These are the basic brick sets sold in North America by Samsonite, the luggage maker, which held the LEGO licence there from 1961. Samsonite made the ordinary bricks itself, first at its factory in Stratford, Ontario, while the special parts came over from Billund, and in 1965 it opened a plant in Loveland, Colorado, used only for LEGO.
1965 LEGO Sets
By 1965, LEGO employed more than 600 people as production scaled rapidly. Packaging was redesigned to feature only buildable models, improving clarity and consistency. In North America, Samsonite introduced the first LEGO gears—designed in Billund by Knud Møller Kristiansen—allowing mechanical motion and simple transmissions. Though initially exclusive to the U.S. and Canada, these parts marked LEGO’s first step toward functional construction.