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BRIO is a long-time manufacturer of wooden train sets. BRIO started in 1884 by the "BRothers Ivarsson of Osby", Sweden. They specialized in wooden toys, and in 1957, began producing a miniature wooden railway system. Peter Reynolds began importing BRIO trains into the United States in 1977, and continued to run the U.S. distribution until 2002, when he left to form The Little3 Toy Company. BRIO trains and tracks are manufactured in Sweden and China and are very high quality products. Their train sets have become the standard that most other manufacturers compare themselves to.
In June of 2006, K'NEX Industries became the exclusive distributor of BRIO products in the Unites States. Some of you parents may know K'NEX through their unique building block toys that were highly popular a few years ago.
This arrangement seems to have changed at some point over these past 10 years, as I do not see a reference to BRIO at the current K'NEX website (as of May 2016), and there is now a Brio USA site.
BRIO advertising states that BRIO wooden toys are made from beechwood and birch. The wood is free from insecticides and toxic chemicals, and are selected to be free from knots and cracks. All wood is kiln-dried to retain its natural color and finish. BRIO uses paint rather than decals for the train colors (decals are used for logos, etc.), and some trains receive up to 60 coats of non-toxic paint to resist chipping. BRIO warranties all manufacturing defects for as long as you own the toy.
In the past, BRIO trains were fairly plain looking, but in the 1990's (perhaps due to competition from Learning Curve?) they began to expand their lines to include "famous" characters, such as Bob the Builder, Curious George, Richard Scarry, and others. You'll have to check current catalogs for current availability of any of these characters, as many of them were produced for only limited runs. One of the features I like about BRIO is that they also offer many little people that can fit inside the trains, which helps expand the play beyond the tracks.
In the United States, the availability of the BRIO line
seems
to have really dropped off in the last few years (Mid
2000's). I had begun to see
Chinese import versions of BRIO available in stores like
K-Mart, but
with the demise of many of the specialty toy stores, the
BRIO line
seems to have largely vanished with them. On the US K'NEX
site only a
few items in each category can be
found. For example, under "sets", only a simple circle set
is for sale
(this is as of Oct 2009) and there is only one train under
"Engines".
On the Swedish BRIO site, there are still quite a few
trains, train
sets, bridges, and track to be found, so it seems to be
alive and well
in Europe, at least. New sets for BRIO include a line of
Disney
characters (Mickey Mouse) and a new "Network" line of
track and
characters, that go along with a cartoon. The cartoon is
of a series of
characters that live inside a computer, and have to combat
the Virus
characters that are always trying to mess things up.
As of May 2016, BRIO seems to be alive and well again as
I have seen them in local stores, and their USA website is
up and vibrant! This is good news for wooden train fans.
My experience with BRIO trains and track has been that
they are very
well made, but this was in the pre-Chinese manufacturing
era. The
Chinese trains that I saw in K-Mart still looked good, but
I've never
seen them outside of the packaging so I can't say for
sure!
BRIO AB/BRIO Toy
BRIOgatan 1
S-283 83 OSBY, Sweden
Phone: +46(0)479190 00
Fax: +46(0)479-141 73
Internet: http://www.brio.se
USA: http://www.brio.us
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