3 ms·

Source? How would I find more about this?

by djhn 7y ago

jacquesm 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Fisher_Page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Fisher_Page Hilary Fisher, and not Ole Kirk Christiansen should get the credit for the brick.
- djhn 7y ago
  Thank you, that is a sad story. And well buried - hard to Google, and I never came across this even when they were a client of mine.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    IIRC Lego were originally intending to produce something entirely different with their newly acquired injection moulding machine. Then they discovered the successful bricks being sold by Hilary Page, pivoted into counterfeiting, and produced an identical rip off of product, packaging, marketing, and branding: http://hilarypagetoys.com/Images/articlestock/article875_Image_Lego%20copies%20of%20Kiddicraft%20Elements.jpg http://hilarypagetoys.com/Images/articlestock/article875_Ima... Pretty sure there's a little more of the tale on the site. I have a bit of a thing against Lego's popularity given how litigious they are, and how they themselves got started.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Fisher_Page#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Fisher_Page#Death :(
  - xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
    > British Lego Ltd. was set up in late 1959 and the first sets were sold the following year. Sounds like this wasn't wholly related to LEGO, if it all. Like any good idea, invention is not even half of the battle -- marketing reigns supreme.
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Lego copied the packaging, marketing and branding too. Page's suicide was unconnected, and I'm not sure he knew of the Lego counterfeiting, or the full extent of it at the time.
- dwd 7y ago
  There were a lot of other brick toys around, but it's hard to find dates as to who was first. As a 70s kid I played with my father's Bayko sets and what I think may have been American Plastic Bricks (maybe with a different name) that were in a big box at my grandma's house. These products did specialised pieces years before Lego though you were restricted to building houses.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Bayko were Bakelite, and relied on bars to hold the bricks together, I think metal and straight from a Meccano set. They may have even bolted to the base. (Bayko were another early product from Frank Hornby, maker of Meccano and Hornby trains). I think the sets were solely designed for making buildings with essentially all the pieces specialised. There were plenty of others along the same lines that were building, house building or brick toys, but none had the self-assembly of the gripping pegs in the plastic bricks that became the Kiddicraft innovation, later copied by Lego. Earlier sets used, like Bayko, different materials and approaches to assembly and go back into the inter-war years, perhaps even pre-WW1. Kiddicraft and Lego stem from injection moulding.

Source? How would I find more about this?

by djhn 7y ago

Source? How would I find more about this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Fisher_Page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Fisher_Page Hilary Fisher, and not Ole Kirk Christiansen should get the credit for the brick.

djhn 7y ago
Thank you, that is a sad story. And well buried - hard to Google, and I never came across this even when they were a client of mine.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  IIRC Lego were originally intending to produce something entirely different with their newly acquired injection moulding machine. Then they discovered the successful bricks being sold by Hilary Page, pivoted into counterfeiting, and produced an identical rip off of product, packaging, marketing, and branding: http://hilarypagetoys.com/Images/articlestock/article875_Image_Lego%20copies%20of%20Kiddicraft%20Elements.jpg http://hilarypagetoys.com/Images/articlestock/article875_Ima... Pretty sure there's a little more of the tale on the site. I have a bit of a thing against Lego's popularity given how litigious they are, and how they themselves got started.
saagarjha 7y ago
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Fisher_Page#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Fisher_Page#Death :(
- xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
  > British Lego Ltd. was set up in late 1959 and the first sets were sold the following year. Sounds like this wasn't wholly related to LEGO, if it all. Like any good idea, invention is not even half of the battle -- marketing reigns supreme.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Lego copied the packaging, marketing and branding too. Page's suicide was unconnected, and I'm not sure he knew of the Lego counterfeiting, or the full extent of it at the time.
dwd 7y ago
There were a lot of other brick toys around, but it's hard to find dates as to who was first. As a 70s kid I played with my father's Bayko sets and what I think may have been American Plastic Bricks (maybe with a different name) that were in a big box at my grandma's house. These products did specialised pieces years before Lego though you were restricted to building houses.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Bayko were Bakelite, and relied on bars to hold the bricks together, I think metal and straight from a Meccano set. They may have even bolted to the base. (Bayko were another early product from Frank Hornby, maker of Meccano and Hornby trains). I think the sets were solely designed for making buildings with essentially all the pieces specialised. There were plenty of others along the same lines that were building, house building or brick toys, but none had the self-assembly of the gripping pegs in the plastic bricks that became the Kiddicraft innovation, later copied by Lego. Earlier sets used, like Bayko, different materials and approaches to assembly and go back into the inter-war years, perhaps even pre-WW1. Kiddicraft and Lego stem from injection moulding.