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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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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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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We have had another few sets in the August LEGO Super Mario wave revealed. Focusing on life in the jungle with Donkey Kong, his family and his friends. The sets will be available on August 1, 2023. The range continues to mix-up the way in which children can engage with the interactive Mario, Luigi or Peach characters, including sharing food, playing the bongos, flying a plane or just having a chat. Read on for further details.
I seem to be slipping behind with my LEGO Super Mario Reviews: I have a few sets from the current wave remaining to look at (as well as some more from last year); sometime soon, we will see what the LEGO Group have in store for us later in the year.
The figures were released earlier in 2023, and cost USD6.99/AUD9.99 each. I picked up an unopened box at Toybricks. Read on to see who’s inside, and how they score:
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Yoshi is a fan favorite character, and the LEGO Super Mario game has changed the way in which the character his handled since Green Yoshi debuted in 2020’s 71367 Mario’s House and Yoshi. Like that set, this set provides plenty of opportunity for play and experimentation, not necessarily in the setting of the timed game. Let’s take a look at this set, which builds further on the Fruit and gifts mechanic first revealed in the Peach Starter Set. We will take a close look at that mechanic, and see how you can use it to maximise your score.
The set is based around Yoshi’s house and brings us Green Yoshi, Monty Mole, Green and Red Fruit, a present and a…fruit upgrade carousel? That said, I have come through this set with a better knowledge of the fruit powers and gift giving.
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Today we continue our exploration of the 2022 LEGO Super Mario releases by looking at 71398 Dorrie’s Beach front. The Dorrie in question is a pleisiosaur like sea dragon, who first debuted in Super Mario 64. This expansion set brings us a little scenery in fitting with that biome, as well as hidden treaure boxes, a new mechanism to knock over an enemy, as well as a Huckit Crab.
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Bowser’s Airship plays a major role in a number of the Super Mario Games, and the LEGO form has been long awaited by many fans. I should not be surprised by its popularity, we saw a couple of versions of the airship submitted in our ‘What Next for LEGO Super Mario?’ Competition. The ‘Bowser’s Airship expansion’ is the largest expansion set seen to date with LEGO Super Mario sets, with over 1100 pieces. It will be officially on sale on August 1st 2021.
This set was sent over by the LEGO Group for review purposes, and its certainly quite a different experience to the other sets I have built and played with for this wave. It will be prices at $USD 99.99/€99.99, £89.99 and AUD149.99
We will take a look at the parts, the enemies, and some of the ‘action aspects’ of the set, as well as a playthrough video.
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There have been a number of characters who have prominence in the Super Mario Universe that we have been yet to see: Lakitu, a small Koopa like creature, who spends his life flying in a cloud throwing eggs at Mario, or presiding as MC in Mario Kart is one. One of the new Expansion sets exploits both the two player aspect of the new LEGO Super Mario game, as well as introduces this enemy to the roster of opponent that Mario and Luigi now face.
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The LEGO Group today has revealed the third wave of LEGO Super Mario Character Packs on Twitter. These figures are due for release due for release on 1st August. As with the last few waves, I expect they will be fun, affordable characters, so long as you can find them in store!
The new characters include: Galoomba, Parachute Bob-omb, Crowber, Boo, Amp, Torpedo Ted, Bony Beetle, 1-Up Mushroom, Scuttlebug and Swoop.
I really enjoy the way that LEGO Super Mario provides a fresh way for playing with LEGO, while tying in to the nostalgic video game franchise. I hope to be able to continue reviewing the new expansion sets during the next wave, and am excited to find out what’s coming soon. Hopefully, will will see the full wave revealed at LEGOCon, later in the month.
I presume the majority of characters will be worth a single coin when scanned, in keeping with previous collectable figures, but there are always a couple of characters in each set that exhibit special behaviours:
Read on for closer images, as well as my predictions as to their ‘in game’ behaviour.
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