LEGO’s Life of George merges iOS with LEGO bricks
This product is about half a year old, but somehow escaped me until now. Everyone knows LEGO, and those tiny plastic bricks were a big part of my childhood. Today’s children live in a more technologically advanced world, and aside from robot kits LEGO is now acknowledging that with the Life of George playset. The set consists of a special building “mat” and a bunch of bricks, and it all ties into an iOS game. The game shows you a picture of a LEGO creation, and it’s then your job to build it as fast as possible, throw it on the tracking mat, and direct the iOS device’s camera to it to register the build. There is multiplayer as well, so that you can compete with someone else to see who can build the fastest. You can also register your own models in the app.
All in all it sounds like a great way to incorporate physical toys with electronics, and it’s probably the longest lasting (in terms of amount of fun for the price) LEGO set out there. The app is free, while the set seems to retail for about $30. On iTunes there are some complaints about a new update that was released which is only available through a $2 in-app purchase, which is arguably a bit weird when the initial app is free and you’ve shelled out for the bricks. Still, I would buy this in an instant if I had kids. Weirdly enough, the app is only iPhone-optimized, meaning that it will look a bit pixelated on an iPad. While I doubt kids will care, it’s odd that there’s no native iPad version available, as the size of the iPad makes it more suitable toy than a tiny screened iPhone.
[iTunes | LEGO]
