The LEGO Mindstorms NXT makes it to TIME Magazine this week in a brief review — probably due to its popularity this holiday season.

I’ll never forget that Christmas morning in 1984 when I got the mother of all Lego sets, the medieval castle, and how happy I was snapping the colored pieces together to build it higher and higher. So it was a special treat for me to open up the latest iteration of the Lego franchise, a sophisticated system of sensors, motors and computer controllers called Lego Mindstorms NXT.