A Good Foundation (LEGO Mursten)

You approach a large field. Wide and sparse but a luscious green, you walk through, believing yourself to be alone. This is not the case. You hear a faint shuffling behind you, and you step aside to see a small creature crawling through the grass. More shuffling even still- you turn around to see another creature, and another. With a start, you realize the entire field is bristling with them, tens upon hundreds of tiny beings of many colors worming their way through the green, seemingly to the same destination. You look ahead to where they appear to be going, and see a large tree situated on a hill.

At the base of the tree sits a man, cloaked in white and red. The tree is swarming with the creatures, and they move around the man who seems to treat them as pets. He cradles one in his arms, as another sleeps atop his head. Seeing you, he waves. You wave back. In an instant he gets up and starts collecting some of the creatures, who react with exuberance for what is about to happen. One by one he starts forming the creatures together into larger shapes, creating a strange  form. The many colors of the creatures clash together, the odd shapes jut out, but still the creatures throw themselves forward to be of use. By the end a towering structure looms over the tree, a hideously mismatched and bizarre shape. The craftsman looks at you. You smile. You don't quite know what it is, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter.

So this is it, then. The first LEGO sets.

There’s a joke that’s been around for the past couple decades or so about walking into the LEGO isle of a toy store wanting to buy a box of normal LEGO bricks and finding nothing but special themes and licenses, usually accompanied with the declaration that “man, LEGOs used to be simple when I was a kid”. More often than not, these are the sorts of sets people are referring to- basic assortments of various-colored bricks, with the bricks themselves being the simple 2 x 4 and 1 x 2 type arrangements, maybe with some slopes and plates thrown into the mix.

This joke is of course hogwash for anyone born after about 1955 or so, because what we’re looking at right now is literally the only time in the history of the company where the line has been entirely basic brick assortments. In a few years System will be introduced, and after that it’s a steady increase of play themes and genres, with licenses entering the mix in the late 90s. Plus, the standard basic brick assortments never really go away- even now it’s very easy to find standard boxes of bricks in toy aisles, plus lines like Creator are set up specifically to preserve that function of LEGO sets. The only thing that’s really changed is that the color and piece pallets have gotten substantially larger in the 60+ years LEGO bricks have been around, but that’s par for the course with these things.

The expanded brick lineup
of LEGO Mursten

Nonetheless, to many people this is the default state of LEGO sets, most likely because this is indeed where it all started. So let’s talk about that, then- these are the early sets released by LEGO, under the banner of “LEGO Mursten” (LEGO Bricks) after it was felt the “Automatic Binding Bricks” name was putting customers off the bricks.  The early sets featured only 2 x 2 and 2 x 4 bricks in a small selection of colors, with each brick featuring little slots in the sides into which could be inserted plastic doors or windows. As time went by more bricks of different sizes would be added to the mix, as well as thinner ‘plates’ that would be used as bases, and new studded windows and doors would be created, rendering the slotted bricks redundant (they would be phased out in 1956).

The early Mursten line consisted mostly of the basic brick assortments and supplemental brick packages, but already these early sets reveal aspects of what would come to define LEGO in the next few decades- the early inclusion of plastic windows and doors provide an intrinsic link between LEGO and architecture, which in itself would be part of what ensured LEGO’s lasting connection with adulthood as the years go on (note that a strong percentage of current adult-targeted sets are intricate buildings and pieces of architecture). The popular “10 cents/brick” value ratio that will be used by fans several decades in the future also appears to have gotten its start here, with individual bricks available to be purchased for around the equivalent of today’s 9 US cents. And the releases of LEGO “gift sets”, which provided enough bricks to build small red-and-white houses, would provide the basis for the upcoming LEGO System, and what would be its first and most long-running theme, LEGO Town (later CITY).

Examples of the 'gift sets' of various models of houses.

But perhaps the most important thing gleaned from the early LEGO Mursten sets are the creations themselves. Early sets adopted the Kiddicraft method of providing various illustrations on the box of the potential creations one could make with the bricks included- in Kiddicraft’s case it was stuff like a house, a windmill, a train, even a man sitting in a chair.

What is notable about these creations is that, well, they look pretty much exactly what they are- blocky representations of the objects being created. This is of course inevitable- the lack of slopes and plates at this point makes curves functionally impossible, and the restriction to basic primary colors means most creations are gonna come out a tad splotchy and mismatched. When people talk about missing the simplicity of LEGO, I suspect this blockiness is what they’re talking about. Each creation is certainly recognizable as the object it’s meant to portray, but there’s still a marked fakeness to it- an abstracted reality in which one is constantly aware of the artifices of their world even as they go about creating it.

Rather than disappearing as time goes on, though, this abstracted reality is going to be a driving point in shaping LEGO as the sets become more sophisticated and the themes more distinct. These Mursten sets may represent the absolute simplest form of what LEGO can be, but they still form the literal building blocks of what will become even the most complex sets available today. And over the course of the next couple decades we’re going to see how it is LEGO grows from these basic bricks to becoming the toy many of us recognize today. They’ve already got the bricks and the start of an idea and an aesthetic, now they to push it one step forward.

They need a system.

His work complete, the craftsman takes several more of the creatures and places them gently into a satchel. Slinging it over his shoulder, he heads out of the hills. He stops and turns around to see you rooted in place. With a laugh, he gestures for you to follow him. Hesitantly, you oblige, and leave the hills.