LEGO 1962 Sets

In 1962 LEGO furthered its international expansion and began to sell products in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Morocco and Australia. In addition, the original Danish patent that was filed in 1958 was finally granted. New parts and colors were introduced in 1962 such as black bricks and LEGO plates. Also, the LEGO wheel was no fully developed and LEGO introduced the wheels in the 400 and 401 supplementary sets in 1962. The wheel was part of the new Futura groups products and perhaps Futura’s first important contribution to the LEGO System. The wheels were round 2 × 2 or 4 × 4 bricks with a groove to accept a rubber tire and had friction based axles for rotation.

1962 also marked an important change in the plastic used to create the modern bricks. In 1962 LEGO created a process development lab in Billund and one of the first results, based on numerous experiments, was a switch to a new plastic for the bricks which was ABS, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, and still used today. LEGO began switching over production in 1963 to ABS and completely phased out the older cellulose acetate plastics over the next several years.