LEGO Fusion Toys Blend The Iconic Bricks With iOS Gaming
by Brent Dirks
June 19, 2014
The LEGO brand is sure to be familiar to most kids and adults. And while there are a number of LEGO-themed games available on the App Store, the new Fusion toys bring together physical bricks and iOS gaming.
Designed for kids 7 and up, the set consists of LEGO bricks, a free downloadable app, and a Fusion capture plate. The plate contains a printed design that allows a device’s camera to identify the size and colors of bricks built vertically in 2-D.
With the app, kids can “see” the design and then import it into the app in 3-D. Once the creation is in the game, a series of challenges requires players to use the physical bricks to build new solutions to help keep moving the game forward.
"In our research, we heard repeatedly from parents that they are constantly battling 'zombie gaze,' the experience when their children are immersed in their device screens for large blocks of time," said Pedersen. "We developed LEGO FUSION with this challenge in mind, creating a play experience that keeps children entertained with the kind of app gameplay they love while giving real reasons to return to the brick pile to creatively build."Four different sets will be available, including Town Master, Battle Towers, Create & Race, and Designer. Each of the sets will retail for $34.99 and be available starting in August. They will be available at Toys “R” Us and LEGO Stores and online. As a parent of younger children, I think the Fusion toys sound great. I’m looking forward to trying them out with my kids. I suspect it will be quite a popular gift during the holiday season as well. For other recent accessory news and reviews, see: Adobe's One More Thing: A Physical Ruler And Pen For Apps Called Ink And Slide, Take A Look At The Gamevice, An Upcoming MFi Controller For Apple's iPad mini, and Forget Beats Plastic Headphones: Consider Sennheiser's Momentum Line.