LEGO SMART Play is the latest innovation from the LEGO Group – what is Blocks Editor Graham E. Hancock’s hot take?
Today I have been at the LEGO Group’s London event to see the new LEGO SMART Play products that were announced at CES in Las Vegas. As with anything new from the LEGO Group, fans will have strong opinions – and having seen the products, heard from spokespeople and thought about how this new offering fits into the existing LEGO ecosystem, I have initial thoughts to share.
LEGO Smart Play is bringing interactivity to the classic System, through a core brick that you use in combination with tags and minifigures. It launches in three new Star Wars sets – 75421 Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter, 75423 Luke’s Red Five X-wing and 75427 Throne Room Duel & A-wing.
The first thing to state is that this concept is a fun one – SMART tags (tiles) and bricks interact with the SMART brick, causing it to react in a certain way. It is great fun to hear Imperial March play when you seat the Emperor on his throne or R2-D2 scream when the X-wing flies upside down.
I immediately thought of how children age up more quickly than ever before – research has found that children play with physical toys for less time than ever, which is demonstrated by the success of collectibles like Labubu. Before they reach teenage years, children are collecting toys for their shelves rather than thinking of them as playthings.
By having such a straightforward interactive element, the SMART Brick might encourage children to pick up a set from the shelf to swoosh it and have it react to the action. That’s obviously not going to be the end of the play session though and will hopefully lead to a decent chunk of time spent engaging imaginatively with their X-wing or TIE Fighter. I suspect the LEGO Group have this in mind with SMART Play.
Learn about how tech-infused LEGO bricks have been decades in the making! Issue 135 of Blocks, the monthly LEGO magazine, deep dives into the long quest for interactive elements.
Adult fans of course will not find the most realistic renderings of these starfighters within the SMART Play range – and this will surely lead to many complaints. But there have been many decent models of these ships that are super accurate and work for display as well as play – these more durable sets offer something different.
What they offer is fun, but they are not the most sophisticated electronic toy on the market. What is notable though is that the LEGO Group is referring to the SMART Play System, which suggests that this is just the beginning. In the demos that the experience designers shared with us, they showcased the many different things that these bricks can do, the things that underpin the experience in these initial Star Wars sets.
Getting the tech into these tiny spaces was no easy task – but what the sets offer are sound effects, lights and simple games. I suspect that the LEGO Group has much more planned for the future. That System name and the platform development that has been going on for a decade indicate that this will grow and expand going forward, just as the LEGO System in Play has.
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The real advantage to these SMART Play products is that they don’t require screens – children can use these tech infused toys without a smart device (except to update the firmware). This is a big improvement on something like LEGO Dimensions, which had you playing through a video game then building every now and again. These sets are consistently tactile, just as any other LEGO set is.
My gut recommendation for these initial models is that if you want something fun and different in your LEGO Star Wars collecton, pick them up. They won’t be a good alternative for an Ultimate Collector Series model, but they are something new for the theme – and if you have been collecting for a decade or more that is very welcome.
If you don’t feel they do enough though, then sit tight and wait to see how SMART Play develops – the time and care that the LEGO Group’s Creative Play Lab has put into this suggests that it will be sticking around. You may not be wowed by these first steps, but there is more to come and knowing the ambitions of the creatives in Billund, it will be much more than light and sound reactions.
Some people find the price off-putting and that is fair – after all, the tech is undoubtedly making these sets more expensive than they would otherwise be. I have a strong suspicion though that future sets will not always include SMART Bricks and chargers, instead just tags and/or minifigures, which should bring the prices down. One of the clever things about this initative is that all SMART Bricks are identical.
These words, as you can probably tell, are my raw reactions. In upcoming issues of Blocks, the premium monthly LEGO magazine, you will be able to read more reaction from myself and the team, reviews of the new sets plus exclusive interviews with the LEGO SMART Play team to learn more about what went into its creation.
To summarise my initial take though; this is interesting and worth watching. It will not set the adult fan community on fire initially, but there is great potential in what the LEGO Group has kicked off here.
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