Literally never seen this set before.
It’s actually pretty lame and a boring build!
The trees are the best part of the set.

"Warehouse."
"There house!"
"You've got to be kidding..."

Why do those trees look so off?

I love these really old sets - the ancient "flat" trees (which were painted BTW); the crazy baseplates; the little 1x2 windows; and the frequent use of old light gray plates that would largely end by 1973 and not reappear much until the first Castle and Classic Space sets in 1978. Yes, not a fantastic build, but a fascinating little time capsule!

@lemish34 said:
"It’s actually pretty lame and a boring build!
The trees are the best part of the set."

And yet, sadly, these are not the really good granulated trees that came along two years later.

How exciting!

@WhileyFox said:
"Why do those trees look so off? "

Huh. Not the famous crumble trees. Um, a lot of stuff from the early years looks like it was meant to be used as scenery on a hobby train layout. This includes die-cast cars, and probably these weird trees as well. One early form of tree was the crumble tree, where they molded a brown trunk, coated it in solvent, and then dipped it in green ABS pellets to represent the leaves (which, true to their design, would shed periodically). Then there were a couple different generations of these flat molded trees before they eventually stopped trying to court the hobby train crowd so heavily, created the minifig, and just produced the full range of stuff you’d need to make a train layout.

They should do a 6000 piece Icons remake, maybe IKEA or Amazon branded...

@8lackmagic said:
"They should do a 6000 piece Icons remake, maybe IKEA or Amazon branded..."

Think IKEA already went with Lego with 40357 .. but yeah, this looks like a set from a 70s Hong-Kong movie...half expect a minifig to be crashing out of the window followed by others being pummelled out from one angry kung-fu fighter who is out for vengeance.

Warehouse? I was at work in a warehouse just a few hours ago, and it looked nothing like this. Why is this one on stilts? Is it in a swamp? You can't operate forklifts in a swamp, you know.

@PurpleDave said:
" @WhileyFox said:
"Why do those trees look so off? "

Huh. Not the famous crumble trees. Um, a lot of stuff from the early years looks like it was meant to be used as scenery on a hobby train layout. This includes die-cast cars, and probably these weird trees as well. One early form of tree was the crumble tree, where they molded a brown trunk, coated it in solvent, and then dipped it in green ABS pellets to represent the leaves (which, true to their design, would shed periodically). Then there were a couple different generations of these flat molded trees before they eventually stopped trying to court the hobby train crowd so heavily, created the minifig, and just produced the full range of stuff you’d need to make a train layout."

I didn't know about that at all. But that makes sense since I don't own any sets older than 1978. I wonder what the cost was to do all this? They really are distracting to the eye. They give me that same feeling that the Toy Story minifigs did, where the heads didn't feel like LEGO at all.

@sjr60 said:
" @BLProductions said:
"Warehouse? I was at work in a warehouse just a few hours ago, and it looked nothing like this. Why is this one on stilts?"
To make it level with a train.
"
Also to create ventilation underneath, and by doing so to keep everything in the building dry and (somewhat) cool, and keep it safe from pests.
(though that was more likely in the era long before trains existed)

The lighting is so dramatic

@sjr60 said:
" @BLProductions said:
"Warehouse? I was at work in a warehouse just a few hours ago, and it looked nothing like this. Why is this one on stilts?"
To make it level with a train."
Exactly. What many don't seem to remember (or know in the first place) is that a lot of early LEGO was designed to fit into a train layout, specifically H0/00.

And back then there were loads of these small warehouses along minor train lines all over Europe. They often looked something like this:

https://www.ebay.de/itm/357750650776

Sometimes they also looked like they were built on stilts in real life, but in this case it might also have been LEGO trying to save on using too many bricks.

Simpler times.