1970 / Universal Building Set / Gears

LEGO's Universal Building Sets theme was released as early as 1966 but it was not until 1973 that the Basic LEGO sets became known as Universal Building Sets. These sets were produced in two set version numbers, the first was for sets that were sold in the UK, Europe, Canada and Australia. The other version numbers, but for the same exact set with the same box artwork was released in the United States. Most, but not all sets between 1973 and 1981 were sold in both regions.

1970 LEGO Sets

By 1970, LEGO grew to over 1,000 employees. The LEGO Group started the process to regain the LEGO license from Samsonite in the United States market after the founder of Samsonite, Jesse Shwayder, died. By 1973 LEGO will take control of all US LEGO sales. As LEGO continues its European growth, in Italy, the Italian Parliament restricts the import of LEGO products and LEGO responds by creating their own Italian manufacturing subsidiary called LEGO Minitalia. In 1970 LEGO produced their first sets on the Minitalia theme which were essentially Basic systems. In total from 1970 until 1975 there were 21 Minitalia sets produced. During the same year, the long-running Town Plan theme was discontinued as this was part of the phasing out of multiple scaled models.