Back to Basics

The legendary LEGO brick revolutionized building play by giving kids more possibilities than the wooden blocks, Erector Sets, Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs that proceeded its release in 1958. LEGO bricks coupled together easily, enabling even the youngest architects to create elaborate and semi-permanent buildings, quite literally in a snap. Maybe that’s why our latest poll was no contest. We asked, “What’s the best construction toy ever invented?” Here are the results:

As LEGO diversified to reach older kids, the brick went high-tech. In 1998, with the help of scientists from MIT, LEGO created a computerized building system called LEGO Mindstorms. The Bionicle came next and inspired a vast number of products based on the line include trading cards, video games, board games, pens, a sneaker made by Nike and a full-length feature film which was released this year. But as this article states, after a recent slump in sales,
LEGO is going back to the foundation on which it was built.

So it appears as though "The Brick is Back," but as millions already know (and as our poll would indicate) it never really left. They are still stepped on by parents, sucked up into vacuums and lost under couch cushions everywhere.