Samsonite / Basic Set

Samsonite was an American manufacturer of LEGO sets which introduced the very first USA LEGO catalog for Christmas of 1961. LEGO and Samsonite created a partnership to produce and sell LEGO in the US. The result was a 9-year license for exclusive North American distribution rights. Samsonite began marketing sets under the name LEGO by Samsonite in the US in 1961 and Canada in 1962.

Initially, Samsonite manufactured the basic bricks in their existing Stratford, Ontario factory and imported the specialty pieces, such as the trees and HO 1:87 Vehicles, from Billund however, in Samsonite built a second plant in April 1965 in Loveland, Colorado. devoted exclusively to LEGO manufacturing and by the mid 1960s Samsonite was marketing an almost completely different assortment than in Europe. A licensing dispute ended the arrangement in the United States in 1972, but Samsonite remained the distributor of LEGO in Canada until 1988.