General Information

The following information has been collected from original newspapers, catalogs, and magazines, some of which are freely available for reference below. The rest can be found in the site’s gallery. No aggregate catalogs (BrickLink, Brickset, etc.) were used.

Advertised Part Count(s): Unknown (my copy contains 78 parts)

It's very likely the set simply used the same inventory as the 702.

First Year Confirmed Available: 1963

Reader's Digest Magazine, 1963

USA Only.

Most Likely Retirement Date: 1964?

No 1965 evidence exists (and likely wouldn't exist because of the 1965 introduction of B-2187 and the 93-Piece Set, the direct replacement for the introductory set when the 702 retired.)

Last Year Seen Available: Late 1964
Hickory Daily Record, November 16th, 1964 The Grand Rapids Press, September 20th, 1964

Aliases: Introductory Set, Trial Package

Suggested Retail Price(s): 98c - $1.00 (USA)

Rarity Score (Rarity Index): 6/7

Box/Overview

The Special Introductory set was produced from late 1963 to late 1964 as a low cost "introductory" set, as LEGO was still relatively new to the North American audience.

The set used a 702 Basic Set's box with four stickers obscuring the original set number and price. It has no known assigned number from Samsonite. I wanted to give it 701 as all 1961-65 basic sets derive their numbers from the equation 700 + price. So 700 + 1 = 701. I abandoned that however, as I found it very unintuitive as I'm already used to referring it as the 702 Special Introductory Set and so is the rest of the community.

As seen in the links above, it was available in two ways: by magazine order in late 1963 to early 1964 or also over the counter in at least 1964. Due to the limited surviving ephemera mentioning the set, it's possible it had a wider distribution than impressed here. One source linked above calls it a "Trial Package", which may imply this set also was an early test of 1965's 005 Discovery Set's offer.

With that out of the way, the box is the same as the 702 so there should be no surprises:

717 box top image

The previous owner destroyed one of the stickers on my copy, confirming the box still has the 702's number and US price underneath the sticker.

There is nothing on the bottom of the box.

Contents

Below you can find the contents my set came with, though as usual take it as a guide and not law:

special 701 set

The parts are majority cellulose, with some ABS bricks(mainly red) mixed in.

You can also view the inventory for my copy on BrickLink.

Historical Examples

While this set has no original pictured examples, I kept this section as I've been curious if the 702 Special Introductory Set was also available in Canada.

The magazine ad from above has a 1963 version without the Special Introductory Set offer and also mentions Samsonite of Canada. We have two versions of this magazine advert with and without the Special Introductory Offer (pay attention to the differences in the small text on the bottom):

My thought is that the version with the offer is a USA version, and the one without the offer is a different version of Reader's Digest that could be distributed in Canada, as the specificity of Canadian prices (from my experience with Samsonite magazine adverts) only occurred in ads that where ran in both countries. Special offers or other promotions (i.e. holiday based adverts) did not clarify such.

All in all, it is highly unlikely this set was available for a Canadian audience.

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