LEGO Smart Brick review: It’s great fun, but who is it for?

The LEGO Smart Brick certainly made waves when it was first announced, the internet set ablaze with intrigue at the prospect of an all-singing, all-dancing LEGO brick that could bring your play time to life.

I'll admit – when I saw our LEGO Smart Brick preview come in from the CES conference, I was filled with jealousy that I hadn't been there myself to be among the first people to try it. The hype was real.

However, now that I’ve played with the LEGO Smart Brick Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing kit in the comfort of my home, turning it from a box full of bricks to a fully functioning toy set, I have found myself with a question: who is this range of toys actually for?

• Shop the whole range of LEGO Smart Brick sets

When I was at the London Toy Fair earlier in the year, I learned that there are a few different types of people that interact with toys. Kids who actually play with toys are an obvious cohort, and there’s also an increasing number of ‘kidults’ who are perhaps more likely to buy a toy in order to display it as part of their collection.

As a 30-something without children of my own, I fall firmly into the ‘kidult’ camp. Over the last few months, I’ve filled a shelf with two nostalgic little LEGO sets: the Nintendo Game Boy kit and the mini Millennium Falcon. Both were fun to build, and it brings me joy to look at them from my sofa while watching TV of an evening.

As a kidult, I don’t particularly need a LEGO set to make noises or flash with lights. Once I’ve made a LEGO set and found a place for it, I could go for months without touching it at all (save for a gentle dusting, or showing it off to an equally nerdy house guest).

But I can’t help but wonder, do young kids actually need this either? When you have the powerful enough imagination of a child, do you need sound effects or lighting effects to make your play more interesting? Or are you already making all your own noises, and inventing your own stories without the need of prompts?

Putting that question aside for a moment, I can’t deny that the X-Wing set was a fun build. With its 581 pieces delivered across eight bags, I completed it in two short sittings over the course of a single weekend (the Millennium Falcon, however, took me a number of weeks to find the time and complete it).

As I completed each individual part of the set (the refuelling and repair vehicle, the Imperial gun turret, and the X-Wing itself), there was a frisson of excitement to be had when I played with the Smart elements for the first time.

Hearing the ‘pew pew’ of blaster fire at the press of a button brought my inner kid back to life for a moment, while the snippet of movie music that accompanies the Luke minifigure certainly scratched a nostalgic itch. And there are fun little Easter eggs, like R2-D2 screaming if you hold the X-Wing upside down with him in it, which will bring a smile to even the most hardened cynic.

I was also pleased to discover that the Smart elements haven’t been added at the expense of physical features. The X-Wing and the turret can both fire little pellets at great speed, as well as having in-built buttons that allow you to play the sound effects as many times as you like (even if you lose the pellets, which will inevitably happen in a busy household!).

As I finished the set, I ran to the other room to show the Smart features to my wife. Check out this sound effect! See what R2-D2 does! Pew pew pew! I felt the urge to text some nerdy friends to point out the clever details, too. (For example, there are different sound effects for repairing and refuelling, which will play if you put the right colour-coded item next to the Smart Brick).

Next time a Star Wars fan friend visits our place, I’ll be sure to make sure the Smart Brick is charged up so I can show them all the fun things it can do. But until that day comes, the X-Wing will sit on the shelf with my less Smart, kidult-appropriate LEGO sets. And to be fair, it does look the part, holding its own visually next to sets that didn’t have to make all that space for Smart features.

Equally, next time my nephews and nieces come to visit, I’ll have to see how they get on with the Smart Brick. Will they interact with its features for more than a few moments, or will they default to making their own sound effects and making their own stories like they’ve always done? I’ll be very interested to see.

At the London Toy Fair, I was also shown how the different Smart Brick Star Wars sets interact with each other. If you have a TIE Fighter and an X-Wing, and make them pew pew at each other, you will hear extra sound effects as they digitally ‘explode’. But again, once you’ve done that a couple of times, will the novelty wear off?

For now, then, I can’t deny that I had good fun building the LEGO Smart Brick: Luke’s Red Five X-Wing set. I do question who it’s for, and whether its bells and whistles will get much play after the initial excitement wears off.

But, all of that said, it does look nice on this kidult’s shelf, and it brought me some joy in the process of building it. And what more can I ask for, really?

Shop the whole range of LEGO Smart Brick sets

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