There are more new details to find in the LEGO Star Wars SMART Play sets when you look beyond the SMART Brick.
Obviously, the LEGO Star Wars SMART Play sets are doing something new with the SMART Bricks and Tags, offering fresh interactivity in the play sets. If you're not up to date, you can learn more about LEGO SMART Play here, but there's more to these sets than just the technology.
Digging into how these sets have been designed marks some key changes in one of the LEGO Group's most long-running themes, seemingly due to the practicalities of how they're made to be played with. The first to note is that, unlike the majority of LEGO Star Wars vehicles, there are several instances of machines and ships being left partially open, like the walker in 75424 AT-ST Attack on Endor and the Imperial ship in 75421 Darth Vader's TIE Fighter.
That's a necessity to allow for the SMART Brick to be slotted in and out of place, so you don't have to pause play to activate the brick with a shake or rebuild sets to move the brick between them (especially as not every set comes with its own SMART Brick).
Another design choice that's been noted is the markedly blocky style of many of the ships, most notable in 75420 Luke's Landspeeder and 75426 Millennium Falcon. Where the majority of other LEGO Star Wars sets, even ones geared towards play, have evolved to become more detailed as building techniques have evolved, the LEGO SMART Play sets have a decidedly different feel to them.
Rather than smaller pieces sculpting out finer details, it's mostly larger parts used to create these sets. That gives them that signature bulky look, but also makes them easier to hold. Once again, this design change seems to be down to practicalities.
Last but not least, the minifigures for Wicket and Yoda feature mid-sized legs, rather than the short legs that they've had in all their iterations prior to now, from what we can tell. Although it throws off their sizes slightly, with those two characters being much smaller than the adult humanoids around them, it makes the minifigures more posable for play.
Those changes all come together to create what feels like a wholly new design language, especially for those who have been building and collecting LEGO Star Wars for years. The differences between the SMART Play Star Wars sets are immediately apparent when you stand them next to the rest of the theme.
The reason for it seems to stem largely from making sure the sets work well for play, but it has interesting implications for the wider LEGO Star Wars theme.
The new style reinforces what the LEGO Group's marketing is telling us: these sets are designed with kids in mind. Adults are welcome to join in the fun, but these are not necessarily catering to older fans of LEGO.
That's not to say that there isn't still plenty for more traditional LEGO Star Wars fans. Out of the 124 LEGO Star Wars products on the market right now, just seven of them are SMART Play ones. If these aren't for you, there's plenty of other sets to tickle your fancy, with still more rumoured throughout 2026.
If LEGO SMART Play sticks around for as long as the LEGO Group clearly hopes it will, considering how much the company has invested in developing and promoting the sets, we could arguably see two sections of LEGO Star Wars evolve, both with markedly different styles. While you can usually tell what's a play set and what's a display set at a quick glance, the differences are even more evident with the SMART Play models.
We're at the beginning of what could be a crucial period of evolution not just for LEGO Star Wars but for the wider LEGO system. The presence of LEGO SMART Bricks is not just a matter of technology, but something that will and already is affecting how LEGO sets are designed.
Thank you for supporting the work that Brick Fanatics does by buying your LEGO sets using our affiliate links!
Comments
Be the first to comment!