Earlier this week, Phil Edwards published his video on how LEGO won over Kiddicraft and other competitors and now this. So much great LEGO content, I love this! Thanks Peter!!
LEGO has been hot in the algorithm lately and to improve SEO traffic to new channels and websites lots of new companies and channels are making LEGO related content where they can
Maybe you'd enjoy this video about "The Most Insane Lego RU-vidr", or the described RU-vidr's videos. It's a very complimentary video about him. www. youtube .com/watch?v=vMBw8ypCIqU Link with gaps so my comment doesn't get auto-deleted.
My former school in Germany used the Modulex-System to coordinate, which class to use whih room, to show the shedule of each teacher/class, etc. Around 1.300 pupils attented this school around the year 2000, the Modulex board was put up on a walls of the dispatcher's room in the late 1970's, stretching at least 6 meter (or even more). The room was simply called "Lego Land". As a pupil I had been in the interesting cabinett several times - and always wondered about the small size of the "Lego" bricks. Thanks to this wonderful documentary a looming question of my youth has been answered. All the best, Valentin Add on: In the brutalist building of the Württembergische Landesbibliothek (State library of Wurttemberg), errected in the 1970's in Stuttgart, there still is a Modulex chart, showing where different book themes can be found). Western Germany was really into the Modulex stuff, as it seemes.
You know what, I'm taking a library tech course and the idea of using Modulex (or even just normal Lego) bricks to show where books are is a great idea.
That's interesting, because I just realised my old high school's class schedule was also done with a system that was probably Modulex. I mean, I understood it was like Lego, but I didn't make the connection that it was the same company.
I'm honestly hoping this comes back. The colors are great, it's professional, it's minimalist. I'd love to sit down with a bunch of these and make some post modern architecture.
Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, LEGO owner, bought his nephew (Anders Kirk Johansson) out from restarting Modulex production. Anders mother (Gunhild) was Kjeld's older sister, whom he bought out her share of the LEGO company in 2007. It is very doubtful that Kjeld will ever allow Modulex production to be restarted, and be a competitor against LEGO.
@@GerRoland1 Yeah. I know it'll never happen. I just like the notion of sitting down with a brutalist or mid-century-modern sandbox: just something intended for architecture. The Lego system is great but it's lacking in a certain form of elegance and design.
@@GerRoland1 I don't understand why then they don't bring it back under the LEGO brand as LEGO Modulex or something like that, then it's not a competitor really, just a LEGO sub-brand.
I think one small detail that's fun: If you manage to get your hands on some pre-1958 LEGO bricks (those without the center posts) and they haven't gotten too brittle with age, you can actually link them directly into a brick manufactured today.
I mean… Lego never changed their standard brick dimensions. You could do the same thing with the old bricks without the cylinder supports from the 50s.
I discovered that modulex existed back in the 1990s. I was at UCLA, and I had proposed making an art installation of Royce hall for the student union. They would pay some amount of money plus cost and materials for proposals for various media of art. I’m not entirely sure exactly how I found them, the Internet wasn’t really that much of a thing at the time. My original proposal was going to use regular Lego bricks. They rejected it because I wanted to use the right color bricks, and they preferred the sort of odd colors that Legos come in. But I wanted to make something that looks right. A few years later, probably in 1993, is when I discovered modulex. There was a fellow in West LA named Irving who sold them. I talk with them about it, but they were quite expensive, and since I didn’t get the project at UCLA, I didn’t buy them. Several years later in 1999 I was in a position to be able to afford them, and so I called Irving. However, Irving was no longer in the business. He had sold his company to a fellow named Irwin. That’s right, a different guy named Irwin bought the company from Irving. I basically bought all of the bricks that he had in brown, rust, beige, I think some green, and a few other colors. I must’ve had 50 boxes of various size bricks. I eventually built my Royce hall model, it took me about 16 hours, I worked almost straight through. I still have the model today. The items that I bought included plates with the cushioned base. I didn’t have any of the special window bricks, but I do believe I had some of the angle bricks, and I used many of them in the Royce Hall model. The boxes were very cleanly design, about 4“ x 8“ by an inch and a half or so? Eventually, I sold what I had remaining I think on eBay. The bricks are very high quality, they were not compatible at all with regular Legos either by the size of their connectors, or their thickness. They were just scale down versions of Lego bricks. I also recall that the lot that I bought from Irwin had the catalog of all the different kinds of things you could get. I sold that along with everything else.
When I was little I would hear adults overseeing my building and tinkering with the toys talking about how they're a great engineering and architecture tool, never understanding wtf they were talking about until right now. Because when I would look at regular Lego and then IRL stuff I tried to build with it, the proportions we're always f*ed up.
@@DustWolphy The patent has expired, but due to the very exacting manufacturing tollerances, the competition has not picked up. Of course also brand and distribution contribute. LEGO is simply a quality brand when it comes to building systems. Fischer Technic and the old metal Meccano systems are also quality systems that have endured.
@@TheLadderman you'd be surprised. The last two years has seen massive improvements in what these printers can do. Even my Prusa MINI+ can get down to 0.2mm tolerances, and resin printers get tolerances down to an accuracy close to their pixel density.
@@ShadowDrakken Yeah, I know resin printers of course are super accurate, there's a reason I said most printers, not all. And 0.2mm is still not very tight tolerances in the grand scheme of things. That's just under 8 thou, which is pretty abysmall for machining, and still not great even for injection molding. I can't find any super great source that says what the tolerances are on even just normal Legos, but sounds like it might be as small as 10 microns, or .01mm.
Just imagine if Modulex was resurrected, I would totally use it for the improved precision, plus they could introduce more unique compatability with modern bricks. Honestly, they could essentially introduce internal competition a bit
i had a couple individual bricks i found over the years and they had "lego" on the studs and i wondered why they were tiny so i just started calling them "half-bricks" because i thought they were just rare half-sized bricks but i never held onto them and then i never found any in lots of official lego sets where they would have been useful and thought "why didn't they just use a 'half brick' here?" and it frustrated me to no end, i never realized that they wouldn't have fit because i never saw a modulex brick and a lego in the same room together
Fascinating, I didn't realize the company lasted so long and had its hand in so many fields. I had assumed it died out in the '70s. I remember meeting Karyn a few times as a kid going to lego conventions, and I'm glad you worked with her to tell the story of this fascinating company.
My dad was a 70s kid and told me that the sets were much simpler back then. Oh, one time when I was a kid, I was visiting my Cali cousins and was in my aunt's living room. I think I was touching a taxidermied animal that was on a coffee table. Anyway, she said why don't you go play Lego with your cousin. I thought "Legos" however, due to my upbringing, I did not correct her. It was not till sometime within the past few years, that I realized that the way Europeans, such as my aunt, say the plural for Lego is the right way! Lol. Io, Lego is plural and singular.
Green was not a brick color until at least 90's. Green was only used for base plates for grass and for trees and flower stems. I have no sets from the 60's to 1983 that has a green brick. The only exception is a translucent green used with the lighting bricks.
Another "lost cousin" was the American Bricks building sets. They were made of wood, also in the 2 x 4 stud format.Unlike Lego, they were in a (roughly) 4 x 8 x 1 proportion (and 4 x 4 x 1 half bricks). They were grooved on the lateral edges to imitate smaller bricks of normal-appearing proportions. They were a muted brick-red rather than the bright, saturated colors of Legos. The studs were formed by punching small cylinders of wood upward, leaving sockets on the underside and studs on top. I had a huge set (or maybe multiple sets) in the late 1940s or early 1950s. And like Legos, they were savage on bare feet.
I had some summer jobs in a warehouse that used Modulex to organize the storage rack usage. Every tile had a number and and corresponding entry in an inventory book and storage bin/palette/box/tank/etc. Colors marked the "type" of stuff in it: loose/sealed/liquid and so on. The old man had a memory like a computer, knew exactly what and how much was where. I had to make a full inventory of all screws once because of a discrepancy between accounting and his memory. EDIT: screws not skews 😕
@@pcarrierorange I think he was off 6 or so to much, definitely less that 10 over half a million screws (i counted most of them by weight). He reported a few thousand screws less than the accounting had in their books.
The weird proportions and connections of Legos were always a little bit confusing and annoying when I was a kid. I didn't tend to freebuild with System parts for anything other than houses buildings, and other technical type stuff. (Perhaps having a parent with a history of industrial design is to blame for that and my preference for drawing on graph paper.) While I can see how Lego probably preferred the bricks that are still made today, I feel like Modulex would have solved my little frustrations, as well averted the need for all the weird tricks that experienced builders end up using today.
Whenever you least xpect it, whenever you most need it, a new Peter Dibble Documentary is right around the corner, and I couldnt be more enthralled by them
For all the years I've loved Lego, I'd never heard of Modulex. This was a hugely interesting documentary and I was about to say how the easy listening music was so spot on for the 1960s modernist style, when I got a pop up message to say the Burt Bacharach has just passed away.
This video is AMAZING. I am about to leave the longest comment of all time because I have a lot to say! :) First, after meeting Karyn at Brickworld last summer, I actually wanted to make a documentary-style video like this too. Watching this has absolutely brightened my day because I don’t think I have the research or storytelling skills you do, so I’m very glad that this information has been packaged up nicely without losing the story. Another thing is that I’m so appreciative of the research that went into this. I knew just enough about Modulex that I could have spotted any egregious errors, but to see that you used and cited credible sources from the LEGO community is absolutely brilliant and I highly commend you for that. Fun fact that you didn’t include: did you know they sold two different types of glue? Glue A was for putting bricks together and Glue B was for attaching baseplates to other surfaces. I do have a couple questions, though. When I talked to Karyn last year, she made it seem as though the planning and signage products were new attempts to market a failing product, while your video made it seem like they were new SKUs for a brand that was doing very well (like reeses pieces vs cups). I hadn’t considered that before, and I had never done the research on that part of the story. Do you know which is closer to the truth? I know you consulted Karyn so perhaps she had new information or something. Last question: Was the LEGO group buyout of Modulex in 2015 a confirmed and public trade? From what I knew, they just kinda went silent and it became a sore point of conversation in the community that had gotten their hopes up. If you know anything else about that I’d love more info or some links where I can read about it. Again, this was a phenomenal video. Thank you so much for making this, and I will absolutely be sharing it on my own channel 😄
Thanks very much! 1) I would say that both explanations are basically correct. Karyn was accurate in telling you that the company expanded into those other uses in an attempt to salvage the brand. This video essentially says the same thing, though I guess I phrased things in a more positive light. When doing research on this, I kept getting the sense that Modulex wasn't as much of a failure as people often make it out to be. So that was a theme I wanted to convey in the video. 2) I don't know much about the whole 2015 buyout beyond what was mentioned in the video. I did some reading on it and got a sense of what fans were saying/feeling at the time. But the actual corporate details seemed very hush-hush.
@@peterdibble why couldn't he have simply used a different name and told LEGO to shove off, thanks to MEGA BLOKS and other companies who can use the same basic dimensions due to patent expiration? "Compatible with Modulex(TM)". How does Modulex compare to LEGO Microscale? I just spent a fruitless half hour attempting to discover the dimensions of those tiny bricks.
You know, I always wondered if LEGO bricks could have had commercial applications, for planning out interior spaces or visualizing data. It just seemed like a natural fit, but I assumed no one ever realized that potential. The moment you started talking about what Modulex bricks were primarily used for, though, I figured out that computerized spreadsheets probably replaced them for a lot of those applications. What really surprised me is that they hung on until the mid-2000s, right until the tail end of Internet adoption. That just shows how good they were as a sort of stopgap between early 20th century methods and late 20th century PCs.
they could still bring it back if they wanted to... but i think the greed itself stopped them... there's still going to be market for it... just as niche as it had started...
When I saw this video in my feed, I thought it was going to be some obscure off-shoot or a company rival that didn't last long. I can't believe Modulex was such a massive thing that lasted over 40 years and yet I have never even heard of it. Fantastic video.
Considering that it was marketed and sold to companies as a professional tool rather than to individuals as a craft hobby/toy, the lack of exposure makes sense
This is going to be brought back. I just know it. I don't know when, but the demand for this will always exist. Very cool video. I wonder how these were to mass produce. I wonder what they *feel* like. Damn LEGO, damn.
MEGA BLOKS is one of a few companies that make LEGO compatible bricks. They plug together, have the same basic dimensions, and they have near identical versions of LEGO bricks for which design patents have expired. MEGA BLOKS also has their own style of mini figures and their own parts designs. They also have the license to make Star Trek building kits, which is why any submission to LEGO Ideas for anything Star Trek gets removed. I always figured it was rather hypocritical of LEGO to sue other companies when Ole Kirk Kristiansen had exactly copied the dimensions of the bricks made by another company. He just added the slots on one side of the bricks to make them "different". LEGO's first actual new thing was the inside tubes that enabled connecting the bricks with offsets and they'd hold together. The hollow bricks could be offset but their grip would be weaker or non-existent. There are and have been some companies that make exact copies of LEGO bricks, including various licensed sets and bricks with current design patents. Their knockoffs often have poor dimensional accuracy and thus may have weak "clutch power" to hold together. Some use lower quality ABS or different plastics that can warp over time or may be warped right out of the box due to not taking the time to do proper pack and hold and cooling in the molding machines.
As an engineering trainee for British Rail in the early 1980s, I was assigned to a regional project management office for a while. A Modulex representative came to demonstrate the planning system and the senior manager invited me into the meeting so I met the charming rep and got my hands on a few bricks. I recall the feature of being abe to photocopy the specially sized plates in sections was being sold heavily. The company decided not to buy in the end; I think the high price was seen as a problem, although I, as a Lego enthusist, was rather impressed! That was my only contatct with Modulex and their product line, and I soon moved on to other placements in BR.
I´m brazilian and have to say.. great music taste man! I'm a huge fan of bossa nova myself and it makes me happy that this classic genre made fans worldwide :)
Peter, your videos never cease to amaze me with both the depth of the dive you take us all on, as well as the production quality. May you live for exactly however long you wish to. I won't curse you with immortality, but please keep up the great work for many many more years to come before you punch your ticket, alright?
This was so interesting! Personally, I think that they could make a comeback in a big way if someone were to adapt LEGO Technic to the ModuleX form-factor. I can see makers going *nuts* over the new system.
I see that I am one of the contributors in the making of this video. Thank you! I would like to add this video to my digital Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide... (APPENDIX D - Modulex) which allows clickable links to RU-vid videos. Thanks for putting this together! ~ Gary Istok (LEGO Historian on Eurobricks, and Istokg on Brickset)
I’m amazed at how unknown this system is given how successful it managed to be, I had never heard of it at all until I started using bricklink and saw it listed
Wow! I can’t believe that I just watched a 30-minute RU-vid video from beginning to end… but this was absolutely FASCINATING! And very well done too - Thank you!
That was an amazing mini documentary! I don't know how you can afford to create something with such scope and depth and production quality, but you nailed it! You've earned a subscriber!
I always wondered whether things would have been simpler if LEGO had gone with 1x1x1 proportions for everything as Modulex did. There are lots of hacks to make things line up with LEGO bricks, e.g. when one is vertical.
@@gblargg no, a single modulex 1x1 "brick" has a 1x1x1 proportion in lego 1x1 bricks are 1x1x1.5 2 1x1 lego PLATES on top of each other create a 1x1x1 proportion for 2x2 plates, 5 plates on top create a 1x1x1 proportion
@@absolutezerochill2700 A LEGO plate is 3.2mm thick. A 1x1 LEGO brick is nominally 8mm wide. 3.2*2=6.4mm. How do you get an 8mm height? It can be frustrating when you can't express yourself clearly. See the video at 6:31. A Modulex brick's width, height, and depth are all the same (5mm) thus it's a cube.
I used Modulex in the 1960s in a layout for the company's stampings works producing laminations for electric motors solenoids, small transformers and similar products
I learned about Modulex a few months ago when I decided to look up why Lego pieces weren’t cubic. Personally I’d love cubic pieces instead. Building sideways and integrating with Technic is very common and cubic pieces would help a ton with that.
I'm borne 1963, and was crazy about LEGO from 2-3 years of age. My mom sayed it was very practical that she could just place my large wooden basket of lego in front of me, and she could go about household chores, just hearing me show through the basket in search for the right brick or part. (I knew exactly how many of the more unusual parts I had.) When the sound of me showing the bricks in the basket seased, she knew I had fallen asleep on the floor carpet!😄 I remember when the slanted rooftiles 2x6 knobs were introduced (so they were not exlusive to the Modulex system), a rotating disk assembly, and the first LEGO motor, that had a separate battery box, that you connected with electrical cords to the motor. A train system was also introduced. You had to assemble the rails and sleepers yourself. LEGO bricks were not only offered as kits, but rather more in white and black paper boxes containing a category of parts/bricks. Often when we travelled to town (every 1-2 weeks, by steam powered trains!), I would ask to buy a certain type of bricks. And I kept track of new types of bricks introduced. My daughter who has moved from home to university, specifically asked me to retain the wooden basket with the LEGO bricks and parts for her, when clearing amongst her toys. Who knows, perhaps my grandchildren will be playing with some of my old bricks mixed in with their new ones?😘 There was actually an Italian rip-off brick system, that my mom bought when we had vacation in Italy, because I was very unhappy I didn't have my LEGO. However, when we came home, the 3year old me, got very upset whenever these "false bricks" didn't work with the genuine LEGO, so she sorted them out, and threw them away (without me knowing), which restored my peace of mind.😆 Sadly gears where only introduced after I had learned to work even in metal for my projects.
I met Karen Murphy a few times at past Brickfairs, and she is wonderful! I also have additional info about the signage from an inside source. A friend of mine, Kevin Hinkle, used to work in a community outreach position at the LEGO Group in the 2010s, and showed pictures of the offices he worked at. Most employees had office signs made with printed LEGO system tiles, but the executives were still using Modulex!
I hope this comes back it's such a genius design and tool that today could be more useful than ever could have a large impact even of we have 3D modeling and computers it's still important to preserve this historic piece of art.
I can't be sure without seeing the box these came in but I think I actually had some of these as a kid. I was born in the 90s but my grandmother is a hoarder, and she kept toys from whenever my aunts and my mom were kids in the 60s and 70s up until today to the point where I grew up playing with original Smurf toys and toys that were from Mork and Mindy, and I specifically remember having an old box of really small really thin blocks kind of like Legos whenever I was growing up that had windows and doors with them that were meant for building little models of buildings. They were a lot smaller than any other Lego kind of blocks I've had since and I don't remember much about them other than that the packaging was blue and red and white, and I think there was an o in the design that had an arrow coming out of it, possibly with a bullseye kind of shape? Either way looking back I definitely should not have been playing with them as a kid because they were definitely choking hazards. I apologize ahead of time for any typos, I use a voice typing system because of my disabilities and it doesn't always recognize my speech properly.
What a great video so we’ll done! Was very excited to discover the name tags we used at our office desk was actually ModuleX. I still have mine, and all this time I thought it was just a lego knockoff brand. It’s pleasing to know its part of lego history
I don't know if you know this but when I visited European Space Agency's CDF (concurrent design faciity) at ESTEC that is a room with a layout similar to a control room but meant for designing future space missions, there are consoles for each of the subsystems, 3 wall-sized interactive videowhiteboards etc and there is a little table in the first row close to the central large interactive screen that is for "modelling" in the physical sense, and for this there is a flat suface and a number of boxes containing modular contructions with generic shapes and also more specific custom parts like pole, parabolic and SAR antennas, solar panels, rocket nozzles, spherical tanks etc. When we simulated the design of a new mission (very broadly as a first phase) I was the one putting my hands on those pieces. When I did this in early 2010s those were not something I would describe as "lego type" constructions because they were based on something similar to the holes and double pins used in LEGO technic, in many cases they looked like 3dprinted. But since then I have seen a few spacecraft concepts modelled with LEGO (or something very similar) in institutional models too. so I guess the set of tools available have been expanded. Some might downplay this approach as "toy like" in a time with computer 3d modeling and 3d printing, but CAD modeling and 3D printing are very slow process, snapping a few plastic pieces together is much much faster when the configuration is constantly being modified and revised. it's a kind of tool that is hard to beat
This was so cool! I had no idea this ever existed! Hearing that Modulex was used to teach city planning in schools for a while made me think of Sim City. I wonder if Will Wright ever used Modulex when he was in school. Wouldn't that be cool if this was some kind of secret inspiration? This is so neat! Thanks for this video!
Hey for anyone who would have loved to build Lego with a size of Modulex, there's actually an off brand Lego out there by the name Loz who have like a middle ground, their bricks are 25% smaller than regular Lego bricks, while Modulex was 37.5% smaller than regular Lego bricks. Adding to this, if you look and search hard enough there brands with a larger varity of bricks for nanoblocks which are 50% the size of Lego bricks.
Now I want to find some of these bricks! I need to keep my eyes out on inspecting no-so LEGO bricks in thrift stores. I do hope LEGO would revitalize the M20 line with conversion bricks to make both systems compatible with each other. But I don't see how it would make business sense. Even with the signage and stationery route, LEGO is already producing similar product lines.
Not going to happen unfortunately. There was an attempt to start production again i think in 2014? With the original molds. But Lego legal came in and bought back all of them and put a stop to it.
Such an interesting story about a product that I have never heard of, but which is a cousin to a product which I am very familiar with! Can't wait for the next video!
With the invention of 3D printers, I wonder if people are going to start creating their own MODULEX bricks? I also wonder if Architects may actually consider more nowadays and they did back then? Despite the introduction of CAD, as mentioned even back to the sixties, sometimes just having a physical model to make all the difference to being able to perceive a final design, and the simplicity to change the design is super important.
3D-printing bricks of the Modulex size would take quite some time and effort to produce in larger numbers as it would be required for the fields shown in the video. Injection molding is a much better approach for mass production and high precision.
that was a great video.. i think i cried a lil.. might sound dumb but i have fond memories that were brought back by this.. Thank you for this wonderful edutainment!
I'm sure they might come back one day but wouldn't be used in some things like management probably and other things but still have use in architecture and planning
@@andrewreynolds912 I have been having scale issues with traditional lego pieces for a long time, I am glad there were pieces with actual scale properties to use for layout planning purposes. Wouldn't mind the tool launched in the future for recreational, architectural and planning use. I can see many people in the public setting use something like this.
@@andrewreynolds912 Lego is a toy, Modulex is a tool. There's a stark difference between a toy and a tool that I don't think that Lego itself realises. You get brightly coloured toy hammers (mostly in the theme of bob the builder), and you can get actual hammers which are tools. You have meccano, and then you have nut & bolt engineering construction found within many modern warehouses and factories.
You know while we're at it, you could sell this produce in DIY stores, stores that sell practical tools like hammers, drills, lathes, paints etc... I've also been thinking, the large base boards could be wired up like breadboards, (you know, the stuff which you plug electronic components into) and simulate lighting effects to see shadows etc. It may be possible to set up actual dioramas using the blocks to visually investigate various crime scenes quickly. Have specific landscaping blocks to help with garden layout. This includes basic fencing, blocks to make flowers and various layouts. Also make the widest selection of colours possible, if you can get something using the RAL Classic colour palette, you should be able to get that respective block in RAL classic as well.
This was so amazing! Thank you for putting this one together for us. As a fan of LEGO from childhood to adulthood, I am very grateful for your work on this.
This was a great pleasure to watch! Having grown up with Lego, I had never heard of Modulex, but it looks fascinating, i might even try to get a few bricks 'just for the sake of it'! Thanks for this excellent production, I'll be keeping an eye on your channel ;-)
I inherited a bin of old legos from my uncle when i was way young, and I vaguely remember there being some lego pieces that were oddly small. I never saw those pieces again after a few months but the definitely were there. I was never able to find anything about them but now i know what they are. Thank you for this
I’ve just discovered your channel, and I’m so glad I did! Your content is phenomenal, so well crafted in every aspect, you are truly gifted in creating documentaries. You deserve far more viewers, which I hope you achieve in the future. I believe you and fellow documentarian Kevin Perjurer of Defunctland would get along well! I will be binging your channel, and sharing your videos with friends . Thank you for what you do!
Quite interesting indeed. And unfortunately, an other proof that LEGO is a company and don't care about what people want, only in profits (which sometimes are the same, but far from always). Thank you for your work for this great video.
@@mylittleparody2277 You right, one or two. I am just trying to say, that even "people oriented" business as Lego, it just a business at bottom line, targeted for their own profit. Business wise, i think it was smart decision, keeping all under one family, otherwise, Modulex could almost certainly go away to 3-rd parties and we would have another "Lapin Lego".....
My son is addicted to LEGO. He started with a couple of bricks now he does a full one of those green bases in one go 😭. It's heartbreaking stuff, tears familys apart.
