LEGO is killing Mindstorms

October 27, 2022 | 7

Some sad news today – LEGO have officially announced that LEGO Mindstorms will be retired, with Mindstorms-related sets being retired at the end of 2022.

This includes the flagship set 51515 Robot Inventor, which unfortunately only had a 2-year lifespan. The Robot Inventor companion app will be supported till the end of 2024, which probably means that your sets will effectively brick themselves by 2024, unless there’s some other alternative.

Thankfully, this isn’t the end for LEGO, Robotics and Programming, as the platform will still live on in the form of Spike Prime, and we’ll likely see more initiatives here through LEGO Education. Watch this space.

It’s a massive end to an era – since the original Mindstorms launched in 1998, it has been such an influential and important stepping stone and introduction to coding and robotics for kids.

Many programmers and software engineers today, will undoubtedly owe their careers and interest in programming to Mindstorms, especially if they participated in the various leagues and activities that the ecosystem once thrived on.

First LEGO League is also thankfully unaffected by this.

I think this is a pretty sad move, and shows that LEGO is still grappling with its transition to digitise the company, and there seems to be no roadmap to where LEGO is going. They’re still obviously finding it really hard to get software and physical toys to work properly, and give it the support it needs to thrive.

The Mindstorms brand dying is an unfortunate emblem of LEGO’s troubles here, and it’s a huge shame as when it first launched, and through many other iterations, it was the market leader and in some ways, far ahead of its time – something I think that LEGO have squandered from the lack of strategy, direction, especially when many more affordable and accessible STEM/programming related toys are now available for parents.

If you have any fond or happy memories with Mindstorms, please feel free to share them in the comments

Here is LEGO’s official statement:

Since its launch in September 1998, LEGO MINDSTORMS has been one of the core ‘Build & Code’ experiences in the company’s portfolio, carrying with it significant brand equity and becoming a stand-out experience for the early days of consumer robotics and leading to current Build & Code experiences such as SPIKE Prime, from LEGO Education’s LEGO Learning System. 

However, now having a number of priorities in LEGO Education and other Build & Code experiences, we have decided to focus our resources and future plans by redirecting our MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor team and their expertise into different areas of the business.  

This means the physical MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor product (51515) and its related elements (88016 and 88018) are to exit our portfolio from the end of 2022, whilst digital platforms – such as the LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor App – will remain live until at least the end of 2024.  

We still have strong belief in the Build & Code proposition and will continue to support it through platforms such as SPIKE Prime, and we are continuing to hold on to the trademark for the MINDSTORMS brand and assessing our future plans together with LEGO Education. 

So yeah, you’ll still have till end of 2022, or when stocks eventually run out to pick up a copy of 51515 Robot Inventor in case you need any components, but be warned that support for the app will only run till 2024.

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