Yes, dear CP5670 .. catalogues are so ever permanent (well, nothing is infinite, but they'll last my - and my son's - lifetime). One should not forget about tangible documents like that in this modern brave new virtual world. They still make a powerfull impression on young LEGO builders (<- and some of them will become AFOLs with a lot of money to spend in the future). I wonder if they'll collect snapshots of 201X websites in 203X?

(Sigh, did I just earn the 'old fart' tag here?)

You and me both. The catalog dioramas were always a source of inspiration for me, and I wanted to build layouts like that myself. Some of the old theme websites can be found on the wayback machine, but it's sporadic and not that reliable.

Every once in a while, I would get a catalog from overseas, which had a very different selection of sets I was not aware of. That was very frustrating to see a bunch of sets I couldn't get to!

This was a common problem around the early 1990s. Some of the US catalogs were condensed for no apparent reason, especially with Technic sets. I never knew about 8868, 8094 or several other big Technic sets until finding them on Lugnet many years later, even though they were sold in stores here, while the European catalogs all display them prominently.

I didn't want to open a separate thread... but my all time favorites amog catalogs... are LEGO Retailer Catalogs. These are usually pretty hard to come by, and often give us a better information as to what is found in LEGO sets.

Here's some examples... the 1972 USA Samsonite LEGO retailer catalog. This was an easy one... since there were only 8 sets at this time. In 1970 TLG filed a lawsuit against USA Samsonite (the licensee) for underperforming LEGO sales. The end was near in 1972 for Samsonite in the USA, the last regular year for LEGO sales, although sets on shelves could remain until the following year. In 1973 the first TLG produced LEGO sets were sold in the USA... distributed from Connecticut.

But I love this page in particular.... it mentions "that due to production technologies, we are able to offer the consumer nearly double the parts at a lower price".... hehehe... someone is NOT telling the truth (Samsonite)... that the real reason that these sets are so cheap (so many huge sets at a cheap price)... is because that within a year Samsonite has to empty their factory inventory of LEGO parts... and the best way to do so is drop the price/part ration much lower...

Notice how HUGE the word "Samsonite" is in relation to "LEGO"... this would never have been possible if it were not for the fact that Samsonite was on their way out for selling LEGO... and they no longer cared what TLG thought about the Samsonite LEGO boxes....

Here we see the 2 larger basic sets (a 737 and 917 piece set). By late in 1972... Samsonite was dumping LEGO parts into larger Sears and J.C. Penney catalog sets with over 1200 parts. Note also that the 104 set shows a model of a portable "Barrel Organ"... with pipes made of 1x6 and 1x8 LEGO beams... except these beams look kind of odd... they were supposedly retired in 1964 when TLG switched from hollow bottom beams to beams with posts underneath....

Samsonite had the older 1x6 and 1x8 beams (and waffle bottom plates) for a nearly a decade after they were discontinued in Europe. Why is that?? Because Samsonite bought the obsolete old LEGO molds from TLG, and continued using them, and often even re-tooling them for continued use... which explains why some USA Samsonite bricks and beams have more than one LEGO font on the same bricks and parts... and not always going in the same direction!!

There are so many little clues that retailer catalogs give us... that explain so much!!

Images found in my LEGO DVD/download.

Edited October 13, 201311 yr by LEGO Historian

Do you have pictures of reatiler's catalogs from the late 70s to the 80s ?

Do you have pictures of reatiler's catalogs from the late 70s to the 80s ?

Let me do some digging around... I know I have at least one from circa 1985-87. But unlike my customer catalogs... my retailer ones are not all together....

It just happens there is a Samsonite store near me (Birch Run, MI outlet mall) so I need to print out a few of these old flyers and take it to the store and really mess with the employee there.

I bet most of them are too young to remember actual Samsonite branded LEGO sets.