#interactive-toys

#interactive-toys

When The Lego Group announced that its biggest innovation since 1978 would be a tiny proprietary computer brick, the reactions were divided. I heard from people concerned this was the death of imagination from a company that's all about imagination - and from people who thought it sounded pretty cool! Personally, I walked in skeptical. My kids loved Lego's previous computer bricks, the Lego Mario toys, but don't play with them for long because they're predictable and fiddly to use!

The Smart Brick has a 4.1mm ASIC chip inside of it that Lego says is smaller than a standard Lego stud. It runs something called the Play Engine that can sense things like motion, orientation and magnetic fields. Thanks to this and some integrated copper coils, the Smart Brick can sense distance, direction and orientation of other Smart Bricks near it when you're building.

1. A 6-foot-long plush puppy, because sometimes bigger is better with the little crowd, and what could be better than a body-pillow of a pup for hours of cuddles and pretend play? (This guy would do GREAT on the floor is lava circuit.) 3. An interactive talking Ms. Rachel plushy if the other parent in your house is 100% Ms. Rachel, and you want to extend that learning love to playtime.

It's hard to bring those days back since we live in a totally different era right now. But what parents can do now is to create specific times when everyone has to put down their phones and play a game.