Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Little Pieces of History

My Mom, Betty Hansen, has been slowly dispersing her worldly goods out to her children, grand children and great grand children. The latest is a box of Legos and Loc Bloc sets. She worked as a Lego Designer/artist for Samsonite in the model shop in Loveland, Colorado during the nineteen sixties and early seventies. The Samsonite Lego plant itself was pretty cool as it had giant lego bricks decorating the outside of the building. They produced a lot of Lego bricks under license for the Danish Company Lego out of that building. Many of the block sets sold during that time period featured models that she had designed. She once made a four foot tall crystal cathedrals from clear blocks. She also created displays for stores. Once she built a giant chess set out of B+W blocks for the FAO Schwartz Toy Store in NY city. She also created a giant six foot Christmas tree for them one Christmas complete with decorations.It was amazing! I remember the tree had to be broken down into multiple boxes to be shipped. When we moved from Colorado to Northern California she continued her artistry working with plastic blocs by getting hired by Loc Bloc a Japanese competitor to Lego down in Los Angeles. She would fly down to LA to meet with them periodically as well as ship completed models she had created down to them. As a kid it was pretty exciting when she would bring home extra Legos that had been swept up off the factory floor or ones that had mixed colors from when they changed colors on the molding machines.It was like Christmas when she came home with a bag full of blocks. This is a little bit of Lego as well as my Mom's history.#teamcanonusa God's light and love to all in the upcoming year, chris

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