# What is the most iconic toy of all time?

> Some were engineered, some were accidents, and one was named after a president who refused to shoot a bear.

*By YPB Team · Published August 12, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-most-iconic-toy-of-all-time*

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## Current results (0 votes)

1. **Teddy bear**
   Named after Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1902 refused to shoot a bear that had been tied up for him.
2. **LEGO brick**
   The interlocking plastic brick patented in 1958 and still compatible with every set since.
3. **Barbie**
   Mattel's fashion doll, launched in 1959 and redesigned for every decade since.
4. **Rubik's Cube**
   The Hungarian architecture professor's puzzle that sold hundreds of millions and spawned a speed-solving sport.
5. **Slinky**
   A coiled spring that walks down stairs, invented by accident in a naval engineering lab in 1943.
6. **Hot Wheels**
   Mattel's die-cast cars with the orange track, launched in 1968 and collected by adults ever since.
7. **Yo-yo**
   One of the oldest toys in the world, revived as a craze in America in the late 1920s.
8. **Play-Doh**
   A wallpaper cleaner repurposed as modelling compound in the 1950s, and still sold by the tub.
9. **Etch A Sketch**
   The red-framed drawing screen with two knobs, launched in 1960 and erased by shaking.
10. **Rocking horse**
   The wooden nursery toy that predates the whole modern toy industry by centuries.
11. **Game Boy**
   Nintendo's 1989 handheld, the toy that put a games console in a coat pocket.
12. **Model train set**
   The tabletop railway that turned a hobby into a lifelong obsession for whole households.

Tags: brands, classics, toys