American Plastic Bricks, ELGO Plastics, Halsam Products.
American Plastic Bricks, made by ELGO Plastics, are often mistaken for an early LEGO knock-off. The truth runs the other way: ELGO was making interlocking building blocks before LEGO was.
ELGO Plastics, Inc. was established in 1941 as a division of Chicago's Halsam Products Company — two decades before LEGO would enter the American market in 1961. More surprising still, the interlocking toy bricks developed under the Halsam name appeared in the late 1930s, predating LEGO's own work in the field by roughly a decade.
Both names trace back to the same two men. Harold Elliot and Sam Goss founded Halsam in 1917, combining their given names into the company's; when they launched the plastics division a quarter-century later, they drew on their surnames instead, giving ELGO its name.
Halsam had been producing wooden toy building blocks from the start, and by the 1930s was among the first companies to license Disney characters, adding Mickey Mouse blocks to its line. Wooden interlocking bricks followed in 1939, and two years later the founders formed ELGO to move production into plastic. The war intervened, however, and plastic bricks did not reach the market until 1947 — still two years ahead of LEGO's Automatic Binding Bricks. Halsam's plastic bricks were compatible with their wooden bricks.
The parallels between the two companies run deeper than timing. Both made the same transition from wood to plastic, both lost a toy factory to fire and rebuilt, and both produced bricks slotted to accept doors and windows.
Rumors have it that LEGO representatives travelled to the US prior to its entry into the US Market and paid ELGO $25k to ensure they would not give them any issues with their existing trademark similarities.
The story ends differently for Halsom though. Playskool acquired Halsam and ELGO in 1962, and Milton Bradley acquired Playskool in 1968. The plastic building bricks remained on the market under the Playskool name until Hasbro purchased Milton Bradley in 1984.
