LEGO History enthusiasts have just gotten an early Christmas present! The LEGO Group (specifically the Archivists/Curators/Historians) have quietly launched a very exciting new feature on the LEGO History section of their website – a searchable database cataloguing the complete collection of Wooden Toys from The LEGO Group’s very early years!
For those who appreciate LEGO’s history and heritage, this is an exceptionally huge deal as there is now this treasure trove of official information from 1932-1959, when LEGO founder Ole Kirk Kristiansen began designing and producing wooden toys.
The database is a huge leap forward for digitising all of this official information from LEGO’s nascent years , and allows you to search by product name, product number, launch year and exit year, both in English and Danish.
For a spot of realism, all the images in LEGO’s former catalogues were in black and white, so the images uploaded to the database have stay trued to the original look. There are still plenty of images that haven’t been uploading yet, but a message in the Introductory section states that “they will get there”.
I’m not an authoritative LEGO Historian by any means, but I have a deep passion for this era of The LEGO Group’s history, and am slowly adding to my own personal archive of LEGO Wooden Toys, so I’ve been spending a lot of time flicking through the pages and immersing myself in the photos.
There’s stuff I’ve never seen before like the Hare Wagon (that I’m not sure is documented anywhere else online) and I also loved seeing the wooden Castle.
Another cool thing I’ve seen that’s completely new to me is the Ball Conveyor from 1953, which looks like the ancestor of the Great Ball Contraption!
And yes, you can also check out items like the Wooden Rifle, Peace Gun and Blunderbuss too!
This thing is just a treasure trove of early LEGO History, and will be an invaluable tool for amateur LEGO Historians and Collectors who want to learn more about LEGO’s Wooden Toys, but also as official reference material.
Do check out the LEGO Wooden Toy archive and while you’re there, the entire LEGO History section is a fantastic resource for those who can’t quite get to Denmark and visit The LEGO House history collection, or the LEGO Idea House.
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