All posts tagged: brick

Brick vs. Bloom Card: I tested both for my screen addiction, and the winner depends on you

Brick vs. Bloom Card: I tested both for my screen addiction, and the winner depends on you

Published by skeptic

pros and cons Pros Better app than Brick. Easy app scheduling. Lower price. Cons Continued to block apps after my scheduled time was over. Breaks defeat the purpose of strictly curbing screen time. I’m on track to having spent 16 years of my life glued to my phone screen. That’s what Bloom, the latest salve to phone addiction, tells me as I create my account.  16 years. According to my calculations, if I weren’t attached to my phone’s addictive mechanisms, I could have spent that time running 1,700 marathons, grabbing 2,900 cups worth of coffee with friends, or adding one or two more hours of sleep to my night each night. Instead, I scroll.  And I’m not alone.  Also: The base model Kindle is my secret weapon against doomscrolling – and it’s on sale As phone addiction becomes more widespread — and as we learn how social media keeps us addicted — more companies are coming up with solutions. Bloom is one of those companies that, like the popular Brick, developed a tap-able NFC-enabled card …

Best Lego Gifts for Brick Builders (2026): Smart Bricks, Video Games, and More

Best Lego Gifts for Brick Builders (2026): Smart Bricks, Video Games, and More

Published by skeptic

To address the elephant in the room: Yes, Lego bricks are made of plastic. The company makes billions of tiny bricks that proliferate all over the world and all over your living room, and they will not biodegrade and cannot be recycled. With that said, Lego bricks are machined to incredibly tight tolerances. Unless your dog chews on them, the bricks retain what Lego refers to as their “clutch power” for decades. Like so many others, my family became obsessed with Lego sets during the Covid-19 pandemic, and we still love them today. Years on, I have found no better way to while away a rainy afternoon than making tiny tyrannosaurs and pterosaurs with your son. If you and your loved ones are also obsessed with Lego sets, we have some great gift ideas for you. If not, don’t forget to check out our other gift guides; Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are coming up sooner than you think. Updated April 2026: We added the Throne Room, added more information about smart bricks, and updated …

An Inside Look at Lego’s New Tech-Packed Smart Brick

An Inside Look at Lego’s New Tech-Packed Smart Brick

Published by skeptic

The project needed more than mere technical insight. It needed a president of play. A fun foreman. Lego Group design director Michael Fuller has been at the company for 18 years. “The Lego Batman Movie, that was five, six years of my life,” Fuller says. After wrapping the 2017 film, Fuller was trying to work out what he was going to do next when Donaldson approached him. “I actually tried to convince him I wasn’t right for it. I’m not techie at all. I’m old-school. But Tom said, ‘No, that’s what we need. I’ve got lots of smart engineers and techie people. I need a toy guy.’” And so Fuller was drafted in. “In the early days, I was just drawing concepts. I had a wall at Cambridge Consultants with hand-drawn concepts of ‘What if? What if? What if?’” From there, they moved on to handmade prototypes, a phase Fuller estimates encompassed half of the total development time. “It was quite a small team of people, and you had to be resilient,” he says. This …

How Brick Helped Me Stop Wasting Time On Social Media

How Brick Helped Me Stop Wasting Time On Social Media

Published by Sam Flores

When this year started, I knew I had to make drastic changes… because my phone had taken over my life. Screen time had skyrocketed. Humour circled around TikTok reactions. I found myself scrolling through waves of news horrors and memes before I was fully awake each day. Enter the Brick, which has emerged as the go-to app for people looking to reset their relationships with their phones. “Bricking” your phone has now become a verb for people to share the news that they are logging off and to tell others. I actually learned about “bricking” and “unbricking” myself through the loud declarations of other writers and influencers. I was skeptical at first about whether an app blocker that costs over $50 could be worth it. But I had tried free ways of deleting social media apps and blocking them from my phone through features like Apple’s Screen Time or Android Digital Wellbeing, and they hadn’t worked because they are easy to bypass. However, the Brick is a little square device that pairs with an app …

I cut my screen time in half using Brick

I cut my screen time in half using Brick

Published by skeptic

I spend way too much time staring at screens. When I wake up, I reach for my phone first. In addition to the eight hours a day I spend typing away at my computer, my phone is always there, tempting me to open it and scroll through Instagram rather than getting my work done. When I’m unwinding with a TV show in the evening, my phone is there again, pulling my attention away from the screen. And before falling asleep, I’m once again scrolling through TikTok when I could be reading. I’m not particularly proud of my screen time numbers or my need to be constantly stimulated. I’ve created time limits on my most distracting apps and set designated downtime schedules. But honestly, it still hasn’t been enough — getting around those limits is as easy as hitting the snooze button. Ironically, as I tried to lower my screen time, I was targeted with Instagram ads for The Brick, which promises stricter screen time controls to actually curb my phone usage. After testing the Brick …

The first Lego Star Wars sets to support the SMART Brick start shipping in March, but you can pre-order them right now

The first Lego Star Wars sets to support the SMART Brick start shipping in March, but you can pre-order them right now

Published by Jenni Sidey

Sign Up For Goods 🛍️ Product news, reviews, and must-have deals. LEGO’s new SMART Play Star Wars sets are now up for pre-order We first met LEGO’s new SMART Play and Smart Blocks back at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. These enhanced sets use embedded SMART Tags, SMART Minifigures, and responsive SMART Bricks to add interactive digital elements to play sets without requiring the use of a screen. So, kids (or adults who still enjoy fun) don’t need to pair the Smart Bricks to a phone or tablet to take them out of the imaginative space. Now, LEGO has a total of eight SMART Play sets for pre-order and they’re Star Wars-themed. It looks like those credit card bills we racked up during the holidays are going to have to wait a little longer to get paid off. What is LEGO SMART Play? LEGO SMART Play is LEGO’s attempt to make physical bricks behave a little more like a game without putting a screen in front of a kid’s face. The sets use embedded RFID-style …

‘Hideous’: Lego fans perplexed over launch of 9 wearable brick clogs in collaboration with Crocs

‘Hideous’: Lego fans perplexed over launch of $199 wearable brick clogs in collaboration with Crocs

Published by Daniella Wilson

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Lego has perplexed its loyal fanbase by launching its first pair of shoes: a bright red set of wearable brick-shaped clogs, in collaboration with footwear giant Crocs. Made from Crocs’ signature foam material, each pair features four studs stamped with the Lego logo, a movable heel strap and a faux anti-stud sole. They could be yours for an eye-watering $199.99. Musician Tommy Cash was the first celebrity spotted wearing the kicks at EgnoLab’s fall 2026 display at Paris Fashion Week, stumbling awkwardly to accommodate the large size of the clogs. Cash wore the polarizing shoes paired with a black suit covered in Lego bricks, holding a red rose made from the buildable bricks. After the collaboration was revealed this week, consumers have been sharing …

LEGO Smart Brick hands-on preview: These next-gen blocks rock

LEGO Smart Brick hands-on preview: These next-gen blocks rock

Published by Daniella Wilson

There have been a few major innovations in LEGO’s history: LEGO Technic in 1977, and the minifigure a year later, but those are nearly 50 years ago now. In the interim, the LEGO brand has kept its place as the world’s favourite toy mainly by pairing up with kids’ favourite intellectual property, including Star Wars, Marvel, Minecraft and Super Mario. Enter the Smart Play system, out this year, which incorporates modern digital technology such as sensors, speakers and lights to offer the first new way to play with LEGO in decades. We went hands on at the CES conference in Las Vegas to find out more! So, what actually is this new range? The Smart Play system incorporates the Smart Brick itself, which is the hub of the whole experience thanks to the built-in sensors, speakers, lights and custom chips it houses. Check out LEGO Smart Play at LEGO These allow it to be aware of data such as movement, as well as proximity to other Smart products. Those include the Smart tags and Smart …