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Lego toys, especially the robot-like Bionicles, are a hot toy among kids.

"Mostly boys," said Kara Fichter, manager of Out of the Blue, Ltd., a toy shop at 2502 Rio Grande Blvd. N.W. "A few girls, but mostly boys."

The store believes it's ready to keep up with demand for the popular Lego items, Fichter said. But that might not be the case for other retailers as the holiday shopping season kicks in.

Lego, the Danish toy-maker, is having a hard time keeping up with demand for its popular plastic building blocks as toy stores stack their inventories for the Christmas season, company officials said today.

"Many of our most popular products are sold out," Lego spokeswoman Charlotte Simonsen said. "As part of efforts to restructure the company and focus on our core business, we had to make some cuts and the company has not had time to readjust its production."

Simonsen declined to say how many orders had been turned down, but said the restructuring changes had affected the production of Duplo bricks and boxes with Lego City, Star Wars and Lego Technik sets.

The Billund, Denmark-based group has been trimming its staff at home and abroad since starting a restructuring program four years ago. Part of its production and distribution has been moved to countries with lower wages than Denmark, including the Czech Republic and Mexico.

In 2005, Lego sold its four Legoland amusement parks in Denmark, Britain, California and Germany to the U.S.-based private-equity group Blackstone Capital Partners.

Boersen, Denmark's leading financial newspaper, estimated that Lego could lose 750 million kroner ($127 million) because of lost Christmas sales. But Mads Nipper, a vice president at Lego in charge of marketing, said that figure was too high.

"We don't know what the Christmas sales will be like until Christmas is over," Nipper said.

Fichter, from Albuquerque's Out of the Blue store, said she stocks "quite a good selection" of Lego products.

"We're just a little local store," she said. "So we're hoping we have enough for the holidays."