Lego's egalitarian instructions from the 1970s

No one would use ragged right in packaging material? Also isn’t this a bit too clever by half? Hand holding a paper in front of a bricks strewn across the floor? Is the paper in the box? or the photo in the box?

This is fake. Does anyone anywhere even remember seeing this? I doubt it.

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No souping-up needed. Selectric typewriters could use either fixed or proportional pitch balls. Compared to high quality photo typesetting, using a Selectric for typesetting would be a very cheap but low quality option.

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As much as like debunking, the words visible “on the other side” might have been ink transfer from something else (like a newpaper clipping) that was stacked on top of it for decades. So it’s in reverse and askew silly putty style .

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This whole Selectric proportional times New Roman thing was gone over in great detail ten years ago, when the “Bush National Guard memos” surfaced from Dan Rather on 60 Minutes. My brother got involved, as he’s the owner of selectric.org, and has a bit of a Selectric museum in his house.

tl;dr Selectrics cannot produce Times New Roman, or anything remotely like it.

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I am not so sure about that. See for example this rather famous ad from a few years later:

ETA: As far as I can tell, the page is dated 1974 and it seems to match the style of this 1974 Lego catalogue well enough.

Imgur

And a real link, if BBS lets me: Lego Catalogue 1974 | We visited some friends on Friday, and… | Flickr

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The Cosmic Balance swings back & forth.

Totally legit, here’s the german Version with same Font and localized language: http://www.redshift.com/~shifflett/lego/German_catalog_1974/target2.html

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That looks like a staple on the right of the original photo, which would make this the back cover of a booklet. I don’t recall this message ‘To Parents’, but I do recall the existence of such booklets of inspirational photos in boxes of LEGO, and catalogues advertising other sets.

Incidentally, I certainly had Duplo in the mid-70s, and visited Legoland Billund in '78.
Heh. And I had that moonshot set shown in KarlS’s last post. :wink:

Edit: Note the staple in Walt74’s photo too!

So now someone does the same X-ray trick on the German version to see what’s on the other side… the first few words seem to tie up.

the wording of that ad is very similar in tone and style to the insert in question. it doesn’t seem to be out of the realm of possibility.

we need a new word that means “true on the internet but not irl”
i nominate: snopengeist

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The whole Catalogue is up there, in german it says „Der Tag, an dem das Mittagessen in der Küche anbrannte“, translation: „The Day, Lunch burnt in the Kitchen“ or so. Fits.

[edit] Link: http://www.redshift.com/~shifflett/lego/German_catalog_1974/

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That’s all the proof I need.

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Yup, same here. Great find!

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The most heartbreaking thing: In the german Version of this, it says “Lego setzt der Phantasie keine Grenzen”, translated “Lego sets no limits to Phantasy”. Nowadays, they do more often, than not. And that’s sad.

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Yes, and the “more human than spaceships” and “more exciting than dolls [sic] houses” pronouncements are amusingly naive - although well-meaning, I’d guess this has been made by someone under 25 who has no awareness of Sociology and gender theory.

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One of you Photoshop wizards needs to get in there and change the text to a warning about wearing shoes when your kid is playing with this stuff.

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A copywriter in 1974 not showing proper awareness of gender theory? Impossible.

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To toy companies
The urge to create fun toys is strong in all toy companies. Big and small.
It’s imagination that counts. Not marketing. You manufacture whatever comes into your head, the way you want it. Construction toys that build anything and open kids’ imaginations. Entertainment licenses just turn your business into a movie souvenir business. Even an officially licensed Lego set based on “The Lego Movie” (which purported to promote creativity) short circuits itself. The most important thing is put the right material in kids’ hands and LET THEM CREATE whatever appeals to them.

Logo check, as requested:

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They’re still rather behind on that today…

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