To say our boys are excited would be an understatement.

Having just heard a snippet from a promotional video talking about ‘creating your own programmable Batmobile’ – it was enough to send them running around the room waving their hands in the air with anticipation and counting down the hours (yes, hours) until they can get their hands on the big Lego offering for Autumn 2017, Lego Boost.

The headline for Lego Boost is “turn all your Lego into programmable robots and toys”.  Sounds cool doesn’t it ?  Well, to be fair, it is.

Like a lot of parents, we toyed with the idea of Lego Mindstorms for our boys a little while back, but I am glad now we didn’t take the plunge, as I think that Lego Boost offers more flexibility and creativity for a much more reasonable price.

The Lego Boost kit will include 840 standard bricks along with a move hub, interactive motor and a colour & distance sensor.   The kit will come with everything you need to make five programmable toys:  Vernie (the robot), Frankie (the cat), a guitar, a bulldozer and a lego-stacking machine … but the really cool part is that the programmable elements can be used with any existing Lego kits and bricks too.

It will also have a companion app (iOS and Android) with a drag and drop function making it much more straightforward to code and programme your creations, meaning it’s a lot more accessible for young and budding designers and programmers.

Lego Boost is likely to retail for around £159 and is due to hit the shelves August time ….. we’ll keep you posted (don’t worry, there’s no way we’ll forget as I just know it’s going to be one of the only topics of conversation in our house for the next 3,670 hours….)