When I was a kid in the early-to-mid '50s, I had a set of bricks that were something like Lego, or possibly Kiddicraft. All the bricks were red, and two sizes. The smaller square bricks had 4 “studs,” while the larger ones (twice the size) had 8. There was also an assortment of windows, doors, etc. that were white plastic. I vaguely remember some green roofs as well.
Does anyone remember these? Were they in fact an earlier version of Legos?
Fairly thin and a loose fit(didn’t “snap” or “press” together)?
I had a set of those in the mid-late 60s.
This sounds like a set of bricks that I had in the late sixties. I think they were from Sears. Mine were red with some six and eight stud white ones, doors, windows and roof tiles. My guess is that Monkey Wards, Penney’s and Speigel’s all had similar store brand Lego knock offs.
ETA: Mine sound a lot like yours, runner pat.
Lego itself dates back to the 1950s, or even to 1949, following on from the earlier Kiddicraft, and of course the building components have ranged ever more widely in type, size and complexity as time has gone on; for instance, wheels didn’t put in an appearance until the early Sixties. No cite, you can find your own in a few seconds the same way I did.
Yes, those are the ones.
When I was a kid (in the 60s), I had Brico, which was a cheap knockoff of Lego. I envied my Lego-having friends.
My parents visited Copenhagen in the late 50s and brought back Legos for us. They weren’t sold in the US at that point.
Yup, good memories. The smooth white ones were for foundations. Also, I remember stepping on the garage door and ruining it.
When I was little I had a big cardboard tub of knock-off Lego. I must have been about five or six when I played with that stuff, but I can still remember verbatim the slogan on the front: “FITS WITH THE LEADING BUILDING BRICKS”.
And now I come to Google it, I find I posted that very same thing seven years ago right here!
We had those too! I always assumed they were real Legos. Weird.
Those are the ones we had. All of those bricks had the bottom snaps, so no certain color was stuck as a bottom piece. There were also a few black and a few yellow bricks in there. The snaps on the bottom often broke off, the side walls would crack and the piece eventually break completely in two pieces and the bricks had a slight warp. They were crappy ones.
I love legos. About a year ago I retrieved a box of my old toys from the crawlspace with the purpose of giving my old legos to my 4 and 6 year old girls. It was cool to see stuff in that box that I had built when I was a kid still put together. Of course we immediately disassembled that stuff and started building new stuff. The 35+ year old bricks work perfectly with the new bricks. Except for some specialized bricks (I was into the space ship kits) I’m not sure I can tell the difference between old and new.
I do have one lego man that is about twice as big and has a huge head compared to the “standard” lego men though. His arms also bend at the elbow and he has a removable red cap.
Yes, we had American Bricks, too. I know parents complain, with reason, of the pain of stepping on a Lego brick while barefoot or only wearing socks, but this does not compare with the pain of stepping on a cut-rate knock-off Lego brick while barefoot and having it snap into two or more sharp-edged pieces :eek: They did make spiffy looking toy houses when they weren’t busy breaking, of course.