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Lego

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I’ve just finished a lego set I had bought myself for Christmas: the typewriter, and today I was looking online for images of old sets I had as a kid from the 70s. This might bring back memories to others too.

The typewriter

It was a really good set, I’ve enjoyed making all the little components and then putting them together. It was also the first time I was using lego blocks horizontally as well as vertically.

the typewrite made of lego on a wood table, it's seen from above and part of of mechanism is visible, with ink ribbon and round keys.
That’s it finished!

It moves like a real one but doesn’t work and you don’t have the little chime when you’ve reached the end of the line which would have been a great addition. I guess not getting my hand dirty with the ink ribbon is a plus though. It brought back memories of an orange toy one I was playing with as a kid.

The photo is not it but probably pretty close to what I had at the time.

real typewriter with an orange body, black keys, the keyboard is an AZERTY as it's French

This is a time where I was playing with other games like Anatomie 2000 (French name for that set), or Simon, but soon after, all I was going to ask for as presents was going to be music related like my first Sony DD walkman.

box of the set with Anatomie 2000 written on it, one card has all the bones parts another one all the organs and the last one has the plastic body cover part to put the rest in.
Simon pocket game with French instructions on it
red walkman DD from Sony

Lego – lego – lego

Before I turned to music as a teenager, all I wanted was lego sets. I had the ‘girly’ ones where you do a room of the house: the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room.

lego set box cover for the bathroom, it's number c265 and the elements are on a blue lego plaque, there is a vintage feel on the photo
lego set box cover for the living room, it's number c264 and the elements are on a red lego plaque, most of the elements are blue and there is a 70s feel about the design
lego set box cover for the kitchen, it's number c263 and the elements are on a blue lego plaque, most of the elements are yellow with big flowers on the unit doors
box set number c200 this is a family with a boy and a girl, the parents and the grandmother. The arms can move at the shoulder and elbow level, the hand are round and you can add lego on it if want. The kids are holding hands like that.

The characters’ arms could fold in different ways at the time. But the instructions look very similar to those we have today from what I can see:

instruction for the kitchen set, there are 4 steps to create the mother and 3 steps to create the girl

I also had sets which were aimed at letting you do whatever you wanted like this one:

open box with 4 parts with various bricks, some are classic ones and some are trees, wheels to make a car or windows for build a house

But the best ones were the train sets. I got more and more over the years and could make a pretty decent track and town around it.

I think this is the train I had:

box for the train, no number on it, the track are blue with white plates to join them

But then I got more and more, I could do an 8 shape, move up some tracks and make a bridge, and I had a railway crossing as well like the one below:

various train components on a table, with a railway crossing, many pack of blue tracks some instructions and wagons

I remember this as well, which would let me increase the speed, away from the set:

box of lego system, the controller is blue with a red button to adjust the speed, this is a French blue and the voltage is 12V

So over all I probably had something like that:

table with many trains parts sets on it, various track shapes some wagons and rail crossing

I remember this thing below as well (whatever it’s called). I created different vehicles with that. I think later I had a kit with a little engine and cogs where I could make things move in various directions.

blue vehicle with various wheels and tyre shapes to fit them, one image on the box show the inside part of the blue engine
big yellow cogs with a red centre, medium blue cogs with a red centre and small red cogs, there are also grey bricks with holes in them and some plastic part to join them together

This made me think of another game: Spirographe (with an extra e in French 😉 ), There is an online version you can use if you want.

OK, I’ll stop with the nostalgia here. I hope this post brought back some good memories if you are from the 70s too.