Tag: The Lego Movie

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Lego expands its Super Mario world with customization tools, new Mario power-ups, and more characters

Lego’s partnership with Nintendo delivered a pretty awesome debut earlier this year with the interactive Lego Super Mario Starter Course, and now it’s following that up with additional sets designed to complement the first. These include a new ‘Master Your Adventure Maker Set,’ which adds customization options by tweaking Lego Mario’s response via three new bricks, and a new way to shuffle the rules for each level. Lego and Nintendo are also releasing additional themed Expansion sets, new power-ups for Mario, and a second series of mystery characters to incorporate into level builds.

Image Credits: Nintendo

The Master Your Adventure Maker Set includes 366 pieces in total, and will retail for $59.99. The Expansion sets include a Chain Chomp jungle-themed playset ($19.99), a Piranha Plan puzzle challenge set ($29.99), and a new Poison-themed biome for Mario to explore featuring Wiggler ($39.99). The two new power-ups for Lego Mario are his Penguin suit, and his Tanooki suit, which retail for $9.99 each respectively.

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Each new Series 2 Character Pack retails for $4.99. These come in packaging that doesn’t reveal their contents until opened, adding some degree of chance to which of the new characters you end up with. The Series 2 characters include Huckit Crab, Spiny Cheep Cheep, Ninji, Foo, Parachute Goomba, Fly Guy, Poison Mushroom, Para-Beetle, Thwimp or Bone Goomba.

Image Credits: Nintendo

These will all go on sale starting January 1, both from Lego direct and from its retail partners. That’s just after the holiday rush, which seems like a bit of a miss for what you’d expect would be a popular set of gifts, but Nintendo’s still selling the original starter course and other kits

Hand-crank a level of Super Mario Bros. on Lego’s new 2,646-piece NES kit

Here’s the full lineup of Lego Super Mario sets, due out August 1

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Lego made an International Space Station kit, including Space Shuttle and robotic arm

Lego is releasing an official International Space Station kit, which includes a scale model of the orbital platform, along with a miniature dockable Space Shuttle, a deployable satellite and two astronaut minifigurines. The kit is made up of 864 pieces, and celebrates the science station’s over 20 years in operation. It was originally suggested through Lego’s Ideas platform, which crowdsources ideas from the Lego fan community.

The new kit will be available starting in February, and will retail for $69.99. It looks like a fairly involved kit, and that’s backed up by the recommended age for the assembly being pegged at 16+. The station is presented in al its glory, including its large, fan-like solar power arrays, as well as its docking station, which works with both the Space Shuttle mini model and a cargo capsule that’s also included as part of the set.

As mentioned, there’s also a satellite as part of the kit, and you can make use of the robotic Canadarm that’s also part of the station model to deploy the satellite. Meanwhile, should the ISS require any servicing, two included astronaut minifigs can be tasked with any repairs or upgrades – just like those provided by actual astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir this week to upgrade the lab’s on-board battery systems.

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The real ISS, a collaborative effort between NASA, Russia’s Roscosmos, Europe’s ESA and Canada’s CSA, was first launched in 1998, and has been operating continuously with people on board for just over 19 years (its official 20th ‘operational’ anniversary is this November. The station has exceeded its original intended mission lifespan, but it’s expected to continue serving as an orbital science facility until at least 2030 thanks to mission expansions.

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This Lego Cybertruck is one even Elon can love

Lego already debuted its own take on the divisive Tesla Cybertruck design, but theirs was purely for the lols. This Lego Cybertruck, however, submitted to the official Lego Ideas crowdsourcing website, is actually a remarkably faithful representation, and comes completely with fully articulating tailgate and ‘frunk’ (front truck, for the uninitiated).

The design, by Lego Ideas user ‘BrickinNick,’ recreates the throwback polygonal cyberpunk aesthetic of the actual Cybertruck remarkably well, and BrickinNick says that it could be adapted to have even more moving parts, including opening passenger doors, a slide-out ramp and maybe even a companion Tesla ATV kit so you can replicate the stage demo in even more detail. This would of course mean we absolutely must get a minifig Elon, too – and maybe swappable shattered windows.

Lego Ideas allows anyone to create an account and submit their down design, then the community votes on those submissions. Get enough votes, and Lego will consider actually producing said design as a kit. Obviously, when there’s IP from other companies involved its not a sure thing, but this campaign already has around 2,000 supporters as of this writing, so it’s doing well in the realm of user support.

Love it or hate it, the Cybertruck does make a pretty great Lego design, so here’s hoping this actually one day becomes a shipping kit.

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Lego’s take on the Tesla ‘Cybertruck’ comes with innovative roof racks

Lego seems to have been inspired by recent events to bring its own vision fo the truck of the future to the world – behold this bold design statement in all its glory. Clearly, Lego is having a go at Elon Musk and the Tesla Cybertruck that he unveiled last week – which was… divisive in its reception, to say the least.

The Lego version is “guaranteed shatterproof,” Lego notes on Twitter, which is a jab at the failed demo wherein Musk had designer Franz von Holzhausen hurl a large metal ball at the driver and rear passenger windows of the Cybertruck, only to have them smash instantly upon contact. Musk has since said that this only happened because Holzhausen’s prior sledgehammer strikes to the driver door panel undermined the structure of the windows, but it was still highly memorable and memeable moment.

Despite launch day hiccups and a lot of poking fun at its looks, Musk has said that so far, more than 250,000 customers have signed up and put down a refundable $100 deposit for the Cybertruck, so it’s garnering enough interest for at least that level of commitment.

No word on Lego’s truck availability or pre-orders, but maybe they’ll challenge Ford to a truck duel, too.