A/S Norske LEGIO - Norway's First LEGO
Posted by Huw,
Here's an article about a fascinating aspect of LEGO's early history, written by the world's leading authority, Gary Istok:
LEGO bricks were first sold in Denmark as Automatic Binding Bricks in 1949, then switched names to LEGO Mursten in 1953.
The first country besides Denmark that sold LEGO bricks was Norway, starting in 1953. Norway had a toy import ban after the war, which continued until 1961. So, LEGO partnered with a Norwegian plastic maker based in Oslo by the name of Svein Strømberg & Co.
In 1953, they created a subsidiary called A/S Norske LEGO, which had to be renamed A/S Norske LEGIO in 1954, for legal reasons. Apparently "LEGO" as a company name was already trademarked in Norway by someone else.
The first LEGO sets in Norway in 1953 were 3 basic sets, a large 700/2 set, a medium 700/4 set and a small 700/6 set. What is so unusual about the first LEGO basic sets in Norway was they were boxed so differently. This was more than likely that LEGO Denmark shipped Norway leftover empty boxes, some of which were never actually used in Denmark. When these boxes were used up (within a few months), Norway started using the same box designs as Denmark.
The largest basic set was the 700/2 set which matched the sets sold in Denmark...
The medium basic set was the 700/4, which was a Danish box never actually used in Denmark, so the empty boxes were exported to Norway. So far this is the only known example...
The small basic set was the 700/6, which was also a Danish box used only for a few months in Denmark. Denmark switched to a new box design, and the leftover empty boxes of this design were shipped to Norway...
LEGO basic sets sold in Norway came filled with parts like every other country. But unlike anywhere else in Europe, Norway also allowed LEGO customers to fill empty LEGO basic set boxes with whatever color bricks were available in Norwegian Pick-A-Brick retailer wooden boxes. So unusual brick, windows/doors and baseplate colors were available to be added to Norwegian basic sets, unlike anywhere else. This is one such example, a 1954 introduced 700/3 basic set box...
Norwegian LEGO retailers (like those of Denmark) had wooden Pick-A-Brick boxes for individual LEGO part sales, and also for filling up the Norwegian basic sets (optional for empty basic set boxes).
Even Norwegian baseplates were very different from those of Denmark and elsewhere. Early Norwegian baseplates of 1953-54 were often thin, and nailed to a wooden board of the same size, and found in Norwegian basic sets of 1953-54, such as the baseplate in the above 700/3 basic set...
In 1955 Town Plan spare parts were first produced and sold in Norway, and they produced some parts that were very unusual, such as the first LEGO road signs with red bases. The road signs (packed 8 each in parts packs 1240 and 1241) had gray bases in Denmark and elsewhere.
In 1957 1x1 alphabet bricks were sold in a 1234 Letters Parts Pack. Those sold in other countries were always white bricks with blue printing. But in Norway they made either blue or red 1x1 bricks with gold lettering.
Norway also had a few LEGO sets not sold elsewhere, such as this 1957 very rare 1309 Esso Garage Set. So far this is the only known example...
Also in 1957 Norway made LEGO 1:87 scale Opel Kapitän cars. However these were only prototypes, and never actually put into production. Only about 2 dozen are known, and some have sold for up to 4000 Euros. These were produced in about 5 or 6 colors...
In 1961 Norway ended toy import bans, and all Norwegian LEGO sets and parts were imported to Norway from Denmark, starting in 1962.
These are just a few of the many examples of rare Norwegian LEGO sets, many of which are new additions to my updated Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide, coming out in early 2021, and free to current owners. It will include hundreds of additional rare images, and the guide will be current up to 2020 LEGO sets.
The current version can be purchased here.
Original images courtesy of Arild, Fabian and Orjan.
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24 comments on this article
Very interesting article! More like this please :)
Great article.... However I did seem to read it in my best nasal voice.
Strange that “LEGIO” didn’t have to change the boxes to match.
Great, informative post, great photos too, thanks!
The green and brown colours in 700/3 are interesting as I thought it was all black, white, red blue and yellow at the start. I'm not sure what I would do with this set as there are not enough red (or other single colour) bricks to make a roof?
Does anyone know if you could actually make all that was shown on the cover of 700/2 as the 4 buildings look very impressive, or was this just artistic license and a guide to what was possible if you were very talented, had a secret supply of bricks, and didn't need silly things like instructions.
I like the phrase ‘system i Lek’
Only white kids? A church building? What a horrible and dark ages.
Excellent reading. It is sad, that the earlier fruitful cooperation between Lego Denmark and Lego Norway is gone I guess. We don't even have an official Lego brand store here in Norway. :-) There are at least two in Sweden and multiple anywhere else.
Luckily there are couple of guys running Lego stores on their own around Oslo.
I have a few of these parts nocking about, i might try and get em together and build em now :D
@ambr said:
"The green and brown colours in 700/3 are interesting as I thought it was all black, white, red blue and yellow at the start. "
Those colours (plus trans-clear) were just the colours of the bricks (so, no plates, no signs, no trees, no Modulex) in the early 1960s. Not too early, though, since black was introduced in 1962. Since the logo with the five colour stripes was created around that time, those became known as "the classic LEGO colours".
Brown was typically Norwegian, though!
(Note: this is not a proved fact, it's just what is seems to be likely if you look at the dates of the bricks and of the logo.)
Interestingly enough, there is still a treasure trove of old LEGO that shows up in attics, flea markets and boot sales in Norway, and Denmark and Sweden... and some of it is extremely rare and valuable. For those of you who already have my current computer desktop collectors guide... when the updated (expanded up to 2020) becomes available in early 2021, you will find that over 500 older images have been updated with wonderful higher resolution images, as well as the addition of the last 2 decades of LEGO sets, some of which have very rare variations that are even unknown to online databases.
I have between 50 and 100 sets in my guide that are not found in any online database.
I keep a record of current owners of my collectors guide... and will send out the updated expanded version free of charge to them. I should have been finished with the entire guide by now... but doing all that sleuthing (I like to play Sherlock Holmes with LEGO)... uncovers so many versions of even modern sets... that even my head explodes at times... :-D
@ambr said:
"The green and brown colours in 700/3 are interesting as I thought it was all black, white, red blue and yellow at the start. I'm not sure what I would do with this set as there are not enough red (or other single colour) bricks to make a roof?
Does anyone know if you could actually make all that was shown on the cover of 700/2 as the 4 buildings look very impressive, or was this just artistic license and a guide to what was possible if you were very talented, had a secret supply of bricks, and didn't need silly things like instructions."
ambr... lol... that's the problem of picking your own LEGO color bricks as a child... you get to pick all those nice unusual colors... but then it becomes problematic later on, when you actually try to build something with the parts that you custom selected... :-)
Fascinating article.
Very interesting. Can I echo the posters above calling for more articles like this?
Also, pieces on the inner workings of TLG would be appreciated (but not designers parroting marketing blurb). There was an insightful interview on New Elementary recently with LEGO’s head of consumer feedback and quality control. That sort of piece would be great.
Good article! Are there more like this on the way?
@ambr:
Brown and green were around a lot earlier than people expect. The infamous "crumble trees" were made by molding the trunk in brown, and dipping it into green pellets, all before the color palette that many are familiar with was implemented. The story I heard was that the wife of Godtfred Kirk suggested the black/white/red/blue/yellow color palette as those were the five colors used by Piet Mondrian in his "De Stijl" art. Whether that's true or not, they were definitely dropped from production around that time.
"In 1953, they created a subsidiary called A/S Norske LEGO, which had to be renamed A/S Norske LEGIO in 1954, for legal reasons. Apparently "LEGO" as a company name was already trademarked in Norway by someone else."
I wonder if this was a legitimate company or just a 70 year old example of the recent "Razor Crest" fiasco?
@magni_nominis_umbra said:
""In 1953, they created a subsidiary called A/S Norske LEGO, which had to be renamed A/S Norske LEGIO in 1954, for legal reasons. Apparently "LEGO" as a company name was already trademarked in Norway by someone else."
I wonder if this was a legitimate company or just a 70 year old example of the recent "Razor Crest" fiasco?"
The Norway firm had to use the LEGIO name because there was a gentleman by the name of Leo Goldman that had a company in Norway registered under the first 2 letters of his first and last name... LE+GO.
My dad has a DVD in his collection that's just a bunch of random episodes from a few dozen old TV shows that he used to watch when he was a kid. Aside from instances where the stars of those shows would step off to the side of their sets and talk up their sponsors' products, all the ads have been stripped out of these shows...except one. That one pre-recorded ad looks like it could be the very first commercial (but not necessarily the first broadcast of that commercial) to play in the US, advertising the Samsonite LEGO products.
@magni_nominis_umbra:
In 1953, The LEGO Company wasn't really a major player, so there wasn't much point in ripping off their identity. Squatting someone else's identity for profit probably didn't get started until toll-free phone numbers were introduced, and people figured out they could park a number that matched up with the name of a major corporation.
Very interesting. I'm sure I had a garage similar to that ESSO garage when I was young.
@ChicoCheco said:
"Excellent reading. It is sad, that the earlier fruitful cooperation between Lego Denmark and Lego Norway is gone I guess. We don't even have an official Lego brand store here in Norway. :-) There are at least two in Sweden and multiple anywhere else.
Luckily there are couple of guys running Lego stores on their own around Oslo."
On a side note; there are specialized stores elsewhere in Norway as well. Norway is more than Oslo. ;) But a brand store would be nice...
@Istokg, on a related note to this material I have been searching for any kind of documentation about how LEGO selected the dimensions used for their bricks. As far as I can tell, they are closely based on the Kiddicraft blocks first produced by Hilary Page. So my question becomes why Page used these dimensions? It would seem obvious to use 1:1 ratio for width and height but as we know our bricks are 5:6 which has allowed for a much more interesting system.
The closest thing I found to an answer was a speculation that Page simply scaled down a standard clay brick without giving much thought to the dimensions. I would appreciate your thoughts on this subject, and if you have come across anything in all your years of sleuthing that points to a definite answer.
Galaxy12_Import - I've been wondering about the exact same thing. Initially I thought it was 'cause it made it easier to separate a brick in three rather than two plates (and to allow the now-"illegal" plate-wedged-between-studs technique), but AFAIK plates weren't introduced until several years after the bricks (and I don't think Kiddicraft had them at all). Modulex and some clone brands (like Exin Castillos and older Best-Lock sets) used a 1:1 ratio, but most have either gone out of business or switched to the standard shape.
Also, did "Norske Legio" continue to exist as a brand after this? I very vaguely remember some bricks by that name around the late 70s or early 80s, they were about the size of Duplo (but slightly narrower and taller), made from a softer plastic and with taller, square studs.
@Galaxy12_Import:
The dimensions of a LEGO brick are very complex indeed. There are tons of techniques that rely on the very specific dimensions involved, but people wonder at how fortuitous it is that we ended up with this specific set of dimensions when nobody asks what might be possible with a different set. We've seen hints of that answer with other compatible systems. Tyco opted for plates that were 1/2 the height of bricks instead of 1/3, which closed off a host of possibilities, but opened up one that we've yet to see really incorporated into the LEGO system. They made two special 2x2 plates. One was studded on both sides, and the other was an open-cell waffle that could attach to plates on both sides. Together, they'd form a 2x2x1 brick, but independently they enabled you to reverse direction of studs very cleanly. With LEGO parts, we have to cobble together multipart solutions, and some of the more useful parts for accomplishing this have been retired from production. Even if they wanted to, a part the same thickness as a LEGO part wouldn't work, as the material would be significantly weaker due to the 33% reduction in height, and it would still be short enough that two studs would contact each other before they were both fully seated in the reverser plate. It'd only work if the female reverser plate was two plates thick, at which point some of the more complicated options are just as viable.
Some of the dimensions involved are purely about wall thickness and dimpling, I suspect. Some are probably recursive (change one thing here, and you have to change something else there, and a third thing in another place, until all you've accomplished is to change the overall scale. Wall thickness probably determined the size and shape of the stud, and wall thickness determined the space between them (as 2x walls had to be able to fit). The one dimension that is a complete variable is the height of the bricks. Maybe there's a grand secret to why the height is different. Maybe Page played around with it and that's just what worked best. The original ABB was strictly a 2x4, wasn't it? Make the height too short, and it takes tons of pieces to build something. Make it too tall, and the sidewalls get significantly weaker and more prone to cracking. Maybe it's just luck that we ended up with 5:5:6 instead of 5:5:7.3 or something. Maybe Page just stuck to nice whole numbers when planning out the dimensions because it made things easier. Whatever the case, it's a bit late to ask him directly.
Modulex used a slightly different set of ratios. The scale was smaller, but the horizontal dimensions remained 1:1, and the dimensions of the studs and sidewalls apparently stayed consistent against that scale. The only major change I'm aware of is that they reduced the height to make the bricks 1:1:1. It was a terrible move, as it makes the system incredibly boring to build with. So many techniques become unworkable once you do that, without any new techniques opening up. There's little point to SNOT construction because a 1:1:1 brick turned in any direction is still 1:1:1.
@axeleng:
Plates between studs has two problems. The plates are thicker than the gap, which can damage the parts. The studs also land right on top of other studs, preventing the plate from being fully seated in the gap. Tiles, on the other hand, are still considered legal, apparently. They're _slightly_ thinner than plates, from what I've heard, and there are no studs to intersect.