Category:Duplo

1968: Patent submission, edited image [image info]

1971: "Duplo: big bricks for the very young" [image info]

1971: Duplo sets 510, 512, 513 [image info]

1971: Lego-Duplo interoperability [image info]

Lego Duplo is a double-size version of Lego designed for smaller, kindergarten-age children, and launched in 1969.

An especially nice feature of the Duplo system was that the larger early sets (512, 513) came with a sturdy Duplo-studded plastic trolley with metal axles, and simple couplings front and back, with the ability to tie on a piece of string, so that almost anything that a child made with Duplo could become a pull-along toy.

Its logo has gone through a few changes, but is usually associated with a red rabbit.

1967 "Giant" or "Jumbo" Lego (but not Duplo)

Before Duplo, there seems to have been a larger incompatible system, three times larger than normal Lego. This appears in Samsonite's pages in the 1967 (American) Schwarz catalogue as 804-030 "Large Size Lego Blocks", and also in the UK "Assortment 68" 1968 catalogue, as "Jumbo Brick Basic Sets" sets 501 502 and 503.

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  Samsonite 804-030

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  Lego 501 502 503

A standard 2×4 Lego brick, using a 8mm grid, would be 32mm long. Triple-size would be 96mm long, which translates into ~3.78 inches, so the Samsonite characterisation of the blocks bring approximately four inches long might be right.

Duplo interconnectivity

The simple-looking design of the clunky blocks is actually fiendishly clever, as the standard, smaller 2×2 or 2×4 Lego bricks actually fit onto the bigger Duplo bricks, with the cylindrical "tube" shapes in the centres of the normal Lego bricks fitting into the holes in the centres of the studs of the larger Duplo bricks.

This allows a child with a collection of Duplo blocks to start using some of the simpler Lego bricks as ornamentation and detail for their Duplo models, before migrating completely to the smaller system.

1971 promotional text:

For very small children - "Duplo"

So that very small children can play with Lego, we've made "Duplo" - big Lego bricks that they'll find easy to handle and take apart - even if they're only 2 years old. You can, of course, use Duplo with ordinary Lego bricks.

They fit together perfectly. You can put four ordinary 8 stud bricks on either side of a Duplo brick.

Children still enjoy Duplo bricks when they get older and have built up a Lego collection. They can use them on larger models so they don't run out of ordinary 8 stud bricks.

Duplo is now available in three beautiful boxes. Set no. 510 contains different coloured Duplo bricks. The larger sets - nos. 512 and 513 - also contain wheeled base plates for building cars, trains and animals which can be pulled along.

In popular culture

Legend has it that when the creators of the Google search service originally built their first computer server, rather than buy a case, they mounted the PC motherboard in a housing made of Lego (Duplo) bricks.

However, pictures of the server suggests that the case might have actually been made using the "Lego clone" MegaBlox.