The 1650 Maersk Line Container Ship (1974) and other promotional sets...

Istokg

I have been working on finishing my Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide expansion (2800 pages to over 4000), and while I am currently working on the 2011-2020 sets, I keep getting side tracked with older set important information.

Such as the 1650 Maersk Line Container Ship... the first Maersk LEGO set of 1974.

A Danish LEGO acquaintance has sent me this very interesting document about the 1650 set...





This translates into English as this...






So it appears that the 1650 Maersk Line Container Set was limited to a production of 20,000.  It also appears that Maersk was heavily involved with the ship design, so that there is not a primary (container ship) and secondary (cargo ship) models, but both the container AND cargo ship models (on the front and back of the box) are each a primary model build.

The container ship build...


The cargo ship build...



Also, the 20,000 sets were shipped to Maersk in January 1975 (?) and given out to Maersk customers and business connections... likely over several years until the supply ran out.

The paperwork that was included with each 1650 Maersk Line Container Ship Set...





Also of interest is the fact that the Maersk blue color had been used by Modulex for quite some time (since 1960s?) before the introduction of the 1650 set.  The first Maersk blue LEGO parts were the 1650 ship hull parts.  It wasn't until 1980 with the first Maersk truck, that Maersk blue LEGO bricks were actually produced.

So in my collectors guide, it appears that rather than just a picture and set info on some LEGO sets, I will be adding additional anecdotal and historic information, to help preserve the history of "special" LEGO sets.

It is snippets of important LEGO information that has been dragging me out in finishing my Encyclopedic guide on LEGO sets and parts.  I apologize to those waiting on their free computer desktop guide updates... but as a US comedian once said... "good things come to those who wait... but crap shows up right away!"  :-D

Huw

I can't wait...

madforLEGO

Neat, I like the promo pic of the ships floating in water.

Astrobricks

So, is it ok to start calling Maersk blue “Mankbla” now?

Never mind, I’m going to anyway :)

Istokg

Astrobricks said:

So, is it ok to start calling Maersk blue “Mankbla” now?

Never mind, I’m going to anyway :)

Make sure you have that doo-hickey over the "A" in BLÅ...    ;-)

jgadget

@Istokg I assume that you still have that remake of retail model #0751, Regina Maersk Ship, that you've been holding for me?

Astrobricks

jgadget said:

@Istokg I assume that you still have that remake of retail model #0751, Regina Maersk Ship, that you've been holding for me?

So rare it’s not even in the Brickset database apparently.

jgadget

I should have typed "TLG retailer display model".
They are described in chapter 67 of the version of Gary's guide that I have.
He has images for lots more of these retailer models.