Monday, December 21, 2009

BRIO catalog, 1980

I found this catalog in my parents' garage while I was home over Thanksgiving. BRIO is a Swedish toy company specializing in painted wooden toys, the kind that you'd envision Santa's elves to stay up late at night making. BRIO created a cohesive universe of cars, trucks, buildings, imitation household appliances, and, most importantly, trains, all swimming in bold colors and formed from solid, clunky shapes.




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6 comments:

thoughts manifested said...

Brio still makes a lot of this stuff. They also make the wooden Thomas the Tank Engine train stuff. It all works together. Good quality stuff.

David Moreira said...

Quality toys. Love 'em.

Sam's Myth said...

Amazing... and great logo... I forgot to show you my Playmobil catalogs when you were here...

and Happy Birthday!

Anonymous said...

I used to LOVE these things! good post. very nostalgic.

Sargnickfury said...

Hey was there more to that catalog? They're hard to come by, I have been collecting some of the older Brio stuff before they went plastic for my son, would love to have copy of full catalog as a reference.

John Mechalas said...

Thank you for posting this. Like the user above me, I'd be interested in seeing the whole catalog as I, too, am always on the lookout for older BRIO sets.

I have linked to this from the BRIO catalog page of my BRIO Wooden Railway site. There you will find a scanned catalog from the late 80's that you might be interested in, as well. It appears to be from the late 80's based on the use of the newer/current wheel design in the product photos. The catalog design and layout are not as exciting as this 1980 one since it's mostly just product photos.