On March 1st, 2026, The Lego Group will begin selling the most ambitious brick it’s ever made: a tiny computer that fits entirely inside a classic 2x4 Lego brick. When it detects NFC-equipped smart tags nearby, embedded inside new Lego tiles and new Lego minifigures, or when it sees other Smart Bricks, the company claims it will make entire Lego sets come to life — starting with the humming lightsabers, roaring engines, light-up blasters, and the music of Lego Star Wars.
These “Smart Bricks” and “Smart Play” initiatives, just announced at CES 2026, aren’t like the huge Lego Mario toys that required two AAA batteries and mostly only activated when their bottom-mounted cameras detected color or barcodes. They’re wirelessly charged, with a pad that can charge multiple bricks at a time and a battery that “will still perform after years of inactivity.”
Wonderful, now they’re embedding future e-waste onto their billions of pieces of plastic that they generate every year. Very cool.
Plastic is not evil. Single use plastic is. Lego is anything but single use. I’m a little disappointed they’re still using plastic bags in their packaging, hopefully that’ll stop soon. I’ll reserve judgement on these being e-waste till we see how they’re used, if they’re used, if they’re planned obsolescence, etc.
I received a lego set for Christmas this year and the main bag was made of recycled paper. (The smaller bags were still plastic.)
I got a large set, and all th bags were paper—including the small ones inside the larger one. It probably is a process of replacing them over time.
Nice, what’d you get?
Sorry for the terrible lighting :)
Lmao I love the trombone. That’s a nice set, excellent choice!
I got one of the flower sets to brighten up my office cubicle.
If the embedded batteries are non-replaceable, then they’re future e-waste.
Their announcements haven’t said anything about battery replacement, and they’re very small Smart Bricks (2*4 studs), we’ll see, but I think being non-replaceable with a sub-decade EOL seems real likely.
Are they? Any recent sets my kids have received have been paper, I’d assumed they’d done it across the range.
I think it’s a recent transition, so there’ll be a lot of plastic until old stock runs out and new paper bags take their place
They switched to paper bags a while ago, I believe. I got a couple of sets for Christmas, and they were all paper bags.
Not true since the 80s. LEGO blocks used to be about building anything, over and over, but now all they sell is one time construction kits.
This is why modern children are stupid.
To be fair, it’s not like you throw them out after assembly though? So it doesn’t count as single-use plastic. Though I do understand what you’re trying to say here.
I’m pretty sure you can still just straight up buy sets of bricks. Definitely was still a thing when I was a kid, so late 90’s and early 00’s.
Quick look on the Lego website says they sell 'em under the name Lego Classic. Some of those still come with plans you can build, but most pieces are generic and can be used to build anything.
Lego as a brand is super overpriced, but if I’m getting my kid Legos for their birthday, it’ll be a big-ass box of bricks, at least for the earlier birthdays. Still a year or 2 off from that though.