| Home page / LegoŽ / 60s & 70s |
Disclaimer
This page is not connected with or endorsed by The LEGO Company. LEGO,
LEGOLAND, LEGO SYSTEM, LEGO TECHNIC, DUPLO, LEGO PRIMO and LEGO MINDSTORMS are
trademarks of The LEGO Company.
Dedicated to those of you LEGOmaniacs who are too young to remember the first years of LegoŽ, or who have never had the opportunity to see some of these relics.
The story
During my childhood I spent tons of hours playing with LegoŽ, and a large part of my small week's pay buying spare parts. It would have been strange not to receive at least one LegoŽ set at Christmas or birthday. My sister Elena and my brother Stefano are just one and two years younger than I am. They were very fond of LegoŽ too and we usually played together to build very large cities.
Not all of our LegoŽ survived, but we still own a very large bunch of pieces, which I am pleased to share with you in this page.
The images
Our first LegoŽ wheels had brass pins and grey solid rubber tyres. There
where big wheels too, and wheels with special shaped pins to be used with
motors.
Black tyres came after some years, at first solid ones and then hollowed too.
Spoked
wheels appeared later.
All these wheels were to be inserted in special 2 x 4 x 1 bricks, usually white.
In the picture there are train wheels too of the same period.
The 2 x 2 x 1 brick with small wheels had been the foundation of the LegolandŽ
series.
When tracks where made of blue rails coupled with white 2 x 8 white plates
used as ties.
Electric things. Three different 4.5V motors. The large
transparent brick contains an electronic circuit to build a whistle-controlled
train. It
was sold together with the black motor and the white microphone (and the black
whistle
shown in the previous picture).
The black 2 x 4 x 1 electric brick with two pins is a switch used to control
train motors
the fashion present DUPLOŽ trains do.
There were light bricks too: the transparent 2 x 4 and the red 2 x 2 ones in
the picture.
Writings: they were both inside sets and sold
separately. Note some of them are "localised" (in Italian).
With the 1 x 1 white character and number bricks you could compose your own
writings (sold
only as spare parts).
Roof brick were only red and only 45 degrees, but look at all the kind of
"connectors" that allowed you to build any kind of roof with any
number of
pitches.
We had plenty of plates, which in the beginning were mainly grey and
white. There were special plates as well for trains and vehicles. Plates were
sold as spare parts in almost all sizes and colours (sigh!).
Windows came mainly in white and red, later in yellow too. All of them
were fixed and much smaller then now. Our first door that could be opened was
in the unusual 3x width.
We have a large collection of vehicle doors too.
Long before the advent of minifigs, we felt the need of people
for our cities. In this picture you can see our solution. We chose a
transparent cylinder
for the head because it was the most "neutral" of the available
colours to
represent skin (pink LegoŽ came a generation later…). Very simple but
effective.
They were compact enough to be used within small vehicles and houses, and
perfectly
compatibles with the standard LegolandŽ scale. We built a bunch of them in all
colours
simply buying spare 1x cylinders a 1x2 plates (sigh again).
Yes! It IS LegoŽ!
Page visited
times.
Send me an
e-mail
if you like. I understand Italian, English, Spanish.