Early ideas books
Posted by Huw,
There's a dearth of news at the moment so let's have a #ThrowbackTuesday rather than wait until Thursday...
Over the last few weeks Matt Hocker has been busy scanning old printed material for inclusion in our library and today I found the time to add some of it, starting with five old Ideas Books, which are always fascinating to browse.
The highlight is Ideas Book No. 1 from 1960 which is particularly interesting because as well as showing children what can be built using the limited selection of bricks available at the time, it also extols the virtues of 'LEGO as a hobby' for adults.
It's hard to imagine a LEGO world without wheels nowadays but back in 1960 the wheel had not been invented. The system was very much geared towards constructing houses and other buildings so as well as providing plenty of inspiration for them the book goes to some length to show what else is possible, such as trains, boats and planes. Without wheels I imagine that they wouldn't be much fun to play with, though!
There's even some cool brick-built animals.
The last few pages titled 'LEGO as a hobby' are clearly showing the medium's possibilities for building large-scale models of landmarks and other buildings.
I imagine that gathering this many bricks to replicate the Empire State Building 40 years before the birth of BrickLink would be a challenge, though!
Nevertheless it's interesting, and I don't believe that marketing the product to adults in this way continued much beyond this.
Have a flick through the PDF and enjoy more pictures of impressive buildings built with nothing more than basic bricks.
Let's play with Lego from 1971 is particularly interesting to me as I had a copy of this as a kid. In fact I still do, although it's covered with scribbling so I'm glad Matt looked after his copy better than I did.
The first thing that's interesting is the lack of capitalisation of the word LEGO; that must have been enforced later.
This odd couple crop up in various places in the book...
... such as here.
In 1971 there was an impressive range of LEGOLAND buildings and vehicles which are showcased in this diorama:
The back of the book shows the current product range, complete with UK prices.
It's a fascinating glimpse into the world of LEGO 46 years ago! You can view the whole book in our library.
I hope you enjoy flicking through these two, and the others, in the library. There's plenty more where they came from which I'll be adding as time permits.
Many thanks to Matt Hocker for taking the time to scan them for us all to enjoy.
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30 comments on this article
We should be hearing about Saturn V any day now . . . They skipped giving us an update last Friday. The fact that it's such a dry period in terms of other Lego news as well makes the wait even worse.
Wow! I just had a major flashback and remembered having the 'Let's play with Lego' book.
I seem to recall trying to recreate that town layout with the limited amount of Lego I had at the time.
Great memories. Thanks!
These are fantastic! Thank you for making them available to everyone.
Is that the Milano on page 17 ;)
Thanks for taking the time to scan them - fascinating!
Brilliant... But now I want to try and build that huge empire state building. And I want to replicate the Thunderbirds episode"terror in new York city" with a big red technic rig.
What about the picture of the new Carrousel which is on the web as a part of the US June 2017 Store Promo flyer? That's got many AFOLs excited today .....
Pretty cool! I always love scrolling through LEGO books and catalogs to see the interesting ways they use, display, and advertise their products. Having digital copies, especially of the older issues, is fantastic!
^^ no self respecting Lego site will be publishing them until something more official is released or pictures not plastered with watermarks become available.
Awesome
That Empire State Building is about as realistic as many 20,000-brick projects on the Ideas webpage.
Oooh, that is cool. I have two of those (226 from 1981 and 697 from 1997). I could scan them for you if you don't have them (not sure about the legality of it, though).
The Simspons displayed what happens when you don't have wheels for you Lego (Blockoland) sets
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulcne-afQIE
^^ Yes please, but get in touch first before staring so we can advise on the best scanner settings.
Thanks in advance!
Brilliant news.
I love how the man is in a tie... to play with legos. Ive been building for 14 years now, crazy what it was back then, but even more so in the 60's!
Can't help but see that Empire state guy and think of Will Ferrell's character from the Lego Movie 'It's a highly sophisticated inter-locking brick system!'
I tried to get my wife to call me Mr. Stud but she just laughed :(
These articles always make me wonder, will we be having throwback Thursday's with the Lego club magazines from today in twenty years from now?
I love seeing these but they could use some descreening :)
^ I believe Matt did use descreening when scanning them and they don't look too bad to me, in fact the 1970 one is pretty much perfect. I've never had much success descreening post-scanning but if you know of a method to improve them then let me know.
Hmmm, those last few pages of the 1960 book...
Is Lego to blame for all the brutalist architecture we saw in the 60s and 70s? Brutalist style buildings are about all you could built with the Lego available in the 60s...
Mr Stud creeps me out a bit. Great book though!
So, Mr and Mrs Stud, eh? I can't stop giggling, which I don't think was the intention.
I have some early 1980s Lego catalogs and "Lego" was not capitalized there. They went with the capitalization standard sometime in the late 80s or early 90s (while I was in my Dark Ages). ...and to this day, I only capitalize the "L" in Lego because that's how I grew up with it and I see the all-caps "LEGO" demand as a ridiculous marketing demand (like how the National Association of REALTORS insists that "REALTORS" is always capitalized). "LEGO is an abbreviation" is not a valid argument because there are plenty of abbreviations (like "laser" or "scuba") that are not capitalized.
I, too, only write Lego with the cap L as I find writing it in all caps being TOO LOUD, like shouting.
The "Lego as a Hobby For Adults" stuff looks like it came out of a model railroader magazine from the same era.
Great stuff. Thank you very much. Plus, I didn't even know there was a library available.
Just awesome!
^^ Hey, so long as you write or type Lego and not Legos I'm happy...
[By MonsterFighter in United Kingdom, 25 Apr 2017 11:20]
"Wow! I just had a major flashback and remembered having the 'Let's play with Lego' book."
Me too!
Thanks to you both for making these available to us!