Next year, Lego will celebrate 90 years since it was founded in a Danish carpentry workshop back in 1932. Almost a century later, it remains one of the most popular kids toys across the world and it still takes up huge chunks of the toy section in many stores. Over time, Lego has moved further and further away from the simple sets of bricks that it became known for. These days, the elaborate sets that you can build are composed of thousands of pieces that come in all shapes and sizes and it’s easy to be overwhelmed by what’s on offer.
For many of us however, Lego is a big box containing a jumble of random bricks, each belonging to structures that were dismantled long ago. With the instruction manuals long gone, building more than a simple house feels like a daunting prospect. But what if you could scan all of the random pieces and be told exactly what you could make with them? This was the dream for the team behind Brickit, a new app that is inspiring kids and adults alike to build new creations from their old Lego. The process is very straightforward: simply lay out your bricks, point your camera at the unruly heap, and let Brickit do all the work for you. It will scan each individual piece, identify it, and then figure out which of Lego’s many sets you can build from what you have on hand. It will even tell you which bricks are missing.