BRIO collector and enthusiast Tyme let me see a copy of an old flyer from 1997 that was sent out to BRIO retailers. This was something of a pre-announcement of upcoming BRIO products in the late 1997 and early1998 timeframe. On the cover of this flyer, which bears the name “Toy Fair 1997”, is a photo of a prototype train in orange:

Inside the booklet is a larger photo with more information, indicating that the train was modeled after the TGV in France (in French, the Train à Grande Vitesse, which translates as “high speed train”), specifically the TGV Sud-Est in its original orange livery. According to Tyme, who had a close relationship with his local BRIO retailer, BRIO was not able to secure the rights from France to sell the train so it never made it to market.

As you can see in the photo (click to enlarge), this prototype is just a mockup. The body is orange, but the graphics are printed on paper which are glued onto the train body. This is probably fairly common in the early stages of train design since, once you have the body color decided, changing the graphics is easy if you are just printing them on paper as opposed to commiting them permanently in ink on the train itself.

Also note the early prototype of the redesigned Shinkansen as well, which bears the name Shinkansen Tokaido. The final product name for this train would be Shinkansen Nozomi when it was finally released in early 1998. In Japan, Tokaido is the name of one of the high-speed rail lines in operation while Nozomi is the name of the fastest service offering on this line (the limited-stop service). So Shinkansens Nozomi is merely a more specific name for the same train. The train itself is modeled after the 300 series which was in operation from 1992 through 2012.

Also note the suggested pricing in US Dollars. BRIO has never been cheap. Accounting for inflation, $43 in 1998 is equivalent to about $62 today.

I received a copy of a 1982-83 catalog from writer and BRIO enthusiast Joshua McMorrow-Hernandez and will be adding it to the catalog archive, with his permission of course, in the coming days. One interesting bit of history jumped out at me in perusing it, however, and that is the origin of the City Park set, #33578. This item first appeared as a wooden railway accessory in the 1984 catalog, but it appears that it began life as an accessory to what BRIO would eventually come to call their role-playing line of toys.

My earliest catalog is from 1980, so what I know of this line is limited to that decade. The 1980-81 catalog shows these four items:

• Garage #1110/31654, a large building with three overhead doors,
• Garage/petrol station #1111/31656, basically the garage plus gas pumps
• Parking Garage #1113/31658, a three-story garage with petrol station, numbered parking spots and adhesive stickers that children could use to customize its appearance
• Farm #1122/31105, a farm house with removable roof, large play yard and a two-room animal shed.

Accessories for this line would appeared in the early 1980’s, debuting in the 1982-83 catalog:

• Farm #1131/6-31131, a four-piece animal shed with animals
• City Park #1132/4-31132, which would later become wooden railway accessory #333578
• Chicken run #1133/2-31133, a two-piece chicken coop with chickens and other figures

The 3-car garage set #1110/31654 would eventually be renumbered to #31109 in the new 5-digit system, and the Farm #1122/31105 would become #31122. Both products would live for several more years and were last seen in catalogs in 1989.

The accessories for the farm, the smaller four-piece farm and the chicken run, were in catalogs through 1986. What’s interesting here is that these items were in the same styling and rough scale as the wooden railway system, even using the same animal and figure cut-outs, but only the City Park would go on to become an official wooden railway accessory. It would also live on an extra year, showing up in catalogs through 1987.