THE SERIE
Have you some of these bricks, slopes, archs, doors or windows (without Logos except the "pat pend" [patent pending] on the back side)???
Do you think, these are not-original-Lego bricks???
DON'T! This is original LEGO©
The LEGO "Minitalia" was a special
serie available only in Italy during the 70s. Bricks are different from the
normal Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) bricks, but they aren't made of
CA (the first material used for molding the bricks): the plastic is a lower
quality plastic but it is lighter than the normal ABS and it was possible made
trasparent bricks. The most relevant difference between the Minitalia bricks
and the traditional ones, is the absence of the name “LEGO” on the top of the
studs. I have a copy of a letter
sent to a German AFoL where the Lego Group confirm the existence of the
Minitalia branch. You can read it at this
address (note that it is written in German!)
The brand was born due to
many problems with the importing and the selling of LEGO items in Italy during
the 70s.
LEGO made 21 different sets. The most important LEGO-related websites
haven’t rather any informations about them: Brickset.com, Peeron.com and Lugnet.com
ignore the existence of Minitalia sets. Some pictures are only avaiable from
LEGO-fan-sites, like lucajuventino.altervista.org/lego/.
LEGO created two
series of Minitalia sets. The first one during the beginning of the 70s (and
it contains the greates number of sets) and the second at the end of the 70s
(probably 1976-1977). This second is a little bit different from the first one
because the boxes don't have any "Minitalia" logo and many parts are
normal LEGO bricks. Only the windows and the doors come from the old Minitalia
serie (in those sets they are black instead the old ones white). The "new"
set #1 and #2 were transition sets: note that they, as all the other Minitalia
boxes, contain for the first time a 1x4x5 door with four panes and a 1x4x3 window
with shutters. Those sets were made of mostly with regular bricks with the addiction
of the new types of doors and windows. The first 1x4x5 door, like the 1x3x4
window, was released during the 1977
as Peeron says (here
a time table), like the windows (here
the other table). It’s possible that
the Minitalia doors and windows were used as prototypes in those last boxes
of 1976-77.
These boxes show that the "minitalia" parts come from original LEGO sets. I think, "minitalia" is mostly unknown because it had few success due to the "bad" bricks. Today it's possible to find them in some old lot of Lego (by eBay or in some flea market in Italy).
Here there is the description of the Minitalia bricks, provided by Larry Pieniazek:
"Minitalia (you can read more about it on LUGNET) was a licensee of LEGO
(similar to how Samsonite was here in the US)... their sets are badged both LEGO and Minitalia. Complex parts came from LEGO (for example, boat
hulls) but simple rectangular parts and slopes and windows/doors were molded by Minitalia under
license.
ALL of their bricks have hollow technic style studs instead of the LEGO solid studs, but not all have X instead of tubes, some have
(sometimes slotted) tubes instead.
The Minitalia parts are of a different plastic, it's slipperier, somewhat duller and a bit softer. I dunno if it's still a styrene (unlike early
Samsonite which is CA) or not. It's not LEGO ABS though, that's for sure. Some Minitalia bricks exhibit mild concave deformation on large flat
surfaces, consistent with having cooled quickly and shrank a bit after being molded and
ejected.
I got a MISB Minitalia set once, which I opened, and unless the colors faded while in a non light exposed box, which I can't rule out, the colors are not
as vivid as LEGO colors either."
In the boxes there were some catalogs, which showed the other Minitalia sets and where it was possible read some "constructions advices" like those:
If you have more information or want correct something wrong, please feel free to contact me.
I thank Gianluca Morelli for the background & pictures and Jan Katanek for the pictures.
