It’s been a month since Lego launched its new “smart play” system with a wave of Lego Star Wars sets that were, well, met with varying degrees of consternation by Lego Star Wars fans. While the company has yet to, or likely won’t, say for a while if the smart play sets have been well received by a general audience, we’ll leave it to you to judge if the following information says it’s leaning one way or the other.
Lego has announced that it is tapping Luke Skywalker himself, actor Mark Hamill, to record a series of messages explaining the benefits of the smart brick and tag system the company first revealed at CES this year. On Wednesday, April 8, from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern, fans based in the U.S. can call the number 1-877-80-ASK-MARK to hear the actor explain why, actually, they’re meant to sound like that, or why it’s pretty cool that you can buy smart play sets without a smart brick to actually make them fully functional. Or maybe much nicer things about the sets, probably.
Select callers to the hotline will be selected to be pulled into a live video chat with Hamill to talk to him about Star Wars and Lego, if you needed further incentive to phone in.
“Technology keeps improving, and, you know, I keep asking my kids, ‘When did phones come in? When did computers come in? When was the internet?’ Because you lose track of time when you’re as old as I am,” Hamill told Nerdist in an interview about the new technology. “And like I say, my concept of Lego was, you know, all the bricks you need. You could buy specialized sets if you wanted to build a specific thing. But it’s amazing how they have incorporated the most modern technology. Now they have these things called a smart brick, that you place into the toy, and… look at what it does. It’s so cool.”
On the one hand, it’s the latest in a line of big promotions Lego has made to launch the smart brick sets, including a splashy display at the Las Vegas Sphere. On the other hand, now that they’ve been out for a little while, and Lego Star Wars fans’ eyes are turning to the next wave of more normal releases inspired by The Mandalorian and Grogu, roping in Hamill to be a salesperson for the technology feels a bit like him being forced to sing “Luke, Be a Jedi” at the Springfield Dinner Theater’s production of Guys and Dolls in that episode of The Simpsons he guest starred in.
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