ThrowbackThursday: 1974
Posted by Huw,
For today's throwback, I'm going way back in time to 1974, a year that was right in the middle of my childhood, so I have fond memories of many of the sets released that year.
I have a near-pristine copy of the UK catalogue for 1974 that illustrates all that was new and cool, and which I have scanned for your viewing pleasure.
What makes it particularly interesting is that it contains recommended retail prices. With the help of an inflation calculator at ThisIsMoney.co.uk it's possible to work out the prices in today's money and answer once and for all whether LEGO is getting more expensive. I think you will be surprised...
The big news of the year was the introduction of what we call today 'bendy-arm maxi-figs'. LEGO had been producing dolls house furniture sets (Homemaker in the USA) since 1971 but until now there were no people to populate them.
Of course they look crude to today's standards but the introduction of the LEGO family provided unprecedented play possibilities, particularly for girls.
A whole range of sets designed to match the large scale of the figures was launched. The three room settings introduced a new baseplate, 24x32 with studs around the edge, which was used only in sets like these.
Although tiles had been introduced in the late 1960s, these were the first sets to make widespread use of them. However the tiles of the day were a nuisance: they didn't have a groove round the edge that they do nowadays, which made removing them near-impossible.
The LEGOLAND building selection available in 1974 was particularly impressive. As you would expect there are fire and police stations available, but there are ordinary houses and civilian buildings too. The Tea Garden Cafe is delightful, isn't it?
I had 360 Gravel Works: it was perhaps my favourite set as a kid. It's packed with loads of cool parts and it kept me quiet for hours, loading and unloading the 1x1 white bricks.
This page is a good one to start talking about prices. The gravel works is priced at £4.55 which sounds awfully cheap for a 211-piece set, doesn't it? However the aforementioned inflation calculator suggests that in today's money that's £49! A non-licensed set with that number of parts nowadays would be £30 or less although it's not easy to directly compare given the number of large and complex parts in the gravel works, such as the conveyer belt. But would you expect pay £50 for a set of that size nowadays? Probably not.
358 Rocket Base released the year before was an equally stunning set and was, I believe, the first space-themed set, other than obscure Samsonite ones in the '60s.
See the letters in squares in the corner of the pages? These are a 'suitability symbol' that indicate the age range the sets are suitable for. A = toddlers, B = from 3 years, C = 'girls and boys who already have some experience of LEGO', D = 'girls and boys who are really familiar with LEGO building'.
611 Police Car, 38p, what a bargain! 38p in today's money is £4.10. Not such a bargain for a 19-piece set after all...
As well as LEGOLAND vehicles and buildings, a range of larger scale vehicles was available which were fitted with play features that were not practical at the smaller LEGOLAND scale, such as steering, opening doors, working fork-lifts and so on.
No new trains for the UK in 1974 but what is interesting is that we (in the UK) were stuck with battery powered trains while the rest of Europe had already progressed to 12V trains, running on blue tracks rather than the grey ones we usually associate with 12V. I believe this had something to do with regulations around mains powered toys in the UK in the 1970s prohibiting their sale.
Technic was still some way off but its predecessor, based on the gears introduced in 1970, was expanded with three new sets in 1974 enabling all manner of cool (at the time) working models to be built.
The system was compatible with the existing motor, set 103-1, enabling many of the models to be motorised.
I love the line "You don't need to be an engineer but you might decide to become one after building models like these!"
The range of supplementary sets was alive and well in the 1970s which provided a good way to get hold of basic parts in bulk for your own models. 930, 60p=£6.50 for 45-pieces. A bargain?
There was also a comprehensive spare parts service which, looking at the selection available, appears to consist mostly of parts that might get broken, lost or worn.
Finally, on the back page, here's the loyalty programme of the day: collect 'golden studs' found in LEGO packs and redeem them for maxi-figs.
To obtain the maximum reward, worth £1.25 (£13.50) you needed to collect 24 studs. A £1 set contains 2 studs, so you would need to spend £12 (£129) to get it. So the reward is worth about 10%, considerably more than today's scheme, which is about 5%.
That concludes my look at the LEGO selection from 42 years ago. What has been most interesting to me is looking at the prices and how they compare to today's. We all complain that LEGO is expensive and seemingly getting more so but actually, is that the case? Assuming the inflation calculator is accurate then 1974's prices are way higher than you would expect to pay nowadays for similarly sized sets, so perhaps today's prices are not so bad after all...
What are your memories of 1974? Don't tell me, you weren't born then. I suspect some of you will tell me your parents weren't even born then either!
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Great article. I had Gravel Works too - so wish I'd kept it now. Incidentally, I picked up a near pristine boxed 200 Family set a couple of months ago for NZ$15... Total bargain!
I was conceived in 1974 if that makes you feel better, Huw. ;)
My first few LEGO sets had those bendy-arm figures. The arms were great for MOCing sets like 6821 Shovel Buggy.
Inflation seems off real world. Lego always has been expensive though. As for prices not being so bad comparitively...when you make £1 billion net profit per year, your product is too expensive.
I think Australia must have imported the UK sets because I have a lot of these but got them through the late 70's to early 80's.
Yeah, I remember the Golden Studs :-)
Deffo had the Lego Family - the hair piece of the Boy/Dad didn't fit properly and kept falling off :-S
Also remember having the Police Car and Jetliner.
65p for a Lego set - those were the days!
This is a timely article.
I was looking at some old slides last night, and there was one showing that I got LEGO set 941 for Christmas 1975, and Set 171 (plus extra blue track pieces) the following Christmas.
I still have all the parts, I just had no definite idea what sets they came from.
I also have some bendy arm people, and a few white axles from the pre-technic gears.
Fond memories!
Yeah, no, I was born in the early 80s, so this was definitely before my time.
As a kid, the charm to Lego sets for me personally were the minifigs. I had my favourite 'family' of figs, and they'd have names and back-stories and would interact with all the other figures (according to the overall storyline I used to like to play around). I'm sure I would've liked Lego anyway, but back in the day, I don't think it would've held as strong a sway over me without the little people I could tell stories about, you know? Although I do think the "Family" sets there are quite brilliant.
Brickset's new series of articles keep getting better and better!
My older sister was born in 1974. She had some of those, nowadays "strange", figures. Each one had broken hinges in hands by the time I was around. Wasn't it frequent issue with those?
Also, quite interesting about those prices. Looks like Lego always has been, is and will be, too expensive.
my brother had 171 train set! i remember this because in 1985 mum bought me 7725 passenger train.the problem was we couldnt get hold of the 12volt motor and the first train carriage didnt roll without it(major disappointment). no problems, my brother broke out 171 and we modified the train using the red wheels,it rolled around that track beautifully,never did get that motor lol
Let's face it, if LEGO would launch small sets with pieces of interior like a bathroom or kitchen again with the modern range of pieces it would be massively popular for all MOC'ers and FOL's...
They're almost depicted as if they were real interiors to buy =)
Thank you for a great article.
I was born in 1978, but I remember building sets 200 and 250, and daydreaming on the other ones in the catalogue.
Obviously this period coincided with my youth because I remember, and had with my brother, many of the kits shown ( I know, spoilt rotten by family). But I'd completely forgotten about collecting the gold stickers. (Hadn't forgotten collecting stars off Action Man sets nor Airfix kits - both of which were contemporaneous to the Lego points). And I now I remember, that explains how I got the Family pack.
Love these new articles, great idea... Fun to see the calculations with inflation, shocking!
I started getting Lego in 1973. I've got half the sets on that Cars and Planes page, they were among my very first sets. So many memories on those pages...
I'm glad you posted this. I was born in 2001 so I dont own any old catalogs like these. I always did think that legos were getting worse and worse(star wars battle packs were $10 in 2007 but now they are around $13-14) My dad owns only one lego set from that decade, and he also had a few of those 'maxifigs'
I'd love some of those sets! Probably doubtful but I think Lego would be smart to sell a retro themed line where they would sell several sets from years gone by. I certainly would love to get a hold of some of these at retail prices and easily available.
And BTW, would be nice to see the London bus as an Advanced models/vehicles set! :)
Price per brick has another potential flaw: there were not many "small" elements in that era. If you analyzed price-by-weight, I suspect you'd find the price differential shrinks considerably.
I have those caterpillar tracks somewhere, and other bits from several of the above sets. What a great trip down memory lane. Thanks for a great article.
I had (and still have) Gravel Works, fire station, and police car. I played with those sets forever. Always wanted that other fire truck, but never got it. A family friend has recently given me the ambulance and helicopter (complete with box!). As a kid I never liked the maxi-figs. They creeped me out and didn't have legs, so I mostly put them as drivers in cars or trucks to make them less lame, so to speak...
The inflation conversion may be correct; yet middle, working, and lower class incomes were all much higher worldwide, compared w/today's wages. I have no figures from the U.K., however in the U.S. middle class incomes have declined by 40% since 1981. So comparatively the sets may have been a bit higher, but people were generally paid more for their efforts, and thus the sets were more affordable. Just a thought, and probably a topic best saved for another forum altogether. However, w/profits exceeding 20%/year, by far the highest of ANY toy industry, TLG could lower their prices and be just as solid financially.
What a great article! Getting LEGO as a kid was a couple years later for me, but I'm so envious of those kids who got these sets. The adults in my life felt that only the basic set was enough for me. Good thing I made up for it later.
I really like the cover - so simple and very elegant
concerning the price: a price-by-weight analysis would be really great, especially with all the stud-shooters in various sets... 1x1 elements for those increase the piece count significantly
Great article, I love the old catalogues, maybe it's just nostalgia but they have a quality to them unmatched by todays catalogues. Looking forward to next Thursday :-)
My Dad was born in 1959 so I have played with his old sets when I was younger. Great article!
Though I was still too young in '74 (born 3 years earlier) my mother bought a number of these sets second hand. I remember the Miniland sets we had won hands down in popularity against theses earlier seventies sets, but they did increase my Lego fun tremendously by adding a fine collection of basic bricks to our Miniland collection and expanding our building possibilities enormously. I still have these sets by the way! Great article, looking forward to the next one.
A year before my time, but I still have two bendy arm figures from my first sets around 1977, and I had a friend whose older brother had the kitchen set.
Yes, LEGO may be difference with the inflation calculator, but you also have to think that (at least the US dollar) was stronger 40 years ago than it is now. At least that is the perception from looking at older items and their comparative prices now.
LEGO is expensive, but maybe it isn't getting MORE expensive. Either way, it is interesting to see what was NEW and EXCITING back then compared to what they have to come out with now.
I do prefer a minifigure, but if I had grown up a decade to 2 decades earlier, maybe I would have liked maxifigs.
From my time, and the police station 354 was the center of my Legoworld.
So many things from that time we saw for first time, and we're still seeing resemblance in today's set's. First time having a townplan where all could be build. :-)
Had quite a collection back then, from Classis House 326 and 332 Truck, lots of LEGOLAND sets, Train set's up till when Technic's came, switched to that, and then came Dark ages.
Now have some of the old set and lots more "new" old stuff, LEGOLAND series is my Time. :-)
LegoSolo77
I don't know if I buy that. From my own memories, seeing family albums, TV shows, movies, history books etc,, people didn't seem to have that much stuff. Most homes didn't have 3 cars in the driveway, a TV in every room, and utter piles of toys and stackings and stackings of LEGO strewn about. I know on paper you are right, but in real life, but I'm not sure if this was so...
I know you get far more car today for less money than the 70s and MUCH better quality (and I love and own several 70s cars). Three month warranty was a good one back then on a new car.
You've got to remember people weren't as rich back then, not as much stuff existed. When I was little I wanted a Postman Pat van and got a small corgi model, it was all there was. Now if you was PP tat, you can select from shelves of the stuff. Relatively speaking it's all a lot cheaper nowadays includling lego.
As an example the big pirate ship in the early 90's was £50, now a similar sized ship is £80, probably £60 on offer somewhere.
It;s loads cheaper nowadays, hence there is a far more stuff. A giant toy superstore didn't exist in 1975, there was nothing to fill it with
Thanks for a great article. I am definitely pulling out the big box of old catalogues and going through them again, and again, and again...
Too bad our kids don't "get" the simplicity of my original generation of Lego, but I too remember playing with the Gravel Works , and the Rocket Base, and Fire Station for endless hours.
How did they create the artwork back then? It must have been so tricky to set it all up and light it properly. Wow.
"It's hard to grow out of LEGO!" claims the catalogue text. How right they are - that is why we are all still here. I have to agree with Jito above - interior sets would be a great idea. May be smaller polybag sets would be ideal so could mix and match sets and create your own interior design themes.
Saving up Golden Studs to send off for a free gift worth 30p seems incredible now.
"... I'm going way back in time to 1974, a year that was right in the middle of my childhood" So what's the middle of childhood? 8?
Nevertheless, great article that I enjoyed very much. 1974 was the end of my childhood I guess. At age thirteen my interest was changing from bricks to the opposite sex :-)
Great article, I was 8 in 1974 and had the cafe and the gravel works as well as most of the small cars and kits. One day I'll rebuild a few, just for nostalgia.
Is there a database/archive of these catalogues on the site anywhere? Or elsewhere? Is it a possible addition to the database, Huw? I know it would be a pain given the huge number of variations regionally and languagly (??) but I think it would be a great resource.
^ No, but I'm thinking about it...
Peeron of course has an archive of catalog scans:
http://www.peeron.com/catalogs/
Thanks for this, Huw! It brings back memories. I had the family--the articulation of the arms was cool. I had also that same police car, that fork lift, and a crane with a scoop in a different set.
I had the Family set (200). I remember not being interested in the grandmother figure. I have more respect for the elderly now that I'm older!
As for the assertion that LEGO is overpriced nowadays, that's demonstrably false. If it were true, people would stop buying it. But they haven't. In fact, they're buying more than ever.
1974 may have been the low water mark of Lego in the US. Lego had just won it's battle with Samsonite and basically rebuilding it's market in the US. I don't recall if any new sets were released in the US that year, but I don't think so. Many of the new set from 1974 were renumbered and released in the US in 1975. But not everything was. This strategy of renumbering and later releases would continue into the early 80s. I own several of these sets, but they are the US releases. It was hard to find as true 1974 set for my collection.
I've got several of this catalogs, but they either German or 1975 US catalogs. So it's fun to see a UK version.
I love this series! We have those figures in my partner's collection, and as we went through the catalogue we realised that he must have had set 686, because the scoop and tippers are still with us. (He's the youngest of three, born in 1975, so I guess a lot of their Lego was already present when he came along. He remembers, when minifigures came in, being frustrated because he was only allowed to play with the larger buildable figures while his brothers got the minifigs...)
If only the prices of today applied in my region (Asia, Japan).
Still very good read! I had never seen older catalogues and brochures before this article.
I was born only four years later, but many of this pieces and parts are still around in my collection, mostly thanks to my uncle having some of this models when he was younger.
Even with the inflation calculator, the prices are still far cheaper than what Lego sells for today.
I was 8 years old in 1974,and was crazy about lego. I had the café, the rocket base and about 8 other set from this catalog.