Lego Group Announces New Toy Set With Dedicated iOS App

The Lego Group has announced that it will introduce a new toy set that interacts with Apple's iPhone, linking the company's classic Lego bricks with a virtual app. The new Lego play set, dubbed Lego: Life of George, comes with a collection of Lego bricks and a play mat that works as a green-screen, so players can view the game board with their iPhone camera. In the game, players are shown a Lego model on their iOS device, and must recreate the structure using their Lego bricks. The game will then score players based on their accuracy and timing via the iPhone camera. The game will officially debut October 1, 2011. "We understand consumers' powerful connection to casual gaming, and we have seen how successfully the LEGO brand can translate to a virtual experience, so we pursued development of a fun way to combine both physical and virtual play into one product," says the Lego Group's head of new business Paal Smith-Meyer. Other companies have made similar efforts to integrate virtual apps with physical toys. Just this week, Disney announced a line of Cars 2 toys that interact with the Apple iPad, and Activision will introduce a new series of figurines that interact with the upcoming Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure.