- 6 weeks ago
We got our hands on the new LEGO Star Wars Smart Play Darth Vader's TIE Fighter set (75421)! Join us as we unbox, build it against the clock, and see what this new interactive Smart Brick technology is all about.
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00:03We're here with the new LEGO Smartbrick Darth Vader's TIE Fighter set. We're going to build it
00:08today. Now I've had a little bit of a try with Smartbrick before but you haven't. This will be
00:12my first Smartbrick experience. I'm very excited. I want to see it light up and I want to see it
00:16make noise. That's all I want from the experience. Bear in mind this target audience for these
00:20products is children. Hamish thankfully fits into that category. 8 plus plus important is the
00:25important one there. So let's see if it's quite as fun to build as it was to try out some
00:29of the
00:29demo features a few months ago. I'm just going to set us a quick timer because I think it's
00:32only going to take us 15 minutes to build this and I want to be proven right at the very
00:35end.
00:36Okay I'm doing the same 25 minutes.
00:41There's four two one and five. So that's three. Five bags okay and then I think this will be the
00:50charging base. Yeah. So we'll probably need to work out charging this somewhere and then another cable
00:55as well so that you can charge that up. Throw that that way as well. And then the instructions.
01:03Instructions. Looks like it. There you go. Let me show those. So here we have the instructions for bags
01:08one through four for building the ship itself and also what looks like a few quick tips for the Smartbrick.
01:14We have the little extra scene setting pieces here that have their own individual instructions on the
01:20fifth bag and then here is some more guides to Smartplay. So this I imagine will just be a fairly
01:26general overview. Right so we've tidied up our desk got the workspace nice and clear and ready.
01:34Hamish why don't you get bag one opened up let's see what we're doing first. Okay I'm sort of an
01:38open
01:38and tip it kind of a guy. Okay. Appropriate levels of chaos beginning already. Nice. Okay so we've got a
01:45few
01:45different bits. We've got the important brick separator for when we inevitably make mistakes.
01:50Is that everything for Darth Vader? I think so. What's in here? There's also a little bag of stuff.
01:55So I might get stuck getting Darthie boy together while you work on that. Oh no we need his collar.
02:00He has a little collar in there somewhere. That's his collar. Nice. Okay. And the cape. Do we have his
02:05cape?
02:06Are those capes always in here? Oh of course. Yeah yeah. The little bag of capes. And you call yourself
02:09a
02:09Lego. I just skipped the capes because I know that I'm going to accidentally rip them or tear them off.
02:14Okay right. Darth Vader is done. So you're working here on what looks to be the base of the Tide
02:21Fighter.
02:21Yeah I think it is going to eventually be the the main bit. I imagine Darth Vader will sit here.
02:27Somewhere like that yeah yeah. Kind of scary. Not if he meows at me like that. Famously a Darth Vader
02:35sound.
02:37So while Hamish is building away there for a bit I have been looking up some information about the set.
02:42So it's a 473 piece set which is a decent amount of bricks you know for quite a small end
02:49product.
02:49The only challenge is it's retailing at $59.99 in the UK and $69.99 in the US. And obviously
02:56what
02:56you're paying for there is the smart brick functionally right? This will be usable in other
03:00sets other environments in the future we're told. Right now you don't know how that manifests.
03:05Given that context Hamish would you invest in this personally right now? Obviously we've been sent this
03:09very kindly by Lego. Would you spend your own money on it though? I'm gonna say no but there's two
03:13reasons. Firstly I think this is very much aimed at kids to be played with and I'm you know I'm
03:18enjoying
03:18building it. You always enjoy building Lego but I'm not sort of the target audience of someone that's
03:23going to be making this up flying it around and enjoying it from that perspective so probably not
03:28for me. But if I had a kid that wanted something I think if they're really into Star Wars probably
03:35pick
03:35them up one of these. Yeah. I think this is kind of fun you know you get some mainline characters
03:40you've
03:40got Darth Vader you've got Luke Skywalker and the Emperor in another set but I think yeah I want to
03:45see how this develops over time. If you're sort of thinking like oh I'll get this and hopefully more
03:50sets will come maybe it will but equally you can never know. I think as well my opinion on it
03:55has
03:55evolved somewhat since the news came out about it given that like I say we don't know what the future
04:01of it is. My excitement for this is wholly in how it could be used in things like Lego creator
04:07sets.
04:07The biggest criticism I've seen of people about that idea though is that it's not going to require
04:14you to have the imagination to make the noises yourself. For example one of the models they showed
04:18us is of a duck and it responds to you if you pat it it responds with all the quackies
04:22and
04:22splashy noises if it's being moved quickly. Lovely. You know as you sort of demonstrated with your own
04:28Star Wars noises a few short minutes ago it's kind of fun to make them yourself. Now with Star Wars
04:33it actually makes a bit more sense because also as you demonstrated a few minutes ago it's not great
04:39it's quite hard to do good impressions of Star Wars ships and characters. I mean between two different
04:44things I think fundamentally it's really cool and I think a lot of kids will want one of these sets
04:49right? I just don't know that you're going to sell it as a system to people until they can see
04:54it's
04:54used beyond Star Wars. I'm kind of interested to see how it's used in things like Lego City
04:58because I think that I sort of do get what you're saying it's fun to make the noises but also
05:03it's
05:03a bit annoying to sort of be driving a little police car or ambulance around and sort of going
05:07nino nino nino you get a bit tired of it so having the set maybe make those noises make some
05:12train noises
05:13could be fun I'm sort of imagining it from the more mundane perspective but bringing a bit more fun
05:19to people's play. Do you try and sort of bring some order to the chaos or do you embrace the
05:25chaos?
05:25If I'm building with other people I have to be restrained from doing the actual composition
05:30because I just go like I suddenly see into the Matrix and the Matrix is all Lego bricks
05:37Is it like when they do it in the Lego game where they're like
05:38Yeah it's very that. It just comes together
05:46Okay well that's part one of five. Nice. So in this piece it looks like we're building up
05:52the rest of the main chassis I guess. Oh we've got our first smart brick piece.
05:59So this is a NFC tag laden little tiny tile piece and when the smart brick is near it it
06:06will be able
06:07to identify what specific ship we are building or what specific sounds it should make off the back of
06:13This is quite cool. Again perfect demonstration of why a child might need something to make a sound for it
06:21I also told a slight lie I forgot the Darth Vader on the back we'll show do a close-up
06:24of him as well
06:25has a little similar smart brick style so he looks a little different to other smart brick pieces
06:31Yes. I think the ones with capes might be better because obviously it's a little bit obvious it's got a
06:36little
06:37a question mark and sparkles and a speaker phone and so I think the the fact that he's
06:42Can I have a look at myself? Look at that. Oh yeah. So his cape sort of hides that which
06:44I think helps keep him
06:45looking like a sort of a sinister figure. I would be intrigued to see how if they do any more
06:51like
06:51Lego games or any sort of other media that might sort of cross over with smart bricks if they
06:57use them at all as part of it. When the Star Wars movies came out do you remember there were
07:01those
07:01little BB-8 robots this is the most recent trilogy little BB-8 robots you get
07:06the Sphero ones that would whiz around your house and they would react to Star Wars in real
07:11time if you were watching the movies do you remember that? Vaguely. Vaguely. I would love to see if
07:15there's some sort of integration like that where I don't know if if it was just me being attention
07:20deficit as a child but like I used to do a lot of watching movies while playing with toys about
07:26that
07:26movie maybe there'll be some sort of smart brick integration like that? I'm not in this one. I'm not
07:31interested anymore. Would you want to see any kind of like different integrations with this when it
07:38comes to other forms of media or do you quite like the idea of this staying as a Lego experience?
07:42I
07:42think it staying as a Lego experience is probably ideal because it would require so much extra effort
07:47and more technology integration I imagine to be able to watch along your movie with you and I think
07:53the fact that this is relatively appless it seems obviously there are some updates you might have to do
07:59and the like but I think that the fact that you can just sort of play with the toy and
08:02have fun
08:03is the the winning factor of the of the sets I agree I agree
08:12we have this slightly trickier bit done you would have seen us there speeding up some of that footage
08:17because that was uh harder than it should have been for two adults to do an eight year old set
08:21we're not going to talk about that we do have now a little thing that bends which is nice nice
08:32little rotor motion there not sure what it's for let's find out I'm assuming actually oh I think I
08:36do know what that's for that's probably the firing cannon firing mechanism yeah that's a great
08:41impression you are nailing it nailing it so yeah Hamish I think we talked about this at the time the
08:46lego bricks debuted are there any ips that lego currently has partnerships with that you look
08:51at and think oh yeah that's a smart brick horizon would be fun I think obviously the mario has
08:57already got kind of something similar to this so I don't think we need to see more nintendo for now
09:01I really do hope we see some retrofit for sets like that while you're getting that one going
09:05I'm going to start on bag five because bag five has its own instruction manual that's what you give
09:10to your little brother that is so so true I mean we're both the only children yeah so we don't
09:15we don't know
09:15that I'm speaking not from experience wait does that mean I'm the younger brother in this
09:22back on the lego side of things what is your favorite kind of lego we're still saying yeah
09:26I am kind of liking some of the the nerdier 18 plus which sounds the more difficult to build ones
09:33yeah um I always find it really funny when they put 18 plus on a set and it's something like
09:37sesame
09:37street yeah I know what you mean I know what you mean but I I really like those so I've
09:41got the
09:42Sesame Street I've got the razor crest from Star Wars I've got a Winnie the Pooh where he lives
09:47oh that's a really nice one I've got the Zelda Great Deku Tree which version have you got it in
09:52I have currently got it in the Breath of the Wild version same this is a very odd piece look
10:00you've got
10:12he's more affordable than a smart brick
10:17I've done my bits I'm actually done as well got a little field oh well done you did finish
10:22about on time the last couple of bags would just do this but 20 times always the way we're all
10:29done
10:33how long do you think it took to build that Josie I don't know probably around my original estimation of
10:3845 minutes which I moderated down because I thought we would be able to do it quickly we did it
10:43in 46
10:44minutes uh and 50 well 47 minutes I blame that entirely on your fantastic improv skills uh that
10:51was that took a lot longer than I thought it would but hey it did it did 45 minutes of
10:56fun for all the
10:56family yeah I mean it was good fun I will say that much I've gone back to get the smart
11:02brick it's all
11:02charged up so just you've got to plug this into a USB-C cable a bit frustrating it doesn't come
11:07with one
11:07though that can also be if this is the UK EU version of the set sometimes they don't I think
11:12it goes in
11:13the back here I believe so I sounded like that that is exactly what your impression sounded like
11:24but I'm not sort of the target audience of someone that's going to be making this up
11:27flying it around and enjoying it from that perspective
11:34so if I remember correctly actually if you aim that at another lego smart brick star wars set
11:41and the it detects that the pew pews were in the right direction it can actually make an impact
11:47sound as well do you need a second smart brick for that we do need a second smart brick for
11:50that which
11:50do not have so then as Hamish was demoing slightly before so as you can tell it's very reactive right
11:57so on the table here it's down it's stationary the brick is flashing but otherwise it's very quiet
12:02as soon as you pick it up and give any sort of movement you then pick up those fabulous star
12:08warsy
12:08sounds I think we're gonna give a little bit of space here so everyone can enjoy this it's good fun
12:14it's good fun so what it's actually detecting when it does a lot of these things as you saw with
12:18the
12:18fuel tank here which is blue and with the firing mechanic which is red it's detecting the color
12:25of these objects and it knows what set it's in so it knows what those colors mean so if you
12:30use the
12:30hammer for example now
12:35there we go I think the firing
12:39that's the what I was looking for how does it do that so it's because it knows darth vader is
12:44there
12:44so we must not have had him sat close enough to it before that was great the little imperial march
12:49okay that's what I wanted little nuances with it you know like I think a kid's not naturally going
12:53to understand but it needs to be quite as close but anyway we could spend ages playing with this
12:59as you can tell Hamish is already quite keen on that but unfortunately that is all we have time for
13:04today let us know in the comment section down below what you're looking forward to from lego
13:09smart brick or if you're not interested in it at all and Hamish any closing words I'm gonna see if
13:14it
13:14flies no no no
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