LEGO is moving its products into a new era with the LEGO SMART Play system. The pitch of this line is to innovate what a LEGO building kit can do, with The LEGO Group comparing SMART Play to the invention of the LEGO minifigure.
To demonstrate these kits, LEGO is traveling the country with the LEGO Star Wars SMART Play Experience. Through these experiences, families are able to choose between the Light Side and the Dark Side and get a tailored demonstration of related kits.
I paid a visit to the experience’s stop in West Jordan, Utah, to try out SMART Play in person and see these new LEGO kits in action.
LEGO SMART Play is screenless tech for a tech-obsessed generation.
Despite what the name implies, LEGO Star Wars SMART Play isn’t some kind of AI nonsense or an app. In fact, the concept is very simple. Combining a 2×4 LEGO brick with a synthesizer, LED lights, and a battery, the SMART brick plays sounds and flashes lights triggered when placed on top of specially marked tile pieces. These effects can be lightsaber clashes, blaster fire, or even a musical selection from the Mos Eisley Cantina band.
The design of SMART Play is more in line with electronic toys like the classic Furby. Those toys are meant to be played with, even with the technological innovations they leverage. Going through the SMART Play experience, “play” quickly stands out as the operative word.
Throughout the demo, a LEGO representative in either Jedi robes or an Imperial uniform encourages participants to actually play with the kits. At one point during our session, the X-Wing kit broke, only for the rep to assure us that “we break them and then we put them back together.”
LEGO SMART Play is a toy, not a collector’s item.
That mentality highlights the spirit of LEGO Star Wars SMART Play: that LEGOs are toys. They are a child’s plaything, and it’s clear LEGO hopes to ignite playful energy in kids with the SMART brick. With this in mind, the critiques from adult collectors may miss the point.
These functions aren’t for those of us building adult collector sets and putting them on display. In a time when concerns about the effects of video games and iPads or other tablets on children are high on parents’ minds, an offline interactive toy is at least an alternative way for kids to play.
These kits are not cheap, though. Potential buyers need at least one of LEGO’s all-in-one kits to even get a SMART brick, at a minimum of $80. Compatible kits that have tiles to unlock new sound effects and light patterns can cost as much as $100. In browsing all the kits on display, they are chunkier than other builds, surely to make rebuilding easier. This means they’re not nearly as complex as their price per LEGO brick would suggest.
While it’s easy to buy into the pitch during the experience, exiting into these displays with high prices makes the value proposition much more difficult to accept. With all the sticker shock, the scale build of C- 3PO in the center quickly became the most impressive thing in the room.
Is LEGO SMART Play really the future?
However, the LEGO SMART Play kits aren’t meant for adult collectors. These are for children to play with. Compared with smart devices and app microtransactions, one or two LEGO SMART Play kits may even be a steal. The real question is whether or not a brick making sounds is enough to enhance the experience of playing with LEGO.
It’s not too difficult to imagine a kid just making similar sounds with their mouth, though, when playing with less expensive LEGO kits. They may be more inclined to take apart the kits and try to make something new, but that will require easier access to more SMART bricks and tiles than is currently available.
Live events like the LEGO Star Wars SMART Play Experience do help make the sales pitch for this product. But this is only one step in an uphill battle to sell fans on SMART Play being LEGO’s future, for the Star Wars line or otherwise.
LEGO Star Wars SMART Play kits are available now from LEGO and major retailers.