LEGO Discontinues MINDSTORMS, Its Original Robotics Platform

LEGO After a 24-year run, LEGO MINDSTORMS is discontinued. The innovative platform, which allows you to create and manage a LEGO robot, will disappear from stores by the end of 2022. Though as BrickSet notes, software support for MS will continue for at least two years. We aren’t surprised by this news. LEGO hasn’t published a MINDSTORMS kit since the Robot Inventor (51515) launched in 2020. Plus, most schools use LEGO’s latest robotics platform, the education-focused SPIKE Prime—we haven’t heard any significant MS news in a very long time. But it’s nonetheless disappointing to see MINDSTORMS’ death. Unlike SPIKE Prime, which is under the jurisdiction of LEGO Education, MINDSTORMS was a generally-available product. Adults could easily access and create MS kits, and in-person events regularly encouraged people to build MS  robots together. LEGO said that it will redirect the MINDSTORMS staff into “different areas of the business.” Presumably, some members of the MS team will work on SPIKE Prime, while others may construct LEGO sets geared for adults, such as the over-engineered LEGO Mighty Bowser or LEGO Motorized Lighthouse.