Today we're taking a quick look at the contents of the LEGO Star Wars sets. 75421 Darth Vader's TIE Fighter (69,99 €) and 75423 Luke's Red Five X-wing (€89,99), two boxes that have been available since March 1, 2026, and which provide the SMART Brick and its induction charger. These products can be considered as starter packsIndeed, it is impossible to take advantage of the ecosystem launched this year by LEGO without the "smart" brick and its charger.
Almost everything has already been said about the new SMART Play concept and its possibilities, but we mostly hear adult fans making loud mockery and we don't really know what the younger ones who are the target of what LEGO presents as an unprecedented playful innovation think.
For my part, I can only offer an adult perspective on this new LEGO offering; I am not going to invent a childlike perspective that I obviously haven't had for a long time regarding the brand's products.
Even before delving into the SMART Brick itself, one can observe the consequences of adapting the products involved to integrate the various components of the ecosystem. The presence of SMART Tags placed inside the structures is not a serious issue; they are simply... Tiles which have little impact on the appearance of the different models.
The need to be able to integrate the SMART Brick into the ships is, however, more problematic: It was necessary to leave the space for the addition of this brick in the heart of the different assemblies in order to deliver the promised functionalities and the overall rendering is considerably affected: The TIE Fighter is saddled with an out-of-place protrusion at the rear and the X-wing is amputated of part of its hull, which in the process totally deforms the ship.
This aesthetic failure can be mitigated by the fact that these vessels are intended to be handled intensively by children and that priority has logically been given to their robustness.
Regarding the included figurines, the modification required for their integration into the concept affects the characters to varying degrees: the standard figurines equipped with an NFC tag come with their torsos and legs glued together and inseparable, and they bear technical or decorative markings that somewhat detract from their appearance. The R2-D2 droid, on the other hand, has part of its cylinder removed to accommodate the SMART Tag on a flat surface.
Let's be honest, these products aren't LEGO's finest work in terms of faithfulness to the source material; they're designed solely to provide the promised play features and therefore have no chance of ending up on collectors' shelves as simple display models. The minifigures might pass muster from the front, though some purists will likely not consider them "true" LEGO minifigures.
Note that these products combine classic minifigures with those designed to offer a minimum level of interactivity. Here, Luke, Leia, Vader, and R2-D2 are the modified minifigures. The two Rebel soldiers and the Stormtrooper are standard-sized minifigures.
One might also question the choice of the Star Wars license to launch the concept. The LEGO CITY range would undoubtedly have been more appropriate because it truly targets the potential audience for this type of product: children under 8 years old.
It's hard not to see this as an attempt to leverage a major license to sell a concept that would have struggled to gain traction on its own. LEGO is playing it safe, and it feels like they absolutely had to wrap this whole ecosystem in a big-name license to ensure its promotion and launch; a LEGO CITY police car with its siren, flashing lights, and inflated price tag would probably not have been enough.
That being said, it now remains to assess the value of this ecosystem, sold at a premium price by LEGO and presented as almost revolutionary in terms of playability. Unsurprisingly, the result falls far short of expectations, with decent technical execution but a botched implementation.
The SMART Brick, which isn't simply a 2x4 brick contrary to LEGO's claims (it's actually the equivalent of a 2x4 brick topped with a 2x4 plate), is a product that supposedly required about ten years of development. I find that hard to believe, as the product isn't particularly innovative today, except perhaps for the miniaturization of its components to fit them into a format suitable for its intended use. The technologies at work—Bluetooth, NFC, gyroscope, sensors, speaker, and audio synthesizer—have been used for quite some time in numerous toys, and we know from experience that the possible interactions are rather limited.
It's important to understand that everything in this "smart" brick serves only one purpose: to emit sounds that are supposedly consistent with the actions performed. What LEGO calls the SMART Brick is essentially just an enhanced sound brick that can vaguely react to its position in space or its proximity to a SMART Tag or a minifigure. This brick offers nothing else besides a few insignificant and pointless flashes of light that add virtually nothing to the gameplay and, technically speaking, primarily serve as a positioning indicator.
The real problem: this antiquated sound brick can't even properly reproduce the promised sequences. The explanation is simple: there's no way to store original sounds without dedicated internal memory, and LEGO wanted to make this product a versatile and expandable element not limited by its content storage capacity.
The audible sequences are therefore synthesized in real time and on the fly, which explains why we do not find here the signature sounds of the Star Wars universe or real dialogues when it comes to making the characters "speak".
Luke mumbles something unintelligible, Darth Vader grunts, and Leia utters an incomprehensible jumble. Only the half-hearted R2-D2 manages to come off with any semblance of decent sound. And the complete lack of real dialogue obviously cuts short any potential gameplay by failing to provide a genuine narrative direction to the ongoing story, unlike what Playmobil, for example, promises with its new concept. Playmobil Hi!.
LEGO includes an induction charger in the box, and this accessory is essential beyond its primary function of recharging the SMART Brick. For example, you'll need to place and remove the brick on the charger to "wake it up" between play sessions or to update it via the dedicated app.
The charger and its USB Type-A cable will therefore need to remain nearby and easily accessible to users of the product. Yet another sign of the product's misguided development: this charger should simply be equipped with USB-C, the current standard, which would allow, for example, connecting it to a... Powerbank recently while traveling.
The concept's operating principle is simple: you activate the SMART Brick by shaking it vigorously and then place it in one of the designated slots on the constructions to hopefully experience the promised interactivity. In reality, at best, you get a few incomprehensible groans, the faint sound of a pump filling a tank, a few hammer blows on a ship's hull, and, the highlight of the show, the sounds of engines and gunfire when you engage in combat between the two ships.
All these sounds are on par with an 8-bit video game from the 80s, and those supposedly from the Star Wars universe and well-known to fans are barely recognizable. Furthermore, it's impossible to record your own sound sequences, as the device lacks built-in memory.
From a purely technical standpoint, it works quite well and delivers on its promise. The brick is detected every time, it flashes and emits its sound sequences at a sufficient volume and with good timing, and there's nothing to criticize LEGO for in this regard. However, I'm much more reserved about its play value. The sounds it makes are those that children easily produce with their mouths, and it's the children who decide... ultimately of who wins or loses the space duel.
Here, LEGO decides for them via the sounds and flashing lights emitted by the brick, effectively scripting the ongoing interaction like a bad, overly predictable video game. We've seen better approaches to expanding a product's potential playability and fostering a child's intellectual development.
It's therefore difficult to get excited about this proposal, and you don't need to be a child to imagine that the concept will struggle to truly appeal to younger audiences in the long run. They are now surrounded by much more advanced and interactive technologies, and this technological regression will likely only satisfy them if they have to make do with it for lack of anything better. In 2026, a toy that vaguely makes noise isn't going to guarantee hours of gaming fun, unless little Kevin is temporarily without his console and has nothing else to play for a few hours.
Parents who keep their children away from screens and try to compensate for their offspring's frustration by buying them these overpriced products will quickly be disappointed. Once the initial surprise of having LEGO products with an added layer of interactivity has worn off, these bricks will likely end up at the bottom of a toy box due to a lack of real storytelling potential, but LEGO will still have accomplished its mission. The primary goal here is to generate curiosity about the concept, and its lifespan in children's hands is of little importance to the manufacturer, who will likely have to rely on regularly releasing new products that capitalize on the initial idea.
There's also a concern about an area LEGO will need to quickly learn to manage in a more technical way than usual: after-sales service. The SMART Brick remains a fragile and complex component that will inevitably be damaged in the hands of younger children. The integrated battery isn't eternal either, but LEGO likely sees this brick as a simple consumable from a commercial standpoint and probably expects users to abandon it well before it fails to minimize calls to its customer service department.
In short, I'm absolutely not impressed by this concept, which seems to have arrived 15 years too late to truly compete with the most advanced interactive toys. More than just a brick packed with different technologies, LEGO is trying to sell us the entire marketing narrative surrounding it, with play possibilities designed primarily to appeal to parents who will ultimately buy the product, but which are rather fanciful and far from being as convincing in reality as they appear on paper.
In my opinion, customers will only fall for it once, just long enough to realize the promises were a bit too ambitious, and they won't be fooled again. For LEGO, whose market power is undeniable, this will likely be enough to ensure significant sales of the products that benefit from the concept before they definitively abandon it, as has been the case with many other similar attempts in the past.
One might conclude, "All this for that?" given how much effort has been put into this project, failing to serve its own ambitions. As an adult, I think our children surely deserve better than a few grumbling complaints, especially with such high retail prices, but it is the youngest among us who will be the true judges of the concept's relevance and appeal.
Note: The two products shown here, provided by LEGO, are as usual put into play. Deadline fixed at March 20, 2026 at 23:59 PM. Simply post a comment under the article to participate. Two winners will be drawn at random.
69,99 €
89,99 €