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One of the most fun things you can do with Lego is build something that works.* And for all the advances Lego has made with incorporating electronic components into their sets, by its very nature, Lego remains best suited to projects that rely on physical mechanics—projects like, say, a pinball machine.
YouTube is full of pretty impressive Lego pinball machines, from small, minimalist designs to complete life-sized machines like this frankly insane effort. (If you want to see more DIY designs, Lego channel New Brickerton published a pretty comprehensive round-up a couple of years back that included those machines along with a bunch of others.)
One thing that’s always been missing, however, is an official Lego take on the idea—but no longer. This week, Lego announced its own pinball machine, and it looks pretty interesting. The assembled machine is apparently fully playable; as per Lego’s press release, it features “spring-powered launcher, dual flippers, spinning bumpers and an up-and-over ramp bridge,” along with targets to aim at and a mission progress bar. The set is classic space-themed, which is A-OK by me.
Judging from the photos, the set appears to be fairly minimalist in scale, which is probably for the best. It will retail for $230, so god only knows what a life-sized version would cost. There are a few questions that will probably remain unanswered until people get their hands on the set IRL, like, how do the spinning bumpers… spin? How does the progress bar work?
And most importantly, a question for Lego nerds like your correspondent: Are there any new pieces here? There are obviously new decorations—most notably the space-themed decals on the side panels—but it’s less clear whether any of the pieces themselves are new. Possible candidates include the flippers and the sort of ovoid Technic piece that is used for the ball launcher, but it could be that I’m just looking in the wrong place on Bricklink. Then there’s the ball itself, which, as it turns out, is not new—Bricklink lists 27 different ball elements, which is honestly kinda surprising.
Anyway, if you fancy adding a Lego pinball machine to your mantelpiece—or to the entire room you’ve dedicated to the Lego Sagrada Família—you can get the set via the Lego Insiders program on July 1, or in stores on July 4. Tilt!
* Or so I’m told, anyway—I just build spaceships, to be honest.
