Hi, I’m Bethany! And I was wrong about SMART Play.
LEGO spent a lot of money advertising SMART Play, lauding it with praise before its release. Inside our box was a two-sided handout comparing SMART Play to the significance of the minifigure. That’s a big deal. So how were the sets?
We ran multiple play sessions with different ages (ages 4-17). Yet the reactions to SMART Play were surprisingly similar. Each kid independently treated SMART Play as a feature to be tried, like a sound button on a Me Reader. Kids looked at the different play elements and said: “Oh, I’ve already done that one.”
Everything was fun to try a few times, but was set aside once it had been “experienced.” Sets were consistently seen as consumable opportunities, not for ongoing or creative play.
The current SMART play features don’t “reward” you for experimenting. Compare this to Mario sets that involve earning coins. You want to repeat the play, to see if you can change things. SMART Play in its current form just *IS.*
Some kids expressed frustration because they didn’t understand the “mumble” of the SMART figs. The SMART features don’t interact with each other. There’s no incentive to refuel or repair a ship. No health points that require eating cooked food. Kids didn’t get the “point” of the features.
There’s no reset button for SMART Bricks, a glaring omission. We had a fully-charged brick die after 5 minutes of play. There was no way to restart it. It wouldn’t register on the charger or connect to Bluetooth. I thought it was forever dead.
I’ve seen enough demos to know what the SMART Brick is capable of – and this isn’t it. This is underwhelming. If LEGO can gamify its use and make its play purposeful, it might still have a chance. LEGO advertising set high expectations and this series falls short.
Special shoutout to @verge and @engadget for their articles about SMART Play.
[Review products provided by the LEGO Group, but all opinions are our own and honest – we don’t have to praise sets to keep receiving them.]
