Creator of LEGO figure dead at 78

Jens Nygaard Knudsen, who designed the iconic Lego minifigure with interchangeable legs and torsos, has died while in hospice care from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), his former colleague said Saturday.

The 78-year old former designer passed away on Wednesday at a hospice centre where he had stayed for a week, according to Lego designer Niels Milan Pedersen, a former colleague for Nygaard Knudsen.

"His imagination was so fantastic. If we had a brainstorm it was more like a brain hurricane, because he had so many ideas,"Milan Pedersen told AFP.

Nygaard Knudsen, who died at the Anker Fjord Hospice outside the small town of Hvide Sande on the Danish west coast, was a designer at the Danish toy brick maker from 1968 to 2000.

He worked with developing the now legendary minifigure with movable arms and legs in the 1970s, before it was first released in 1978.

According to Lego, it was decided when the figure was created that it - besides having a yellow face with a neutral happy expression - would have no sex or race as these would be "determined by the child's imagination and play."