Loveable rogues
Popular mythology has long since glossed over the brothers' brutal legacy of protection rackets and murder, instead elevating them to the status of loveable rogues.
Fraser
Frankie Fraser: 'Everyone loved the Krays'
After all, goes the argument, the Krays only ever harmed their own.
In recent years, Reggie Kray became the poster boy of "laddism", writing columns for lad mag Front and penning lyrics for the aptly-named US band, Fun Lovin' Criminals.
"Everyone in the East End loved the Krays," former associate, "Mad" Frankie Fraser, said.
"No woman got mugged, and no children were tampered with."
Fraser, himself a convicted criminal with a penchant for torture, cashed in on the appetite for gangster chic, running a tour which retraces the Krays' steps for camera-toting globetrotters on the scent of decades-old blood.
Among the stops is the Blind Beggar, the Bethnal Green pub where Ronnie Kray shot gangland rival George Cornell for allegedly calling him a "fat poof".
When the celluloid biography The Krays hit the silver screen in 1990, British gangster flicks were few and far between.
Guy Ritchie with Brad Pitt, star of his his latest feature
Guy Ritchie and Brad Pitt: Wannabe geezers
Yet that all changed in the late 90s, due in large part to writer-director Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, in which four likely lads take on the hard men of the East End.