The greatest toy EVER?

Today's question of the day is simple...

Has there ever been a a better toy than Lego?

Now, I know that it's not the coolest thing in the world, but hear me out. Sure, Transformers were more complex, He-Man had more personality and Thunder Cats had a cooler catch phrase (hooooooo), but is there a more enduring toy from childhood than those little plastic blocks from Denmark? (Not to mention a toy that has it's own Funland!)

The big bucket of Lego I had as kid is still in parents loft at home, and I can still remember vividly playning Space Lego and listening to Transformers talking books at Seyton Bradford's house when I was 6, or building cars round at Martin Whitelock's house when I was 8, so clearly it has etched itself on my childhood like no other toy I can remember. My Star Wars toys have gone to the jumble sale, and my action man is languishing in a landfill somewhere, but not my Lego, that is a toy for the ages and so has pride of place in the Thomas loft where I know it will be safe until I need it once more!

After all, not only was Lego great to play with, but it was like a rite of passage as you grew up with them. Moving from from Duplo, to Lego Basic, to Technics and then beyond was as much a part of growing up as riding a bike, going to big school or the fateful day your body changed and you realized that you'd never be able to sing alto in the school choir again. As much as I loved my Lego Castle set, the minute I got my forkift truck Technics, I knew I was growing up, even more so than when I got my first razor, and I knew it wouldn't be long before I left childhood behind and finally became a man!

But, who am I kidding, really?! I was still collecting Lego well into my 20s and it is that habit that has in part inspired this blog post, as today I packaged up my Star Wars Lego to sell on Ebay once and for all. However, before selling off yet another chunk of my [second] childhood, I managed to rediscover one final moment of infantile joy as I set about building my Lego TIE Fighter and X-Wing for one last time. Amazed that I had all the pieces, I was still as excited to build these models when I was 10 and was trying to piece together my Lego Town Police Station. Alas, owing to my complete incompetence over the years, I somehow managed to lose all the instuction manuals and so I thought my cause was lost and that this final moment was t be ruined. However, thanks to a search of the interweb, I managed to find this awesome site with complete database of every Lego instruction manual ever produced - how cool is that?! So, just like when I was a kid, I followed the instructions to the letter - no deviating from the rules and had one last evening of fun with my Lego!!

However, not only did it give me one last moment of slightly melanchoilc, retrospection, it also reminded me of one of my favourite childhood memories that came as a result of Lego. It must have been 1989 or so, and Simon Crofts and I teamed up with the couple of other kids from the Broadmayne Cub Scout troop to take on the other neighbouring villages in a Lego Building Competition. Simon and I were pretty confident as I had just been given some fantastic 'Sight and Sound' Lego for my birthday, which had lights and sounds and all sorts. Alas, this was to be banned by some draconian dragon of a scout leader because it 'wasn't fair' to the other pikey kids who didn't have such luxiries. And then, to make matters worse, they made us all swap round and try and build something using the crap that some loser from another village had supplied. Little did I know at the time, that those losers from another village would be Daver and Clive (who I'm still friends with to this day), although I have a sneaking suspicion we ended up with Lego that belonged to Chris 'the mental case' Clarke (who was also there that day) and that explains why we lost! However, that day was still memorable enough that 10 years later, all of use who were there still remembered it and were amazed at the coincidence of us all being there at such a formative age, all thanks to the greatness of Lego.

You'll have to excuse me now though, I have to go and break a flat 'two-er' off a '4 by 8 strip' with my teeth, as my nails just aren't long enough any more to manage. I'll try not to leave any teeth marks, but there's no guarantee I won't!