Lego’s push for smart bricks in the galaxy far, far away is continuing, and things are only getting weirder.
Earlier this month at CES, Lego unveiled its new “Smart Play” system, a plan to heavily integrate interactive light and sound tech into its play sets through unique bricks, minifigures, and tiles. The brick maker started off its push for the system with its Star Wars line, and almost immediately encountered a problem: no matter how cool the potential of the system looked in demonstrations at a tech show with a primed audience, the average Lego person saw sets that did not look very good with a very large price tag attached.
For the second wave of Star Wars “Smart Play” sets, it seemed like Lego learned the lesson at first, with the five new sets revealed today all clocking in at prices ranging from $40 to $100. They include new takes on Luke’s Landspeeder ($40 for 215 pieces, a “Smart” Luke Skywalker minifigure, and a standard Jawa minifigure), the AT-ST ($50 for 347 pieces, with a “Smart” Wicket the Ewok, and standard AT-ST driver and Scout Trooper minifigures), and the Millennium Falcon ($100 for 885 pieces and “Smart” minifigures of Han, Chewie, 3PO, and Luke), and two playsets: one inspired by the Mos Eisley Cantina sequence in A New Hope ($80 for 666 pieces, with “Smart” Greedo and Obi-Wan minifigures as well as standard versions of a Sand Trooper and two Cantina Band members) and Yoda’s hut on Dagobah in Empire Strikes Back ($70 for 440 pieces, as well as “Smart” minifigures of Luke and Yoda, as well as a standard R2-D2).
