BBC News Online: UK

Lego tops toys league

The classic building bricks topped the list of toys in a poll of UK toy sellers.

Lego - a traditional toy of budding young architects and builders - beat the teddy bear, Action Man and Barbie to the coveted title.

Monopoly - the pastime for aspiring capitalists - was named Game of Century.

And the yo-yo rose to victory in the Craze of the Century category.

The votes came from members of the British Association of Toy Retailers (BATR) after considering polls conducted on the internet and in newspapers.

The awards were presented at a dinner in London, attended by 600 guests from all areas of the toy industry.

Lego was first introduced in Denmark in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen.

The coloured bricks first went on sale in the UK in 1955. New types of blocks, vehicles, aircraft and people were introduced over the years. Today, hi-tech bricks are embedded with microchips to create robots, controlled over the internet.

Gerry Masters, spokesman for BATR, said: "The brick has been developed for each generation and the toy has never stood still, but fundamentally the classic building brick still remains."

And he said Monopoly was as popular today as ever before.

"It is the classic family game and is still one of the top selling board games around," Mr Masters said.