Lego's 50th Anniversary

Often cited as one of the greatest toy inventions ever, LEGO bricks celebrate their 50th birthday today.

Here's a little on their history:

"The name 'LEGO' is an abbreviation of the two Danish words "leg godt", meaning "play well". It’s our name and it’s our ideal. The LEGO Group was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen.

The Company has passed from father to son and is now owned by Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, a grandchild of the founder.

It has come a long way over the past 70 years - from a small carpenter’s workshop to a modern, global enterprise that is now, in terms of sales, the world’s sixth-largest manufacturer of toys."

A vast amount of my childhood was spent playing with Lego - we had a 4 huge boxes full of Lego and my 2 brothers and I came up with plenty of ideas of uses for the little coloured bricks, from space stations to whole working towns (Well, in our imaginations anyway...).

We also went on a family holiday to Legoland in Denmark, each of us graduating from the Lego Driving School - probably my only memory of the holiday as I was pretty young.

But the company has moved on so much from then, opening Legoland Windsor and producing some of the most inventive, creative, advanced and, ultimately, fun toys around. Their online community is also second to none, drawing in the big kids as well as the young'ens - a great example of how PR can work for big brands.

The only drawback of Lego?

When you step on a piece, barefoot - ouch!