pdf 1 - exhibitions international

chapter fourteen
Of all the construction toys described in this book, Lego is
probably the best known. There cannot be many middle-class parents
over the last fifty years who do not know what it feels like to step with
bare feet onto an unexpected Lego brick lying in wait on the carpet. Lego is a toy
with a long history. The first Lego plastic bricks appeared in 1947, the current
version in 1958, and in 2000 Lego was named ‘Toy of the Century’ by Fortune
magazine in the US and by the Toy Retailers Association in Britain. 1
The origins of Lego are quite complicated. The basis of Lego, in the beginning,
is the interlocking brick. There were interlocking bricks in the 1930s, such
as Bild-O-Brik in the US in 19342 and the British Minibrix, which we have
written about in Chapter 9. These bricks offered a limited range of shapes, and
had studs on the bottom that interlocked with corresponding holes in the row of
bricks below. Because they are rubber, the studs on the bricks deform slightly to
lock the bricks securely together.
Next on the scene were the wooden American Bricks, made by Halsam, the
makers of the Lincoln Logs that appeared in Chapter 6 (Halsam also made the
earlier, non-studded American Brick Blocks). 3 Halsam was founded in 1917 by
two brothers-in-law, Harold Elliot and Sam Goss, Jr., who combined their names
to form the company’s. One source says that Harold’s son, Kip, came back from
England, where he had spent time as a child in the 1940s and discovered his
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Lego
and the
Green City
favourite toy, Minibrix; he helped launch American Bricks, which were made
using the machinery that Halsam used to mass-produce checkers (draughts to
the British) and dominoes. 4 However, another states that the first American
Bricks patent was filed in 1939, 5 so the origin is clearly disputed. Perhaps Kip’s
sojourn in England was in the 1930s, rather than during the Blitz, and then the
whole thing would make sense, as the American Bricks patent is clearly later
than that for Minibrix. The basic wooden American Brick has eight raised studs
on the top, whereas the basic Minibrix brick has two studs on the bottom, but
unlike their rubber predecessors, American Bricks interlock fairly loosely. This
means they are fixed in relation to one another and cannot slide around, but they
do not stay together if you pick them up. This makes them a halfway house
between the plain blocks of Richter’s and Lott’s and the fully interlocking blocks
of Minibrix and Lego.
In some ways American Bricks were a ‘green’ product. Apparently Sam Goss
used to let the workers go home early on days when the factory got too hot, 6
which would mark him as a green employer, or maybe they just didn’t have air
conditioning; these days the lack of air conditioning might class the factory as a
green building. And of course Sam’s bricks were made of wood, a natural renewable
resource, just like Minibrix, which were made of natural rubber. However,
the world was moving away from natural renewable resources towards plastics
made from oil (and natural gas). 7 Halsam duly followed the trend, making plastic
bricks called, with glorious logic, American Plastic Bricks, which were a close
copy of American (wooden) Bricks8 . Both the wooden and plastic versions had
cardboard windows and doors, 9 tastefully printed with curtains and blinds, 10
which fitted into slots in the bricks in the same manner as the celluloid windows
of Minibrix. Later the windows changed to plastic ones that could be opened.
The roofs are also like Minibrix roofs, but in cardboard rather than rubber, and
American Plastic Bricks had lintels, like the Minibrix ones, for spanning openings.
11 When Messrs Elliot and Goss went into plastics moulding in a big way
they formed a separate company called Elgo (from Elliot and Goss), 12 which
seems to have taken over the manufacture of American Plastic Bricks, although
the Elgo sets do not appear to have had lintels. 13 The Australian copy of American
Plastic Bricks, called Bilda-Brix, did not have lintels either, but did have narrow
metal strips to support the bricks over the openings. These were unconvincingly
replaced by bits of cardboard in the New Zealand version of Bilda-Brix. 14 Our
experience is that Bilda-Brix definitely do not interlock sufficiently to allow a
Lego and the Green City 177