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Liz,
I've cross-posted this to the clone brands subgroup of Lugnet, where you'll
get people much more knowledgable of the similarities & differences between
Lego and other manufacturers. There are no stupid questions, although
finding the answers may take some research.
The two parts you describe (the 75 slope and the 1x1x5 brick) are made by
Lego. Lego makes several pieces with hollow studs. I don't know if similar
pieces were made by clone makers, although this newsgroup is the place to
find out. In my experience, clone slopes do not have the surface texture of
Lego slopes. The 1x1x5 brick sounds like Lego. It's hard to tell from your
description, but some Lego hollow studs have a tri-bar blocking the inside
stud. See this pic:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=208855
which shows the completely hollow Lego stud & the barred Lego stud.
Lego has produced pieces that don't have their logo on them. Although the
studs have had a Lego logo on them since the late 1950's, it is only
recently (during the 1990's) that the company has made a point of putting
the word Lego somewhere on most pieces. Specifically, the tiles you mention
do come in earlier versions without the word Lego stamped in the bottom. The
absence of the Lego word or logo is no proof, in-itself, that the piece is
not Lego.
The "labels with a design" are called stickers. Stickers are used alot by
Lego and clones, although the designs on the stickers tend to be different.
The small single-digit & double-digit numbers you are seeing on parts are
what I call mold marks. I'm no expert on plastic manufacturing, but I'm
guessing that the first number is a die number (the giant metal block used
to mold plastic); the second number is the cavity number (each die would
have several cavities, each cavity producing one "piece"). They were
probably used to track down quality issues during production, so they would
have no meaning to us. Such numbers have appeared on bricks since the early
1960's.
The "Patent Pending" is a mark placed on a piece to indicate a patent
application has been filed. Patent Pending bricks appeared in the 1960's &
1970's. You can see the same mark "erased" on some later bricks, indicating
that the Application was resolved. Eventually the mold was changed & the
Patent mark was taken out completely.
For a visual tour of 17 mold variants of the 2x4 Lego brick, including some
of the above variations visit this link:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=21453
In the upper right corner there is a big pic & a matching text file
describing the differences shown.
Hope this helps & good luck in your quest,
Clark
Visit my Vintage Parts pages, submissions always welcome:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=8642
In lugnet.robotics, liz@bookwyrmz.com writes:
> I have what y’all might consider stupid questions on the identification
> of some parts. But please consider that I’ve only played casually with
> LEGOs as an adult, never as a child, and have only the last several
> months been really learning the ins and outs of Mindstorms, etc. As
> part of that, I have become intimately familiar with many LEGO,
> technic, and Mindstorms parts. However, I’m still getting the hang of
> the thousands of LEGO standard and specialty parts (okay, I’ll never
> come across or recognize all of them!).
>
> I have recently been adding many Technic, Mindstorms, and LEGOs parts
> to my collection for class to allow us more building and programming
> flexibility. (We’re currently up to 8 Mindstorms sets, 8 RoboSports
> sets, 1 Ultimate Accessory Set, 1 Vision Command Set, 1 extra camera, 8
> extra motors – not counting those that came with RoboSports -- 5 extra
> touch sensors, 9 battery boxes, and about 15 extra pounds of misc.
> technic and LEGO parts to build with. If that doesn’t keep them busy,
> I give up!)
>
> In adding the non-Mindstorms parts, I have been buying bulk LEGOs on
> eBay (seems to be cheaper than other sources). However, the last batch
> I bought was about 1/8 Tycho, MegaBlocks, Fisher Price, etc., and not
> LEGO. It was supposed to be a mixture of LEGO specialty parts – lots of
> those, I think someone was building spaceships and castles – and
> regular LEGO bricks, a little short in that area. Anyway, so I’ve been
> sorting the pieces down to report back to the seller (sorry, but I
> resent being shorted pound-wise in the first place, and then have 1 ¼
> pounds turn out to be definitely not LEGOs).
>
> I have come across some pieces that are pretty identical to LEGO, but
> are MegaBlock or Tycho, so I know some pieces can be VERY close and not
> LEGO. I’m being compulsive about the LEGO, because I don’t want non-
> LEGO pieces getting used and mixed in with competition sets (I’m
> coaching two FLL teams).
>
> However, I have run across two different parts (of sufficient number
> that I am concerned) that I cannot tell what they are. One is an
> elongated slope. It appears to be a black 75 2x1x3 slope (3 being the
> height), but the stud is open (hollow) and there is no LEGO mark. It
> is textured exactly like the smaller LEGO slopes. There is a tiny
> number stamped inside the slope, but I can’t read it (it might be 1-61
> or something like that). Is this a LEGO?
>
> The other is a black column 1x1x5 (5 being the height) that has a
> square opening at the bottom and an open (hollow) stud at the top (some
> have a tiny “bar” across the bottom of the opening). Is this a LEGO?
>
> Also, there are a few pieces here and there that appear identical in
> every way to the LEGOs with the exception (such as small tiles) where
> the numbers printed on them are different and there is no LEGO mark
> (one does say patent pending), some are plain, some have a label with a
> design (not painted on the brick). I’m assuming these are not LEGOs,
> despite the similarities. Are there older LEGOs that did not have the
> LEGO mark?
>
> Okay, that’s the end of the amateur hour.
>
> Thanks for any and all education in identifying LEGO parts,
>
> Liz Bilbro
> Teacher/Coach
> CyberStorm Robotics Class and First LEGO League Team
> Sports for the Mind for Lubbock Homeschoolers
> www.cyberstorm.us
>
>
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: LEGO parts -- genuine?
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| Whilst on the subject of Lego / not Lego, I have a question. I have recently bought at a boot fair a bag of Lego, most appearing to be the same era as the stuff I have from childhood, c 1970's. A fair bit of the Lego is obviously different though. (...) (22 years ago, 22-Jul-02, to lugnet.off-topic.clone-brands)
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