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LEGO Says Smart Brick Won't Replace Traditional Play After CES Backlash (ign.com) 30

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
LEGO has responded to concerns that its newly announced Smart Brick technology represents a departure from the company's foundation in physical, non-digital play, a day after the official reveal at CES drew criticism from child development advocates. Federico Begher, SVP of Product, New Business, told IGN the sensor-packed bricks are "an addition, a complementary evolution" and emphasized that the company would "still very much nurture and innovate and keep doing our core experience."

A BBC News report on the CES announcement noted "unease" among "play experts" at the unveiling. Josh Golin, executive director of children's wellbeing group Fairplay, said he believed Smart Bricks could "undermine what was once great about Lego" and curtail imagination during play. Begher compared the rollout to the Minifigure's gradual introduction decades ago. The Smart Brick launches in March in Star Wars sets including an X-Wing that produces engine sounds based on movement. The technology is screen-free and physical, Begher said, drawing on learnings from previous projects like Super Mario figures where "some of the levels were very prescriptive."
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LEGO Says Smart Brick Won't Replace Traditional Play After CES Backlash More

LEGO Says Smart Brick Won't Replace Traditional Play After CES Backlash

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  • Lack of imagination (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SouthSeb ( 8814349 ) on Thursday January 08, 2026 @10:17AM (#65910179)

    The "play experts" fear it will "curtail imagination".

    I call it bullshit! That only goes to show their own lack of imagination.

    Introducing lights and sounds to the bricks is positively a very nice way to expand imagination. Actually, when I was a child, I did frequently add batteries, tiny lamps and slot cars engines to my Lego creations.

    • Re:Lack of imagination (Score:5, Insightful)

      by samdu ( 114873 ) <samdu&ronintech,com> on Thursday January 08, 2026 @10:25AM (#65910197) Homepage

      While I agree that this is really no big deal, without reading the article, I can imagine there might be some concern that having everything built in would remove the exact thing you mentioned. If the lights and sounds were already there, would you have ever explored the process of adding them yourself? Strangely, I was just thinking about Lego the other day and was thinking back to when I was a kid and there were no kits. You got a box of bricks and that was it. If you wanted to build a spaceship, you had to imagine what it looked like and then went about figuring out how to get from a box of rectangular bricks to something that resembled the ship you imagined. I think the kits have probably curtailed creativity in some capacity.

      • Re:Lack of imagination (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Buchenskjoll ( 762354 ) on Thursday January 08, 2026 @10:36AM (#65910227)
        How old are you? I'm 60 and there were definitely kits when I was a kid. Still the fun thing was to build your own creations.

      • Re:Lack of imagination (Score:5, Interesting)

        by SouthSeb ( 8814349 ) on Thursday January 08, 2026 @10:42AM (#65910241)

        If the lights and sounds were already there, would you have ever explored the process of adding them yourself?

        I still would argue that, yes, I would. Only this time I'd do it using the sensors and special bricks provided. I think it's also worth noting that these add-ons Lego is creating are expensive and will come only with certain kits, mostly created for adult audiences.

        I think the kits have probably curtailed creativity in some capacity.

        Well, here goes my personal, completely anedoctal experience:

        The kits were created during my childhood (so I have some pre-kits ones). With the kits, I would usually open the box, build it according to instructions, play a bit and then completely dismantle it and store with all the other ones. Then I spent most of my days building new stuff with it. No hinder in creativity in there.

        Nowadays, I still have all my Legos, and two small godchildren (4 and 6 yo). They love it and eagerly ask to come visit and play with it every weekend. Last Christmas, I bought a new kit to each one of them. And what did they do as soon as we opened it? They completely dismissed the kits, mixed all the bricks and started to build every type of crazy stuff.

        This makes me think the experts may be somehow underestimating kids imagination.

        • This makes me think the experts may be somehow underestimating kids imagination.

          Literally no expert has done that. The kits aren't there to stop any imagination, but the reality is not everyone has the same amount. Kits definitely help some people, and don't help others. It simply made LEGO more accessible. Also the kits provide some guidance on how to build things. All things. Making something the "intended way" is a good stepping stone to understanding how different parts can fit together better in another way.

          Funny enough the Lego Bricktales VR game does the same thing. The first ti

      • Re:Lack of imagination (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Shades72 ( 6355170 ) on Thursday January 08, 2026 @10:54AM (#65910273)

        Machine washing powder used to be sold in big cylinder-shaped cardboard container (20 to 25 kilos I think) about as high as my 5 years self. I had 3 of those containers, all filled to the brim with nondescript Lego bricks in different colors and sizes when I was a kid in the 70s. I recognize the sentiment about having to build anything and everything first before you could get creative in building whatever you thought up.

        And I agree that creativity became more stifled in 80s Lego that used pre-shaped bricks in their kits. Still, one could combine the old and new and still have creative fun. 90s Lego I saw, but never played or used, as I was not a kid anymore and Lego had the stigma of being a toy for little children in the country I grew up in.

        Yes, I think that having access to Lego from all these eras would still ignite more creativity in children today, who are only exposed to Lego from the 10s and 20s eras today.

        But I'm also impressed with Lego robotics, technical Lego and such. This new brick type seems to be a proper extension of that type of Lego.

        • Yeah, I remember knowing kids in the 60's that had huge bins full of Lego that would cost thousands of dollars today. Was it fun to play at their house? Absolutely!
      • I might not be that old, but in the late eighties we already got Lego kits with electric lights (only you had to attach them to a battery compartment) - I can't imagine that it killed my imagination back them.

    • Sounds like a part of psychology that the F grade students would go into.

  • But (Score:5, Funny)

    by tsqr ( 808554 ) on Thursday January 08, 2026 @10:18AM (#65910181)
    Will they run Linux?

  • obviously not a replacement for classic bricks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by matthewcharles2006 ( 960827 ) on Thursday January 08, 2026 @10:22AM (#65910189)
    Why do people have to be like this? Lego's core product is brilliant and popular and not going anywhere. This is OBVIOUSLY not a replacement for that. Its an adjacent, compatible product line that some subset of people could get a lot out of. The creative potential once you get away from the branded kits is really high. This feels like people that are mad about rising Lego costs latching onto a mostly unrelated new product as a vessel to express their frustration.

    • Re:obviously not a replacement for classic bricks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Junta ( 36770 ) on Thursday January 08, 2026 @10:34AM (#65910225)

      You forget when they famously released Lego Technic with electric motors and immediately and forever stopped making traditional bricks.... oh wait...

    • Why do people have to be like this? Lego's core product is brilliant and popular and not going anywhere. This is OBVIOUSLY not a replacement for that. Its an adjacent, compatible product line that some subset of people could get a lot out of. The creative potential once you get away from the branded kits is really high. This feels like people that are mad about rising Lego costs latching onto a mostly unrelated new product as a vessel to express their frustration.

      On the one hand, I get the backlash from the simple perspective of, "Everything tech seems to be turning to garbage, why are they adding garbage to Lego." But from a Lego fan perspective, I can't see it as a bad thing. They've had electronics in various playsets for decades now, and it hasn't taken away from the core Lego experience of building and working with your own imagination.

  • You say that these "smart bricks" aren't interactive enough, but you don't understand their design considerations. They're treading a very fine line here. If you make things too configurable, people will immediately start making Lego, er, companion robots. And the Lego marketing department doesn't want to have to deal with the headlines from all the stud-friction injuries.
  • Companies that sit on their heels, even if they have this kind of following, they are destined to fail. As long as they still make what would now be called old school lego stuff, why worry? +1 to the first person who gets doom to run on a brick.

  • The manbabies are babying. More at 11.

  • I had "smart bricks" 55 years ago. Magnetic cubes with schematic symbols on them, so that by laying out a schematic with the cubes, you actually created the circuit. My dad was an electronics technician, he wanted me to learning electronics. I also had heathkit electronics kits that allowed the creation of circuits by inserting physical wires in spring terminals. The relay was the most fun thing to play with; if you wire it to turn itself off, it oscillates and the coil builds up enough charge to make quite

  • When I was young, there were limited bricks, but the sky was the limit in what you could do with them.

    These days I see more and more boxes with bricks in them which can only be used in one particular way.

    Now this. They're milking a very good product and making it terrible.

    LEGO used to be about creativity; about building whatever pops in your mind. Now, more and more sets can only be used to build exactly one thing... maybe two or three.

  • what would you prefer? That a kid sits in front of a screen or handed a cellphone to play with? Or smartbricks? These people need to calm down and pick their battles and stick to calling out screens.

  • LEGO missed a great troll here (Score:4, Funny)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday January 08, 2026 @12:50PM (#65910611)

    They should release a LEGO Technic set that allows you to build a life size articulated foot and leg, they invite all these people to jump online to download some code for the LEGO NXT Mindstorm controller which then turns around and kicks these idiots in the balls for complaining.

    Hey CES Morons: You don't need to use the smart brick. Stop bitching publicly about something completely optional for you.

    Or better yet make it mandatory. Release a special LEGO kit for CES viewers which comes with a guarantee that a LEGO rep will hold a gun to the head of the person building forcing them to use the brick. That'll show them.

  • Minecraft is a digital copy of Lego (with the idea probably stolen from Douglas Coupland's book "Generation-X") - and with a limited variation of "bricks". imho Lego should go the other way and introduce some redstone logic.

  • Who ever the fuck has an issue w/ Lego having electronics products isnt a Lego fan at all.

    TLDR: FUCKING MINDSTORM EXISTS

    • TLDR: FUCKING MINDSTORM EXISTS

      This.
      And I think Lego was very thoughtful and respectful to their legacy on these SmartBricks.
      Any other company would have shoved some sort of IoT/Cloud/Smart/AI bullcrap on it.

  • 30 years ago, we worked with these through the MIT media lab but as stringable baubles.
    Almost forgot about them until seeing the story a few days ago.
    Very little chance they will somehow put the brakes on traditional LEGO.
    Having worked with every generation of mindstorms, I was skeptical about spike PRIME.
    Was worried it might be too simple and not enough expansion.
    After seeing this yearâs FLL season, I had nothing to worry about.

  • And it did not kill creativity or play.

    https://bricksfanz.com/a-look-... [bricksfanz.com]

    I had the helicopter and it was a interesting system how they did it with special brick parts that could act as "wires".

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