LEGO wooden retailer boxes

[LEGO Historian]

Many of us have seen The LEGO Story... video. But what we didn't see was this part, that never made it to the video...

From a historical perspective... this would have been October 1957, when the Russians launched Sputnik into orbit. The ailing elder Ole Kirk Christiansen would only live another 3 months before he died of a stroke in early 1958 at age 67. His son (1 of 4) Godtfred Kirk Christiansen was already the LEGO Managing Director, and his grandson Kjeld Kirk was 10 years old at this time.

The video shows Godtfred stepping on a hollow bottom brick (the tube bottom brick patent was still a few months into the future). This video also shows some wooden LEGO boxes that Kjeld is getting his bricks from. These wooden boxes would NOT be used by any other LEGO playing child in Denmark back then. The reason is that these wooden boxes were used by LEGO retailers for selling individual bricks to children. The LEGO retailer would buy small cardboard boxes of LEGO bricks (100 per box for smaller sizes, 25 per box for 2x8 and larger bricks)... and dump them into the large retailer box... selling them to children for between 6 øre and 35 øre each (2x2 brick was the cheapest, the 2x14 brick the most expensive).

These retailer boxes came in 2 sizes... 4 partition boxes known in retailer catalogs as "700 K/4" and larger 5 partition boxes known as "700 K/5".

It is interesting to see some of these boxes used in this video. Here are a group of all the wooden LEGO retailer boxes for bricks... from 1950-60. The tall box is the 1950-52 Automatic Binding Bricks box, the shorter longer ones are the LEGO Mursten boxes... the gray was the (4 partition) box for Norway, the 2 block letter boxes (4 and 5 partitions) were the 1952-55 retailer boxes... the 2 boxes with the "dogbone" going thru the LEGO logo are the 1955-60 retailer boxes.

Here is a TLG retailer refill box for 2x3 yellow bricks.... (this box is a little later...1960-65)...

Unfortunately the makers of the video used the 1952-55 box design, instead of the more appropriate to the time 1955-60 box design. The one shown in the Video is the right side, 2nd from top box.

This image is from my Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide on DVD/download... Chapter 43 - LEGO Service Packs & Individual Parts Sales.(1950-90)... still available in Eurobricks Bazaar.

Edited April 20, 2013 by LEGO Historian