LEGO Nintendo 72046 Game Boy is arguably the most popular set of the year, especially at that price – and it opens up a lot of potential doors.
72046 Game Boy ticks every box: it looks good, it's well-priced, and it's just as fun to interact with once built as it is to put together. Part of what makes it so great is how tactile it is. The On/Off button clicks each way with the same force as the original handheld did, while the buttons on the front can move around with the exact same amount of pressure as we used to play with.
The LEGO Super Mario set is, at its core, an affordable set that brings LEGO magic to an interactive handheld device. It's so good in fact that it's got us wanting more, perhaps from some other licensed themes out there.
LEGO Star Trek
Now that we've finally got LEGO Star Trek, the LEGO Group could expand the collection not with more brick-built ships as many might expect them to, but in a direction closer to 72046 Game Boy. The Star Trek characters use a number of handheld devices that could be recreated one-to-one. That includes the phaser (although this might be too close to a weapon for the LEGO Group, despite it not resembling a traditional gun), or even the communicator that fixes to the front of the characters' uniforms.
What we'd most like to see, however, is the tricorder. It feels like the right size with the right level of detail to deliver a truly impressive LEGO set, similar in scale to 72046 Game Boy. It would offer something new in a LEGO set, rather than Star Trek following in the well-trodden territory of LEGO Star Wars recreating various ships (although we wouldn't say no to more ships).
LEGO Star Wars
Speaking of LEGO Star Wars, the jokes about endless big grey ships are funny because they are kind of true. The theme has tried to diversify with buildable characters and playing around with scale via its midi-scale ships, but we want to see them go even further.
The popularity of 40730 Luke Skywalker's Lightsaber as a GWP is all the proof we need that a modern purchasable brick-built lightsaber (or even a collection of them) would go down a treat, but there are other options out there too.
We often see Star Wars characters use holoprojectors to transmit images or communicate with one another throughout the galaxy. A brick-built version of the handheld pod could even feature different trans-blue figures of people or ships to swap out, as if the projector was in use.
LEGO The Lord of the Rings
Last but not least, it's not technically a handheld device, but it's as close to technology as you might get in the world of Middle-earth. The palantir is a magical seeing stone that is used to both communicate and observe across the land. Being spherical and made of black glass, it would be quite a LEGO feat to recreate accurately, while also looking very dramatic on display.
The LEGO Group does seem to be starting to experiment with its LEGO The Lord of the Rings formula, debuting two sets this year that are smaller and more affordable than 10316 The Lord of the Rings: Rivendell and 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr – so perhaps we're not far off this smaller, more display-friendly model.
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