DUPLO JAMS
- Brand
- LEGO
- Year
- 2011
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Other
- Mechanic
- Music & Rhythm
- Platform
- App
- Agency
- Apptitude
- With
- Pereira & O'Dell
Objective
LEGO wanted DUPLO to live beyond the living-room floor and become an everyday presence for families with 2-5 year olds. The brand framed it as moving from one-off building moments to a fully immersive experience, giving parents a screen-based activity tied to creativity and early development. It also kept DUPLO in front of families between toy purchases through a year of monthly content drops.
Solution
Kids open the free app to a menu of six bright worlds — space, farm, ocean, race track, train, and a letters world — each set to its own DUPLO JAMS song. Picking a world starts the song playing over a simple animation, and tapping anything on screen triggers a color change, a sound, or a small action tied to what's touched. Each world has its own mini-game folded into the song: tap blue bricks to launch a rocket, swipe to speed up a race car, catch bricks falling for a passing train, pop bubbles, or match pairs in a memory game. Kids can also record up to three sounds of their own with the microphone and mix them into the scene before moving on to the next world.
- 1
The player opens the free LEGO DUPLO JAMS app on iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad — a touchscreen title built for ages 2 to 5, designed around a child's first taps and swipes.
- 2
A main menu presents six scene-worlds to choose from — space, farm/zoo and ocean, a race, a train, a letters world, and a night mode — each built around its own song. The player picks one and enters.
- 3
Inside a scene, the song plays and the artwork animates on its own — a DUPLO brick train rolling through a forest, for instance — so the player can simply watch and listen. Tapping any object in the scene triggers a sound or visual response, such as a rainbow changing color; this touch-everything sandbox is the app's core loop.
- 4
In "Sort Out the Blues," a space-themed scene set to a blues track, the player taps flying bricks and must pick out the blue ones — hitting blue accelerates the rocket, while other colors do nothing, turning the song into a color-recognition and sorting exercise.
- 5
In "Brick Racer," the player swipes right to speed up a brick-built race car and taps the car and scenery to trigger sounds and effects as it drives through the landscape.
- 6
In "Stick Together," the player keeps a DUPLO train moving by catching bricks that fall from above and touching objects along the track, set to a song about cooperation and coordination.
- 7
In "Build with Letters," set to a brit-pop track, the player pops bubbles and assembles letter bricks, introducing the alphabet.
- 8
In "Barnyard Serenade," the player plays a memory game with animal cards, flipping them to find matching pairs from a fixed set of three pairs that stays the same across sessions.
- 9
In any scene, the player can use the microphone to record up to three original sounds, which are then folded into that scene's soundscape alongside its own effects, personalizing each world.
- 10
A separate night mode offers a calm, non-interactive scene of jumping sheep and DUPLO bricks set to a lullaby, meant for winding down rather than play. Outside the app, parents can subscribe for free to the LEGO DUPLO JAMS podcast on iTunes, which released new songs roughly monthly through 2011.
