{"id":109512,"date":"2026-01-07T15:59:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T15:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2026\/01\/07\/lego-unveils-tech-filled-smart-bricks\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T16:00:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T16:00:19","slug":"lego-unveils-tech-filled-smart-bricks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2026\/01\/07\/lego-unveils-tech-filled-smart-bricks\/","title":{"rendered":"Lego unveils tech-filled Smart Bricks"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Shiona McCallum,<\/span>Senior expertise reporter, CES in Las Vegas,<\/span><\/p>\n

Liv McMahon<\/span>and<\/span><\/p>\n

Emma Calder,<\/span>Know-how reporters<\/span><\/p>\n

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Lego has unveiled Good Bricks – tech-filled variations of its small constructing blocks – which it says will carry units to life with sound, gentle and response to motion.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the brand new product vary has obtained a combined response from play consultants, who say it dangers undermining what makes Lego distinct for youngsters in an more and more digital world.<\/p>\n

Introduced on the Client Electronics Present (CES) 2026 in Las Vegas, the Danish toymaker’s Good Play system introduces new digital elements to the traditional plastic blocks.<\/p>\n

Lego says its new tech-enabled merchandise, launching in March with a brand new Star Wars set, are its “most revolutionary innovation” in almost 50 years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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However Josh Golin, govt director of youngsters’s wellbeing group Fairplay, believes Good Bricks may <\/b>“undermine what was as soon as nice about Legos” – harnessing youngsters’s personal creativeness throughout play.<\/p>\n

He mentioned the toy didn’t require further options to generate sounds or different results.<\/p>\n

“As anybody who has ever watched a baby play with old-school Legos is aware of, youngsters’s Lego creations already do transfer and make noises by the facility of youngsters’s imaginations,” he informed the BBC. “<\/p>\n

Andrew Manches, professor of youngsters and expertise on the College of Edinburgh, agreed the fantastic thing about Lego lay in “the liberty to create, re-create, and adapt easy blocks into limitless tales powered by youngsters’s creativeness”.<\/p>\n

However he additionally welcomed Lego’s efforts to combine bodily and digital play with instruments that react to the way in which youngsters work together with its Good Play merchandise.<\/p>\n

Julia Goldin, the corporate’s chief product and advertising and marketing officer, beforehand informed the BBC it seen digital expertise as a possibility to “broaden bodily play and bodily constructing”.<\/p>\n

“We do not take a look at the digital world as a menace,” she mentioned – including its good vary weaves interactivity “seamlessly” with its bodily merchandise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

What are Lego Good Bricks?<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Lego says its Good Bricks can sense movement, place and distance, permitting the fashions to reply in varied methods throughout play.<\/p>\n

Measuring 2×4, the brick itself comprises sensors, lights, a small sound synthesiser, an accelerometer and a custom-made silicon chip enabling it to detect motion and react to it.<\/p>\n

However it’s designed for use with Good Minifigures and Good Tags tiles – two extra merchandise making up Lego’s Good Play System.<\/p>\n

Equally tailored from present Lego elements, these possess digital identifiers triggering completely different sounds or reactions once they detect and work together with one another.<\/p>\n

As an example, when tried out by the BBC at CES, a Lego birthday cake recognised when its “candles” have been blown out – sounding a cheer and a contented birthday tune.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, a Lego helicopter made whooshing sounds when moved or rotated, with its Good Brick lighting up crimson upon crashing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Utilizing a wi-fi system developed by Lego, the three fashions talk with one another to provide specific responses by the Good Brick.<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Tom Donaldson, head of Lego’s Artistic Play Lab, mentioned the tech supposed to answer youngsters’s actions and complement the way in which they naturally play.<\/p>\n

He mentioned the Good Brick’s reactions to responses would “hopefully encourage and shock the person to maintain them persevering with to play”.<\/p>\n

“We’re constructing a platform that we wish to final for a few years,” he mentioned.<\/p>\n

Prof Manches informed the BBC lowered value and dimension of elements has “enabled extra toymakers to combine digital expertise seamlessly into a spread of toys”.<\/p>\n

However he added regardless of thrilling innovation, issues stay in regards to the safety and privateness of recent and rising good toys for youngsters – significantly these which combine AI. <\/p>\n

“The secret’s to us all to stay critically reflective of the design of those toys, and to pay a lot consideration to how they affect youngsters’s on a regular basis lives,” he mentioned.<\/p>\n

It isn’t the primary time Lego has dabbled in digital experimentation or sought to enchantment to more and more on-line audiences.<\/p>\n

Since 2017 it has launched augmented actuality apps and experiences letting individuals play with computer-generated fashions layered over their environment.<\/p>\n

By way of collaborations with online game publishers akin to Nintendo and Fortnite-maker Epic Video games it has additionally appeared to enchantment to followers of trending video games or new launches – releasing a Tremendous Mario Minifigure in 2020 with a tiny show display screen.<\/p>\n

Lego chief govt Niels B. Christiansen mentioned within the agency\u2019s 2024 annual report it had accelerated spending on digital expertise as a “strategic space” for the corporate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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