Lego HO Scale Car

Here's one that surprises a lot of people. In 1958, in the days before the mini figures Lego introduced a range called Town Plan where children could create whole model Cities out of fairly basic bricks. There were no little people to populate the cities, instead Lego produced a range of plastic HO scale (1:87) cars and lorries that could be driven round your town.

(Picture 1) Lego HO Scale VW 1500 Limousine

The cars were sold in packaging which doubled as little plastic garages. The clever thing was these garages were molded as lego bricks and could be incorporated into your designs. (pictures 2 and 3)

Then in 1962 Lego invented the wheel! As you can see from photo 4 this didn't fit with the existing scale and would eventually spell the end of the model cars as more and more self built lego vehicle kits were produced and a new range of city buildings were added to increase playability.

The original Town Plan range was discontinued in 1966. The HO scale vehicles hung on a bit longer but had disappeared by the end of the 60s. They have largely been forgotten now except for a few hardened collectors.

Some more to come.