I was looking for a Christmas present robot kit for my 8 year old and still on the fence between mindstorms or the makeblock robots. (The Codey Rockey in particular, but the mbot looks really nice too)

I have colleagues that organize coserdojo sessions for young kids fully centered on the makeblock robots. You can program them in scratch to get started, but a push of the button gives you the equivalent Python code once the kids graduate from scratch.

I am surprised to see Lego cancel mindstorms, but it does make the decision easier…