On Wednesday, March 7, 2018 at 9:40:19 AM UTC-6,
s.englis...@gmail.com wrote:
On Tuesday, February 1, 1994 at 2:56:36 AM UTC-5, IC...@asuacad.bitnet wrote:
Rosebud!
At last someone else who _remembers_ and possibly _longs for_ American Plastic Bricks.
I have been looking for these for the past 3-4 years, and have finally
had some success. (Yes, it's true, I played with them as a child. They were, and remain, my all-time favorite toy.)
In the process of hunting for them I have also learned a bit of their history, etc.
They were originally manufactured by Halsam, a Chicago-based company
that specialized in wooden products (puzzles, alphabet blocks, checkers, etc.). Originally they were pressed wood, red and yellow, with lithographed cardboard doors and windows. During this phase of
existence they came packaged in a rectagular box with a lift-off lid.
In this configuration they were called "American Bricks".
The same company made a product similar to Lincoln Logs, called, appropriately,American Logs. These are still fairly easy to find in antique shops in their cylindrical cardboard tubes with screw on tin
lids (like Tinker Toys).
Sometime around the end of WWII, manufacture changed to plastic, and the name changed to "American Plastic Bricks". The box remained square
until the late 40's or the early 50's. Then it switched to a cardboard cylinder with tin lid. Cannisters came in about 6 different sizes, from about 100 pieces to nearly 1000. The cover illustration remained much
the same over the years, a boy *and* a *girl* building a house together.
In plastic, the bricks were red and white. White was used for
foundations, lintels, and doors and windows. Doors and windows were plastic too, and would swing open and closed. Windows were single,
double, triple paned, and evenutally a picture window was added.
Jalousie windows were also available at some point. Illustrations of possible building plans remained the same between the wood and plastic versions, but the bricks were not interchangeable.
American *Plastic* Bricks were still manufactured under the Halsam name, but now the cannisters also carried the brand name: Elgo. Quite a coincidence of names, since Elgo is an anagram of the toy that put them out of business: Lego!
Through the 50's, APBs were a staple in the Sears Roebuck Xmas toy WishBook. Until about 1965 (approximate - without checking my notes)
when Legos appeared. The first Lego display in the Wishbook was
relatively small. By the following year, Legos occupied a full half
page or more. (Sort of the same way that Barbie appeared in 1959). The following year, American Plastic Bricks *vanished* from the pages of the Sears Catalog, never to reappear. (sniff, sniff :-( )
Before their demise, the brick were restyled. The actual building
bricks remained the same size, but doors and windows were down-sized. Bricks and doors and windows were still interchangeable after the restyling. The triple window disappeared. In its stead the double
window was restyled to a triple window, and the single window to a
double. The picture window, without changing its overall size had side windows added and a small blank panel added to the bottom. Doors were
now the size of the original double window (with the knob in the middle
of the door (*very* modern and fashionable in the mid-60's!). Windows
were also now French Provincial, with diagonal divisions of their panes, instead of the Colonial look of the earlier version. The overall effect was to give the illusion of larger buildings from the same number of bricks. Some additional pieces were added (a flagpole, I think). And
the girl was removed from the package display. Now, instead of a
drawing, a photo of 2 (dare I say rather "dorky" looking) boys were building something similar to Frank Lloyd Wright's Waterplace Towers (a Chicago high-rise landmark).
Halsam also manufactured a building set called Skyline (or Skyliner -
I've never found any that I could afford, so I'm unsure of the correct name). This was an even smaller scaled building set for constructing high-rise buildings of the Louis Sullivan type (along the lines of the Wrigley Building and the Tribune Tower - recognizeable Chicago
buildings).
My guess is that for most of you this is more information than you ever cared to know about American Bricks. Block City is another story that
I'll spare you all for now.
Considering that these toys were a mainstay for practically all middle class boys raised in the 50's (I'm always encountering guys (and some gals) who remember having them) they are remarkably difficult to find. Though last September I found a complete cannister in a Rescue Mission (similar to Salvation Army) Thrift Store in York, Pennsylvania!
I've had antique dealers (even those specializing in toys) tell me that they see them, but don't pick them up because no one is interested in them. (But wait! *I'm* interested in them! Can I be the *only* one?) Others have told me they get them in, but they disappear right away, because architects buy them up. So... You tell me.
If anyone out there is interested and would like to discuss this
further, without boring the pants off the rest of rec.antiques, please feel free to contact me directly.
Hope I'll find some playmates out there who'll share their own stories
of hours spent building charming little colonial or Arts & Crafts houses with American (Plastic) Bricks!
|:^}
deg farrelly, Media Librarian Internet: ic...@asuvm.inre.asu.edu
Arizona State University West BITnet: icdeg@asuacad
4701 West Thunderbird Road Phone: (602) 543-8522
Phoenix, Arizona 85069-7100 Fax: (602) 543-8521
Home: (602) 942-3637
Thank you for your detailed information. I have been trying to remember what these blocks were called because I remember spending many hours enjoying the process of building different creations. I wish I had had one of the larger sets because I felt so
limited in what I could make. I'm sure my parents got the canister from the Sears catalog.They gave me things to amuse me so they wouldn't have to worry about having to interact with me themselves. Luckily, I loved to draw and to build with what I now
know to be American Bricks. I really wanted to become an architect with my two great passions, but, alas, being a girl, it was discouraged. What a shame.
Enjoy playing and thanks again for the research.
Susan Fay
Greetings to all! I am on a quest to find out more information about a set of plastic building cubes that I received for Christmas one year in the late 1960's. When I describe the, everyone looks at me like I'm crazy. I had thought they were called "Loc
Blocs' because of their unusual design (they were not a LEGO facsimile), but while doing an online search today I discovered an assortment of vintage building bricks from the 1960s, and several of these bricks were in that assortment. So I'm NOT crazy
after all, but I still haven't discovered what they are called or where they were made.
Their design is very simple: a six-sided cube, with either one or two pins (the pins of the two-pin variant are on opposite faces), and corresponding holes on the remaining faces. Added to this: one of the faces is hinged to create differing angles when
connecting blocks. they only came in primary colors: red, yellow and blue.
Does anyone recall these blocks, and can maybe tell me something about them? It would solve a literal half-century of mystery for me!
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