This year, to celebrate Mario 10th day, the LEGO Group has upped the ante on last year’s 72037 Mario and Standard Kart with a brick-built Luigi with the Mach 8 Kart.
This new set, 72050 LEGO® Mario Kart™ – Luigi & Mach 8 has 2234 pieces and is priced at $AUD 279.99/ £159.99 / €179.99 / $USD179.99. It is available for preorder now, and will be on the shelves on April 1, 2026
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Over the last couple of years, it has become increasingly common for a kid scaled version of a build to be matched up with an ICONS 18+. build, and this time it’s Mario’s turn. To celebrate March 10 (Mar10 day!), the LEGO Group and Nintendo have revealed a new large scale Mario build, complete with a Standard Kart from Mario Kart. The set has 1972 pieces and will be priced at $AUD250/ €169.99 / £139.99 / $USD169.99. It is due for release on May 15th 2025. The model measures 32cm long, 19cm wide and 22 cm high
It’s still March10 (Mar10 Day) in some parts of the world…
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There are a few things that make playing Mario Kart Fun: one is beating the computer powered racers around the track. Another is thwarting the efforts of your families and friends by throwing bananas and shells at them. The Standard Kart was missing any form of Power-up. Today we look at the 72031 Yoshi Bike. With a Brick-built Yoshi, Yoshi themed cycle, and a new Mario Kart ‘?’ Brick, it has the potential to make the race a bit more fun. How will it turn out? Is it worth adding this $AUD19.99/USD14.99/€14.99/ £12.99 set to grid?
Lets take a look. We will explore the build, look at the power-up – use it in a single-player time trial and a two-player race, and see how the experience pans out for us. We shall also see how legacy powerups (Yellow ? blocks, POW, Time Bonus, Star Power and Super Mushroom) work in this setting.
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If you have been following Rambling Brick for a while, you will know that I was quite taken by LEGO Super Mario when it was first released. The timed gameplay provided interesting challenges, maximizing the capabilities of the Smart Brick/Mario figure. Each subsequent year saw new environments and new capabilities. I drifted away over the last year or so, with too many other shiny things providing a distraction, but the Mario Kart wave has piqued my interest again.
Mario Kart on the Wii was the game my family first bonded over on the Nintendo Wii, years ago. Fifteen years later, we still play on the Nintendo Switch from time to time. I was keen to try the LEGO version, so I dropped into my store and (delighted to see the set on the shelves on New Years Eve), picked up the 72032 Standard Kart. With 174 pieces, and priced at $AUD29.99/$USD19.99/€19.99/£17.99, it felt like a reasonable price of entry to the theme. But is it enough on its own?
Let’s take a closer look…
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Back on March 10 (Mario Day), the LEGO Group teased next year’s release of LEGO Mario Kart sets. Today, at the gamescom event in Cologne, six new Mario Kart sets were revealed. The new sets will bring a new look to the Super Mario range when they launch on January 1 2025 and will bring some of the relatively under-represented characters from Super Mario to LEGO Form. We will also see the classic Mario Kart course features: ‘?’ block, wheels and banapeels, to name a few.
To add a layer of digital play, fans can also add a LEGO® Mario™, LEGO® Luigi™ or LEGO® Peach™ (figures not included) to the new Mario Kart sets which takes the interactive experience into high gear when putting one of the figures into the driver’s seat. This includes iconic Mario Kart audio and visual effects for race-starting, horn-honking, kart-drifting and gliding sounds from the game. Players can also use these characters to scan Item Boxes, allowing them to collect extra coins and help boost their score as they finish the race!
Lets take a closer look.
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Its March 10. And in its own special way, this becomes Mar10 – Mario day. To celebrate, the LEGO group have posted a video revealing 3 new LEGO super Mario Play sets, for release in August 2024. In addition to this, LEGO MarioKart has been teased for 2025.
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The Piranha Plant first appeared in Super Mario Brothers, back in 1985 and has been a stalwart enemy of the franchise since that time. We have seen several of these gigantic carnivorous plants crop up in the LEGO Super Mario sets, but they have been a relatively small scale models, designed to be used in the Gamer Mode for LEGO Super Mario. This 540piece sculpture looks like it might promise to bring a little more joy to a bookshelf than previously encountered Piranha Plants. I was delighted when the LEGO Group sent a copy of this set over: it feels that while we have had an onslaught of LEGO sets aimed at adults in recent years, there has been a relative paucity of sets that might come at less than $100 AUD, not releated to flowers, Star Wars or Super Heroes while still leaving enough room on your shelves for other things. This set does both with a RRP of AUD94.99 (59.99USD). This is just shy of the $99.99AUD shelf price of your standard botanical Collection set
So, is this set worthy of your time, real estate and hard earned funds? Lets take a closer look…
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Every year, around this time, we see an adult focussed set drawing inspiration from LEGO Super Mario: be it the Retro TV, the Mario 64 Question Mark Cube or the Mighty Bowser. These sets have drawn heavily on nostalgic aspects of the Super Mario games, to present an artefact that has certainly been a talking point in many households around the wolrd. Each of these sets has had a suitably impressive price tag attached, too (priced from 300-400AUD This year, perhaps as a sign of the times, with cost of living being what it has become in 2023, the scale has been somewhat reduced. This year’s adult focussed LEGO Super Mario set is a shelf sized model of the Pirhana Plant. With 540 pieces, the set will be released on November 6th and priced at $AUD94.99/$USD59.99 / €64.99 / £57.99.
Over recent years, the LEGO Group have been responsive to the cries of adult fans – Give us more, give us bigger – and now it has become apparent that the major problems that these large LEGO sets have give AFOLS are related to two major factors:
We have entered the 4th year of LEGO® Super Mario releases: First we met Mario, and learned to play against the clock. In 2021, we were introduced to Marios bigger brother, Luigi, and learned to play together. Last year, we met Princess Peach, and learned to share gifts with each other with each other. With each year, we have seen new and innovative ways to play as well as a new range of buildable characters.
This year, it feels a little different: There is no new Electronic Smart Character, and no set of Collectable, Buildable Fuigures. We have two subthemes of sets: one takes us back to the earliest days of Nintendo’s electronic entertainment, with Donkey Kong, and his subsequent adventures; and another featuring more Koopalings in flying ships.
Today, we will take a hands-on look at the first of these sets: 71424 Donkey Kong’s Tree House. This is the only set to feature the buildable Donkey Kong, as well as his Grandfather – Cranky Kong. According to lore, Cranky Kong is in fact the original Donkey Kong from the Arcade Game all those years ago. After All these years, I wonder if he has any misgivings towards Mario…
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