If you're looking for top toys for 4 year old boys, there are lots of ideas below. They are based on toys that my son who has just turned four in February 2011 currently likes. They include presents that he received for his birthday and the toys that he loves to play with most.  Ideas include outdoor toys, construction toys, imaginative toys, educational toys, cars, trucks and games. 
Read on for lots of ideas of the best toys for 4 year old boys. 

Lego is a great construction toy for 4 year old boys. There are lots of lego sets that 4 year old boys will love including cars and pirates (featured below). My son has a big tub of lego and he will spend over an hour building things normally cars and space rockets. It's great to get out when you need to keep him occupied. For more options on lego see my page on lego for 4 year olds.  His Dad and Grandad have great fun playing with it too. Another great idea is a marble run. Build different marble runs and then have run, running marbles down them. 

My 4 year old loves taking pictures and one of the presents he got for Christmas (2010) from his grandparents was the blue Vtech Kidizoom Camera below. He loved to take photos with it. Its great fun to use and really creative. You can take funny pictures and  make people different creatures or look like they're wearing different props like hats.   It also has simple games that he loves to play and keep him occupied for a while. There's even a Buzz Lightyear version of the Vtech camera for boys who love Toy Story themed toys. 

Vtech also make a kidizoom video camera. This is the toy my 4 year old boy is getting for Christmas from his grandparents for 2011. (He has now broken his Vtech camera which he loved after dropping it in water - be warned they aren't completely indestructable!!) At the moment you can get £20 of the Vtech Kidizoom video camera at amazon. 

4 years old is a nice age to get a boy their first bike with stabilizers so that they can learn to pedal first. Here are a couple of examples below.  Also scooters make nice gifts for 4 year old boys. The Iscoot was a scooter used by one of my friends for her 4 year old son and she liked it so much she bought one for her other son too.  If you want a 2 wheel scooter my son received a lightening strike scooter for his 4th birthday. We were recommended it by a friend. Its excellent value and he loves the flashing lights. He used to have a 3 wheeled scooter before the Lightening Strike scooter but he finds the 2 wheel scooter really easy to use. 

4 year old boys are now old enough to play simple board games and they will love playing family games. Here are some good options below. Orchard Toys do some excellent games for 4 year olds. Check out the reviews on amazon.co.uk - they're really good. My son loves Orchard toys greedy gorilla game. Its a simple board game which teaches about healthy eating and the kids love it when the gorilla burps if you put a card with junk food in him.
There are also some great classic board games like Hungry Hippos, Connect 4 (best for older 4 year olds) and snakes and ladders which are lots of fun for young children. 

 Click here for more ideas of board games. 

My son loves lego so much we thought we would try out some more great construction toys. For his 4th birthday we bought him some Knex kids. You can use it to make little creatures. He loves creating creatures and then playing with it afterwards. I've researched some other great construction toys too. I have recently bought the galt connecta straws for my 4 year old son and these have been an excellent buy. We started building simple shapes, then flowers, windmills, houses, robots, animals and more. They are extremely good value for money.  There are also a couple more construction toy ideas for you to consider. 
Kid K'nex was another favourite construction toy that my son received for his 4th birthday. He would spend ages building different creatures and monsters and playing with them afterwards. There are currently quite a lot of  1/2 price Kid K'nex sets at Toys R US

There are lots of great educational toys for 4 year old boys. Jigsaws and toys which teach letters and writing are good choices. The Leapfrog Scribble and Write is a good choice for introducing writing, shapes, letters and improving fine motor skills. You can begin by tracing shapes and then move onto big and small letters. The shape or letter to trace lights up on the screen. Other ideas include jigsaw puzzles and a first laptop. Melissa and Doug see and spell is another good choice. You complete simple puzzles to spell words. Great for letter recognition and learning simple spelling. Excellent reviews too.

Another great educational toy that we are getting for my 4 year old son this Christmas is the Vtech Disney Cars 2 Lightning Mcqueen Atlas Educational Toy. It has six educational activities and will help kids learn basic geography, including countries, continents, oceans, capital cities, plus basic foreign language phrases and more. Also the leapfrog word builder is a magnet you can put on the fridge and helps with phonics and basic spelling. 

4 year old boys imagination is on fire, so any toys that facilitate imaginative play are really good gift ideas. Dressing up clothes, tool kits, medical kits, puppets and puppet show theatres all make good ideas. My son received the Casdon post office for his birthday which is good for role play. The items that come with the post office are small but there are forms to fill in, cards to put in envelopes,stamps and a post box to post letters which has really kept my son occupied. I am going to supplement it with some 1p stamps from the royal mail. 

4 year old boys still love playing with cars, trucks and vehicles. Some good gift ideas include remote control cars.  A really good choice is the UKyed Turbo Twister radio control car. It has flashing lights, twists and turns, flips and spins. My 4 year old also received a matchbox pop up playset for his birthday which has been a great hit so far. He loves pulling out the parts and driving his car around. You can fold it all away so its a great portable toy too. 

Here are a few more great toy ideas for 4 year old boys. Ideas include a stomp rocket, which kids love. Stomp on the pad at the bottom of the stomp rocket and see how high you can shoot it in the air. Uncle Milton Moon in my room is a illuminated moon to hang in a 4 year olds bedroom. Mhy son is really interested in space and loves glow in the dark things so would love this. There are twelve different phase settings let you match what the real moon looks like outside. It also comes with an educational CD about the moon. 

A trampoline is a big gift, but in my opinon well worth the money. It was my son's main 4th birthday present and will most likely last for years. He bounces on it most days. It's also great when is friends or other children come to visit. Our trampoline is 8 foot which is big enough for us. For smaller gardens 6 foot trampolines are available and for larger gardens, a 10 ft trampoline like the one below could be a good choice. 
Playmobil is another good choice for imaginative play. Known for it's excellent quality and detail too. 

My son loves making drawing, gluing, painting and making things at the moment. He received the Mr Maker arts and crafts set for Christmas 2010 and had so much fun with it. It comes with toys you can make with the contents. However, I just laid out all the craft items on the table and let him make what he wanted which seemed to work better for him and me. 
We also have an easel which we have had for a while. It's great for painting, chalking and drawing. I tend to use it in the Summer when I put it outside and he can make a big mess in the garden and it doesn't matter. 

The Tomy Colour Doodle is another great toy. You can doodle in color and then wipe away what you've drawn. No need for pens, paints or lots of mess. Great for travel and practising drawing shapes, numbers and letters. 
Sticky Mosaics is a perfect art activity - no mess, improves concentration skills and boys have a nice picture to hang on their wall after its completed. 
Melissa and Doug make a great range of decorate your own craft kits. The one featured below features a treasure chest which you paint and cover with glitter glue and colourful stickers. A good rainy afternoon craft activity. 

If you're looking for stocking filler ideas for a 4 year old boy, here are a few suggestions based on what I'm putting in my 4 year old boy's stocking this Christmas. 
I'm putting in a small Lightning Mcqueen lego toy for him to build. He loves the Mr Men so I'm putting in a pack of Mr Men cards. You can use these to play pairs, snap, happy families etc. There are lots of cards like this, so you could choose a theme with whatever your little one likes (Octonauts, Toy Story, Cars etc). 
Crayons, pencils and pens are good stocking fillers for my 4 year old. He loves drawing and colouring so I know they'll be used. 
The glow in the dark stars would also make a good stocking filler. My 4 year old already has these and stuck them on his ceiling but they would make a nice stocking gift if he didn't have them. 

There are lots more toy ideas to keep children occupied throughout the site. Save money (up to 50%) when buying toy by checking out some top toy offers for December 2011. There are also suggestions and advice on buying jigsaw puzzles, outdoor toys and books too.