Lego's New Smart Play
Hi Lego fans. First of all, Happy New Year! 2025 was great, and I’m looking forward to an even better 2026.
Let’s talk about Lego’s latest release Smart Play. Advertised as the Lego Smart Play system that brings interactive play to life in extraordinary ways with Smart Tags, Smart minifigures, and Smart bricks. Each of these elements reacts to how you move, play, twist and turn Lego sets to allow you to create your own adventures.
When I heard rumors of the Smart brick prior to the official Lego release I thought “Cool! A new way to play with Lego.” But, I also thought, how will this work exactly? The positive thoughts in my head went to stop-motion animation, awesome sound effects, and Lego minifigures talking to one another. The negative side was more geared towards how much will this cost, it has to be limited in terms of what it can do and what Lego builders can do with it, and this may fail.
There does seem to be some interesting features of the Smart brick like responsive sounds when moving a build it is attached to and a light that activates when certain bricks are recognized. But, the downside seems to be that the brick takes up a lot of space in a build, and you need a Smart tag to tell the Smart brick how to respond. To be completely honest, the Smart Brick seems very underwhelming.
My main gripe against Smart Play needs context. When I played with Lego as a kid I provided all of the sound effects, dialogue, actions and reactions through my own imagination. I didn’t need a smart brick for me to have minifigures have a conversation, or make my spaceships swoosh-able, or visualize my police car’s red and blue lights as Pepper Roni helped chase the Brickster. Although I haven’t had any hands on experience with the Smart brick, I feel like it takes away a lot of that imaginative play from kids instead of inspiring it like Lego says.
Additional quick thoughts on Smart Play:
I may be the only one who has the opinion that Smart Play is not all that interesting to Lego fans. I certainly hope that parents or grandparents do not buy those Star Wars sets at those prices. I do hope that Lego makes some changes to Smart Play starting with throwing it away - just kidding. If they open the themes up to Creator or City that would be a great start, then allow the Smart brick and tag to be purchased separately, and of course bring the price down. Even if all of these things happen, I probably won’t buy into the Smart Play sets or system (Although, I would pick it up at a flea market/ swap meet or second hand at a discounted price just to see what it does in person).
If you think differently and like the Smart Play system, the brick and tag, or any of these sets then let me know in the comments below. I’m always open to talking to Lego fans! Thanks for reading y’all!
If these sets interest you, they are available for pre-order at Lego.com.