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I don't even know where to begin with this one.

Previously, I decided to split the site into two: Canadian LEGO Samsonite and US LEGO Samsonite. It just made sense, and I'd only been putting it off because I'd not composed the site with that distinction in mind. Over fifty articles will need to be completely revamped to split apart Canadian and US nuance, as they almost never agree or are relevant to the other. So it's a change for the better. It makes much more sense to compartmentalize, to make sure that distinction is abundantly clear.

It also helps with the organization of the gallery. Before, one had to specify in their search whether or not they wanted Canadian materials via searching "canadian" or "-canadian". I found this livable, but rather unintuitive.

With the current checkbox system, while I feel it is still a temporary solution, we now have a much better system to represent the site's folders. And I've been acquiring Canadian catalogs, adverts, and set images to fill out that side of the site.

It isn't as if I've run out of things to say about the US side of things (I've just discovered Samsonite distributed Modulex in the US, which was a wild revelation), it's simply a matter of giving ourselves the proper groundwork when we do get into the Canadian side of things. It takes an immense amount of time, energy, and patience to process sources and integrate them into the site's ecosystem—it's not something I prefer to do on the fly. It's much more preferable to already have a majority of the information prior to writing. You'll inevitably miss things, it's impossible to have everything in the beginning, so it's your responsibility as a researcher to do your due diligence even after the fact.

And so, the site has 200+ new images and almost 50 new books, with our previous stats at 1,917 images and 93 books. Those new accruals are not all Canadian either. There's yet another new section to the site.

The best way to explain this is to start from the beginning.

As I've continued acquiring Canadian materials, I've observed that the form numbers for paperwork never are unique. Instead, they're either directly inherited from LEGO's own system or US Samsonite's. Which was disappointing to me, as I've been toying with a new thought recently.

Samsonite form numbers are things like H-2307, and the numbers are chronological(with some exceptions). I've had H-2309 for some time, but only recently was H-2308 (the 1967-only instructions for the 536) found. So now we have H-2303 to H-2309 in a neat chronology. We would have H-2300 to H-2309, but we're missing H-2302. I know, I know. It's a lot of numbers, but it's genuinely informative.

What I find valuable is that they place paperwork within a very specific timeline, much more definitively than approximate dating. That's why I was disappointed about the Canadian side of things, as I'd previously assumed that side of things would help the cause. So with that dead end in mind, the fundamental issue is that we have to wait for unknown LEGO Samsonite ephemera to be found, which I myself have had a rate of about one every few months. Until the last week, in which we now we have over 30 form numbers accounted for.

How did we do it?

Recently, I came across a few pairs of 1969-1972 Zipees in the original packaging. It a popular roller skate Samsonite purchased to produce under their name, and they were not very durable but that's a conversation for another day. I began browsing for other Samsonite toys (anything not LEGO is incredibly cheap and available), and realized something that I missed before. I don't even have a good explanation as to why, I just never thought about it as an option.

Form numbers are not just LEGO Samsonite.

It was shared between all Samsonite products. LEGO, toys, even luggage. And thus began the deep dive into filling out that collection. Which might sound a little silly, but it's been immensely informative in evaluating why certain things are designed the way they are.

For example, why does this LEGO retailer order brochure exist in 1961?

It turns out, it was a common practice for Samsonite to provide these order blanks to retailers prior to 1961. I've scanned nearly ten of them now:

Which, seeing them all together, made me realize that I was incorrect about 2407's form number being a typo. It's that for whatever reason, order blanks were not part of the original numbering system, hence why the number rises only by 52 over 1961-65. The new information, however, still supports and even strengthens my 1965 date for the 2407 brochure, and as a bonus, it also explains something that always confused me. Notice the "visit your LEGO dealer" over the order form:

There are two possibilities. One, there exists two versions of this pamphlet, one for in-store use as usual, and it was reused within the same season for the 695, hence the removal of the order section. It makes sense, as the 695 is a surplus set, it was incredibly odd that Samsonite designed a super comprehensive pamphlet just to use it only here. They both would share the same form number, as explained below.

The second possibility was that this is the end of the order blanks being distributed, at least for LEGO Samsonite. And so the surplus set was used as the quiet offload, hence why all text relevant to the 695 is in the box that normally held the store's name. And that's a very real possibility, as the 695's text and the "visit your LEGO dealer" is manually stamped on the paper. This pamphlet isn't even really necessary for the 695 anyway, as Samsonite could've just used the normal 1965 brochure if they really wanted to promote the new line. It'd be much cheaper than hand stamping tens of thousands of these.

It's hard to judge, but given that we have nearly the complete line of them from 1961-65 (missing only 1963) archived before any subsequent year, we shouldn't expect to find any more.

So now I'm in the possession of a large amount of Samsonite ephemera, and at just the perfect time as well. I've been prepping for my complete history of LEGO Samsonite, but my big stumbling block has been not being comfortable with relaying the same summary you find published everywhere. It seems hypocritical and disrespectful to hold ourselves to such a high standard regarding LEGO Samsonite, only to skimp out on the history of Samsonite/Shwayder Bros. itself.

As it turns out, there's no online equivalent of BrickLink or Brickset for Samsonite at all. No one has dug beyond important dates/events, created a reference by which to identify/date Samsonite luggage, folding furniture, etc. At least not publicly.

Hence the second new section of the site: Shwayder Bros & Samsonite (1910-1973).

It will ultimately lead to a better product for LEGO Samsonite's history, as I am certain more context will better inform our analysis (as above with 2407). More importantly, it will provide the larger Samsonite community a means by which to better understand what they own. It gives us an opportunity to examine diverse historical context like religion, the Great Depression, and WWII in relation to Shwayder Bros. We'll be able to characterize surviving luggage as more than antique keepsakes. There's absolutely a story to tell there, and there isn't anyone filling that role.

So we will take the journey ourselves. And I guarantee, as we've done countless times with LEGO Samsonite even to this day, we'll discover something new.