-LEGO System products. A clear distinction had been made—the future of LEGO was in plastic building bricks. The department was overseen by Godtfred’s brother Gerhardt who had been made head of the wooden toy division in 1957. With only slight modifications made, the only noticeable difference to the remaining wooden toys was a new BILOfix logo. Some new toys were produced under BILOfix at this time, including the BILOfix Transport truck. Gerhardt also developed a wooden beams and bolts connecting product during 1959, which the BILOfix name is now most associated with. Gerhardt’s big promotion didn’t last long, though, when another factory fire in 1960 brought wooden toy production at LEGO to an abrupt end. After this incident, the decision was made not to rebuild or reinvest in the product line, and instead to focus solely on the LEGO System of Play. There were some disagreements between the brothers as to whether wooden toy production should end, with Gerhardt feeling strongly that this was the wrong decision. The LEGO System of Play toys were not yet best-sellers, and it was a big risk on Godtfred’s part to insist that they were the way forward. In April 1961, Gerhardt and Karl Georg left their jobs to start their own businesses, and Godtfred bought out all three of his brothers, making himself the majority shareholder.
Despite their quality and appeal, the LEGO Group hardly sold its wooden toys outside of Denmark, except some limited exportation to Norway. It’s likely their simplicity and similarity to other push-pull toys on the market, being produced by larger, more established manufacturers, prevented them from traveling far beyond Danish borders.
The 1960s saw LEGO sets grow in size, moving away from the 1:87 model scale, and toward a larger scale more in line with the minifigure scale used today. One of the first larger scale sets was the 1964 Train (323), which also hinted at the start of the LEGO Train theme (arriving more completely two years later)—the first distinct theme to emerge after the release of the LEGO System town sets. Toy trains were nothing new, and had already enjoyed phenomenal success for over fifty years when the LEGO Group decided to take them on. From as early as 1891, with the emer gence of German-made clockwork trains, model train sets had captured the imagination of children all over the world, and as the toys progressed from basic brickbuilt playthings to scaled-down electric models of real locomotives, they became popular with adult hobbyists, too.
BILOFIX AFTER LEGO
The name BILOfix is from the Danish “Billions of toys,” so it would have been a sad irony for the optimistically named company to have ended after less than a year when its factory burned down. Taking notes from his determined father, Gerhardt Kirk Christiansen decided to leave the LEGO company and set up on his own with the BILOfix brand. In 1962 the new BILOfix company was established in Kolding, Denmark, a seaport town situated approximately twenty-five miles southeast of Billund. A new factory was built and Gerhardt began producing the BILOfix Ingeniørsæts he’d designed and began manufacturing in 1959. This popular toy was made from wooden beams, rods, and bricks which were connected by plastic bolts and screws, initially made at the Billund LEGO factory with the original molds. Exported widely in Europe (including Scandinavia and the U.K.), Canada, and Japan, this award-winning toy enjoyed years of success. After being sold to a Danish toy distributor in the 1970s, the products were made more cheaply, and soon went out of production.
The LEGO Group’s early attempts to bring little bricks to the railroad appear amateur compared to the realistic sets available today, but they were working with a smaller selection of LEGO parts, and colors, and the electric technology was still being developed by Futura. Known as the “blue era” trains, because of the bright blue tracks they ran on, these first incarnations were released in Europe in 1966. Some sets such as 111 (1966) and 080 (1967) were push trains without motors, but with the release of 115 (1966)—a starter train set that included a motor—and component sets allowing push trains to be upgraded to motorized sets, the moving LEGO Train was born. Motors were built into the locomotives and battery boxes functioned as a railcar which could be connected behind it to supply the power. The first motorized trains included 4.5 volt batteries and were fairly successful, but in an effort to improve the realism of the train system, LEGO launched a new 12 volt system alongside it in 1969, which was targeted at older children. Rather than trains carrying a battery, the rails were electrified and were controlled by a transformer. The 4.5 and 12 volt trains were sold until 1980 and became increasingly realistic and design-conscious with additions that included a diesel locomotive (723), passenger coaches (131), and a Shell
tanker wagon (136).
DUPLO bricks have always been compatible with LEGO bricks, although they’re larger, and have hollow studs and bigger play figures. © Harlan Chen
But it wasn’t only older builders who LEGO wanted to attract to its building system. American licensee Samsonite had produced Jumbo bricks in 1964 to target children whom LEGO parts were too small to cater to, and its sales had highlighted the value of the preschool market. There was a European release of two “Jumbo”-style brick sets in 1968, before LEGO set about developing a new type of brick more suitable for the little hands and developing minds they hoped would play with it. Three years after LEGO Train had been launched, the company surged forward with another innovation—the release of the DUPLO brick in 1969. The name “DUPLO” was born out of the fact that the bricks are double the size (in all dimensions) of a regular LEGO brick. The DUPLO brick has seen a few changes—notably to the height of the studs on top (they’ve grown taller) and the precise shape of the tubes underneath—but in essence its suitability hasn’t changed since its conception. Despite having hollowed-out studs, the DUPLO brick is completely compatible with the stud-and-tube system of the regular bricks, so much so that the first DUPLO basic sets (510, 511) included both types of bricks (in 2 × 4 sizes). Available initially in just four colors, red, blue, white, and yellow, LEGO soon saw its new venture take off and it was quick to add to the variety of pieces in the sets including 2 × 2 bricks, large wheeled base plates, and the double concave arches, first featured in 1972, ideal for small hands to hold onto in the middle when trying to connect the studs.
One of the earliest DUPLO sets (513) included base plates with wheels for little hands to build mobile creations. © Alex Howe
