It may be time to retire that hyperspace zoom noise you perfected while playing with Lego spacecraft. No longer must you “pshww-pshww” to convince your playmate their enemy space station has been doomed by your lasers. “Smart” bricks, with play-sensitive miniature speakers, are being added to the arsenal of the Lego enthusiast in a move the Danish toy giant believes will combine creative play with technology without the need for a screen.
The smart bricks – in the shape of a normal two-by-four Lego brick – are being launched in three Star Wars-themed sets and are powered by a custom-made chip smaller than a single Lego stud. When installed in Luke Skywalker’s X-wing fighter, they make the required “woosh” noises, depending on how the player twists and turns the craft through the air. The hard-to-impersonate bleeps and blips of the droid R2D2 are also replicated.
If a second smart brick is installed in Darth Vader’s TIE fighter, then when the Imperial starship engages the Rebel Alliance craft in a dogfight, each will make sounds to signal if they have been hit by the other’s lasers.
The smart bricks communicate with each other and will even decide whether enough accurate laser blasts have been delivered to achieve destruction. The smart bricks also emit light and play music. At a demonstration of the new toys, a Lego executive explained that, when playing with Darth Vader’s craft, “once in a while you get The Imperial March, just to get the vibe going”.
Such fun comes at a price. Skywalker’s X-wing – with smart Luke mini-figure – will retail at £79.99, while Vader’s TIE fighter comes in at £59.99. Some play experts have wondered if such technological advances risk undermining the historic strength of Lego, which has always served to harness a child’s own imagination.
“I can go ‘swoosh’ and ‘pew-pew’ too,” commented one user on Reddit. “Unimpressed”.
Another wrote: “If this is a ‘smart’ brick, does that [mean] all the other bricks are ‘stupid’ bricks”?
Another fan was more enthusiastic, however, wondering when a Lego Titanic – complete with a smart brick playing Céline Dion’s My Heart Will Go On – might hit the market.
The Danish toy giant, which has been producing the bricks for 70 years, launched the new technology at the CES consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. The move comes against a backdrop of rising engagement by children with screen-based games. Roblox, the user-generated gaming platform, has approximately 150 million daily users.
Tom Donaldson, senior vice president at the Lego Group, claimed the new smart brick system “brings creativity, technology and storytelling together to make building worlds and stories even more engaging, and all without a screen”.
