The tale behind the toy finds a new niche beyond the tube

A couple of years ago, Bob Thompson, manager of character and story development for London, England-based Create TV & Film, watched as two seven-year-old boys sat in the lobby of Lego's U.K. headquarters playing with what was then the company's three-month-old Bionicle line of construction toys. When one boy corrected the other about the gender of one of the brand's six original characters - a fact that was pretty arcane at the time - Thompson couldn't help but relish the moment. 'It proved the story was not just accessible, compelling and multi-layered, but it was penetrating, and best of all, it had playground currency,' he says. 'I knew then that we'd made the jump.'