Considered a super brand, Lego is a popular name worldwide. Known to almost every household from the developed to the emerging world its sets and kits have spurred the imagination of kids for over seventy years.

Recently Lego has made marketing connections with top rated movies and made sets on themes such as Harry Potter, Ben 10, Cars DUPLO, Prince of Persia, SpongeBob SquarePants, Toy Story, and Indiana Jones.

It has even turned a few of its own sets into television shows, video games and movies. The secret of their success is their interchangeable design in sets, which infuses variety and provides endless hours of playing.

The Lego Company is a family business, which began with Ole Kirk Christiansen of Denmark. A carpenter, he designed toys with interlocking facilities, which children could use to build objects. Combining with his son in 1937 he came up with the brand name in Danish called "Leg Godt" meaning "Play well".

With the invention of the plastic injection molder in which the Christiansen family invested in 1947, modern Legos came to be. The company's ownership still remains with the family with Ole Kirk's grandson, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen holding the reins.

Lego currently is considered the sixth largest manufacturer of toys in the world due to some clever marketing and the purchasing of licenses from carefully chosen movie themes. The toy has evolved from the original uniformly rectangle or square shaped blocks, which could build anything from a gas station to a police station.

This original Lego block is still considered as inspiration for competition. Lego benefits immensely form what is called the "First Lego League". It is a worldwide competition, which creates a face off against different teams annually for which they are supposed to use the original play sets form Lego.

In the 1960's Lego began to expand their range of block towards the younger age groups using Duplo bricks. These were as much as eight times larger than the standard block, to be grasped by smaller hands.

A further development occurred in the mid 1990's where the Duplo "Primo" made its debut aimed at toddlers and babies. They were usually simple designs often featuring animals.

The 1990's also saw a significant and very profitable movement towards the higher age group of kids. A series of specialized set Compare lego prices castles, pirates, modern cities, were launched.

These were also tied up with CD - Rom gaming. Hollywood moved in during the 2000's with sets featuring super heroes such as Batman, Spider Man and tie-ins with other blockbusters such as Indiana Jones and Harry Potter.

The film tie-ins moved over to gaming through video consoles and PC gaming as well. Lego sets branded with the Star Wars trilogy, The Indiana Jones and Clone wars trilogies became and still are extremely popular.

Lego keeps its trend of moving towards the upper ages with more technical sets aimed at teenagers. Their 'Tecnic' sets can be used for the construction of complex architectural objects such as roller coasters, Ferris wheels, and remote controlled vehicles. The Bionicle sets focus on fictional characters from outer space.