Poisonous fruit

As part of their set of trees, Lego also made this type. Which is listed as a "fruit tree" on Bricklink but which (again with all due and sincere respect) isn't quite right. The tree has details picked out in red, which I suppose were taken to be apples or such. But the thing is, fruit is heavy and hangs down (and gets hidden from view by the leaves) whereas these red details point upwards from the tree and are very visible. That's because they are flowers and the tree is in fact a Chestnut tree (a Horse Chestnut to be precise).

Here is a fine example of a Chestnut tree in full bloom, which happens late May-early July. Even from afar, you can see torch-shaped bunches of blossoms growing up from the branches.

And here is one such cluster of flowers up close, in white this time. Chestnut trees can have flowers ranging from white to pink to red. The leaves are visible as well in this photo, where you can see there's five or so radiating from each single stem. Which Lego has reasonably represented on their toy tree as well.

Chestnut trees do bear fruit, being chestnuts of course. But. The fruit of the Horse Chestnut tree isn't edible (by humans at least); they'll make you quite sick if you'd try. Which is another reason I wouldn't describe the Lego Chestnut as being a fruit tree. But whether by Lego or for real, they do look absolutely lovely.

Just to be complete, the picture below shows a branch and fruit of a Sweet Chestnut (broken off a neighbouring tree during a recent storm). If you want to eat chestnuts then this is what you're looking for. They're easily identifiable by having single leaves with serrated edges and extremely spiky burrs around the nuts (a Horse Chestnut has thick, rather tough burrs with far fewer, thicker, horn-shaped spikes). Their flowers are stringy catkins as opposed to the torch clusters shown above.

There are no Cypress trees in Denmark

 

No native ones at least. At the time Lego modelled the trees above, there was I believe only one Cypress in the whole of Denmark, under glass in the Copenhagen botanical gardens. That's because Cypresses are mediterranean trees, used to much warmer climates than temperate Denmark.

Here's a few of them, in the middle of a garden in Rome. As you can see they're a very dark green cone shape, nothing like the medium-green trees that Lego made. In fact they're conifers, evergreen plants with long narrow leaves similar to what you'd find on an evergreen hedge f ex. So (with all due and sincere respect), the people who put these trees on Bricklink have got it wrong.

What Lego used as an example are Poplar trees, which are very common all over north-western Europe. The most common species is known as the 'Canadian' Poplar which is a cross between a North American and a native European variety, bred centuries ago and spreading ever since.

Poplars grow fast and can get very tall. Being carpenters before they started making toys, the Christiansen family will have used Poplar wood because it's relatively light, easy to work and relatively cheap because Poplars grow so fast. Because of their length they're also good for making fences.

Out in the open, Poplars are also often found as windbreaks along fields or roads (especially in Northern France) so are a very familiar sight. Little wonder Lego included them in their tree set.

The Lego Poplar is of course the same height as the other trees in the set, but that will be due to the maximum height of the mould tooling.

(As a final note on Cypress trees, I do find Danish garden centres now offer them but that's beside the point here.)

Packing for the post

 

Bubble envelopes are lethal for toys. Seriously. They offer no protection whatsoever, and actually add to the risk of serious damage. That's because in quite a few countries, envelopes get run through a roller system to be scanned, where the rollers clamp each envelope very tightly indeed, and there's something in the conveyor system that pulls each envelope along as well. 

All of which is clearly demonstrated by this letterbox-sized box that contained a book:

By the looks of it, this box got flattened by the roller system while a corner got ripped open trying to pull it along. The sides of the box have buckled while the book ended up taking the pressure, which at least it was robust enough to take.

Not so this poor Lego VW Beetle:

This little car was all complete with intact bumpers and started as a bargain because it had a low starting bid. The seller had done a poor job of describing it, so I was the only bidder. The seller also offered free shipping but that's where things went wrong. Loosely wrapped in a piece of toilet paper, the fragile little thing had simply been shoved into a bubble envelope and put in the post, with the devastating results shown above. I got a full refund, but meanwhile a little car that had survived intact for 60+ years had been wrecked...

Thankfully there are people who do a much much better job of packaging vintage toys to get them to their destination unharmed. Based on what I've received and with a few of my own ideas, here's how I go about it:

If the toy has parts that can shake loose, then I put it in a ziplock bag so they don't become lost as well. Some little Lego cars have tiny headlights and a Mercedes roadster that I bought as complete arrived with one headlight missing that must have escaped completely while underway. 

If the bag is wide enough then the toy can go in sideways and the bag can be rolled up with the opening staying flat. I don't put tissue inside because if anything gets loose then it may still disappear when taking out the wrapped item before its absence is noticed.

I do put a piece of kitchen roll between moving parts so they don't scratch. And some bubble wrap to support parts here and there as well. The hose reel at the rear is a repro that fits very tightly so I was confident that would stay put.

I then wrap each toy individually in more kitchen paper. Trailers are packed separately from their tractors.

Everything is then snugly packed into a small box, with wads of bubblewrap to fill up every space so nothing will move when in transit. I hang on to little boxes I receive, and my local DIY is also a very good source having a bin at the exit full of boxes in all sizes including very useful smaller ones.

The small box then goes into the exact middle of a larger box, with styrofoam pellets packed tight between the two. This tight packing ensures that any weight or pressure on the larger box gets evenly distributed throughout without any chance of the toys being affected, the smaller box distributing the pressure around the toys. 

The larger box also means it goes through a different roller system than envelopes with no chance of the kind of damage seen above. And there's less chance of it getting lost because of its size as well.
Do check maximum sizes with whatever shipping service you use, though I've found that the (fairly sturdy) boxes used for half a dozen wine bottles tend to be acceptable to most postal services and esp alternatives like Hermes, Mondial Relay etc. Two local supermarkets have empty boxes to take away at the exit so I keep an eye out for them. 

The 1958 Lego terraced cottages

 
This row of cottages was available for toys shops as a glued-together display model, featuring in a leaflet of such models from 1958. The entire leaflet is on show at Brick Fetish (where tiny links at the bottom lead to the other models). Because I didn't have enough white round bricks for the pillars I made them in yellow, which also provides a bit of variety.

I've taken some pictures while building them, so here's a kind of step-by-step, using period-correct bricks made from cellulose acetate plastic. These buildings are small enough that these bricks hold together fairly well, so no need to resort to my trick of clamping paper inbetween the layers.

The base consists of three 6x8 plates, where a couple of 2x3 bricks are used to keep them together. I've used such bricks as I have while trying to keep the construction as consistent as possible between the three cottages.

The next layer also has a couple of 2x2 bricks to help keep things stable. The rear of the cottages isn't shown in the model leaflet, so I've just used some shuttered windows which I think look good.

Next layer is another three 6x8 plates, with the old waffle-pattern bottom. Where it took a lot of trial and error to find some windows that would still fit onto those plates because cellulose acetate warps with age so quite a few windows just couldn't be used here. 

After fitting the plates, building the stepped roof is easy to do in three layers, capped by 1x2 white bricks for chimneys.

The little Lego garage

 
Starting in the early 1960s the little Lego passenger cars were sold in a special pack consisting of a transparent plastic garage with a paper wrapper around it, as opposed to the little cardboard boxes that continued to be used for the trucks and VW buses. 

By this time the range of passenger cars consisted of seven models, with two more (E-Type and Victor Estate) for the UK and Australia. Initially the early Taunus De Luxe was still in the range, soon to be replaced with the later Taunus 17M. The image above is from a UK folder from early 1965 and still shows the De Luxe while Continental folders already showed the 17M by this time. The range of passenger cars would next be extended by the Citroën, Fiat and Morris models, but by 1968 these separately packed cars had disappeared from the Lego catalogue as larger vehicles made of bricks replaced them.

The garages themselves have a base and opening door in grey plastic. Usually the pale grey shown in my photographs, but also (I think two shades of) a much darker grey. I've incorporated them in a couple of buildings, but also have the two blocks shown here which I find useful in their own right. A little folder that came with each garage suggested they could also be used as display windows, and I have a pair of garages that lost their doors that I intend to use for that.

The 1955 Lego grocery store

This grocery store is based on a drawing I found in the 1955 Byggebog ('Building Book') which can be seen on the marvelous Brick Fetish here. There's a little Købmand store shown (fourth building at the front) but that was rather close to the row of cottages I'd also built (in the background of the picture above - more on those later). So I decided to adapt the second building at the front instead.

'Købmand' is the Danish word for a grocery store, though it literally means 'merchant'. It's linguistically close to the German 'Kaufmann' or the Dutch 'koopman' (pr 'cope mahn') which mean 'man who buys' and then sells again of course. :)

Grocers didn't sell fresh produce at the time (I believe there were even regulations about it) but my grocer does. The building in the Byggebog has a little terrace in front, which I decided to replace with two upside-down hollow bricks that could contain fruit and veg. 

Those hollow bricks are amongst the oldest Lego parts I have. They're held in place with two inner tubes from a broken brick I saw bits from to repair my little cars (cheating, I know :)  The rest of the building is also made from bricks in cellulose acetate plastic, where I've again clamped some notebook paper between the bricks to increase their grip.

(No) Lego VW 1500 repairs

I haven't had to repair any Volkswagen sedans so far. The red one above I opened up to remove its headlights, which are recessed into the body so can't be pulled out. They can however be pushed out from the inside with a bent paperclip. After I had made a mould the lights went back in. One of my blue VW sedans subsequently got a pair of repro headlights.

The VW 1500 is made following the second Lego patent (see earlier post) so to open it up you'll have to get a thumbnail under the rear of the body and lift that up while pushing against the rear window, the lower edge of which clips into the body to hold it in place.

The 1950s Lego neighbourhood post office

It's a lovely evening in late spring, and the chestnut trees are in full bloom. Closed after a lazy day, the little neighbourhood post office basks in the sunset. Tomorrow is another day.

This little building is copied from a glued-together display model which I'd just missed on a local classifieds site. It's another nice example of the rounded-corner style of 1950s Lego architecture. The original had a Scandinavian "Post" sign over the door, complete with bugle, whereas mine belongs to the Dutch PTT (Post Telegraph & Telephone). 

Like the original, it's entirely built out of bricks made from cellulose acetate. But my building mirrors the original because I'd run out of front doors opening to the left. The rear is just a blank wall, but for a display model as well as a little post office that makes sense.