Lego Mario & Standard Kart review: Another brilliant piece for older Lego collectors

For the past five years, Lego and Nintendo have certainly been having a special relationship.

Younger Nintendo fans have been kept busy with a slew of interactive Super Mario sets, while the Animal Crossing line has continued to grow at a steady pace too.

Meanwhile, for older collectors, the Danish brickmaker has delivered no fewer than six adult-focused sets over the past half-decade (by which I obviously mean they’re harder to make, not that they have Mario with his bum out or anything).

It started with the Lego Nintendo Entertainment System, followed swiftly by the Super Mario 64 Question Block, a piece so intricately detailed that nobody really minded that Question Blocks in Mario 64 looked nothing like that.

Then came the enormous $270 Mighty Bowser, the rather more affordable $60 Piranha Plant, and the pixel art version of Mario on Yoshi from Super Mario World.

Finally, just to keep Zelda fans happy, a ruddy big 2-in-1 Great Deku Tree, giving many of us the ultimate dilemma of whether to make the Ocarina one, the Breath of the Wild one or buy two sets to make both. The correct answer? Ocarina. I’m not made of money.

When Lego announced that it would soon be making sets based on Mario Kart, the excitement from older collectors such as myself faded slightly when it turned out they were aimed at younger builders again, and would be compatible with the interactive Mario toys already out.

Now, however, Lego has brought adult builders into the Mario Kart celebration with a new $170 / £150 set aimed at ages 18+, the Mario & Standard Kart set (number 72037, if you’re counting).

The set officially launches on May 15, but Lego sent us it in advance so we could show you how it looks in person and determine whether it’s worth a purchase.

Consisting of a healthy 1,972 pieces, there’s no prizes for guessing what the Mario & Standard Kart set depicts. The kart is based on the Mario Kart 8 version, which is naturally what most modern players will be familiar with given Mario Kart 8 is more than a decade old by now.

The building process begins with the kart itself, with builders putting together the internal chassis first before sorting out the external details. Then, after roughly half the bricks have been used up, it’s onto making Mario himself.

The order here goes torso, legs, arms and head, before the full figure can be sat inside the kart. This does mean he can also be removed again, but because he’s in a permanent sitting position it’s not possible to stand him next to the kart.

One thing that can be moved, however, is Mario’s arms. Rather than a completely static figure, it’s possible to at least position his hands so they’re gripping the wheel, or lift one into the air for a traditional ‘wahoo’ pose.

Similarly, Mario’s head can also be turned, meaning you can either have him staring intently forwards at the race ahead of him, or have him looking to the side as if he was getting his photo taken.

Everything in this set is high quality, with no stickers to speak of at all – all the details like Mario’s eyes, his smile, the little circles on his gloves and the M logos on the hat and kart are bespoke pieces with the details printed directly onto them.

This means there’s no risk of spending all that time on such a detailed model then ruining it by putting Mario’s eyes on all squinty. Nobody wins a race when they’ve got one eye on the road and the other eye on the cup.

While the kart works like any standard Lego vehicle in that the wheels work and it can therefore be pushed along the ground, given that it’s a collector’s piece there may be some builders nervous about putting it on the shelf in case it rolls off and shatters into roughly 1,972 separate pieces.

That’s where the supplied stand comes into play. Obviously you have to build it yourself, and once you do you can use the small circular plug at the top to fit the kart – which has a conveniently similar circular hole on the underside – snugly on top of it.

The twist is that this isn’t just a rigid stand: it can actually tilt forwards and backwards. This means you can position the kart in a mid-air action pose, instead of having it just float facing directly forwards as if it was levitating.

By tilting it forwards and leaning the kart on its side, you can give the impression that it’s drifting round a corner. Similarly, by tilting it back, it looks like it’s either boosting forward at high speed or flying through the air.

This brings me to the one issue (albeit a minor one) I have with this set, the lack of customisation. As part of its more kid-focused Mario Kart line, Lego also released a cheaper 174-piece version of the Standard Kart for £17.99 / $19.99 but this one also comes with a glider which can be attached or removed.

If the adult-focused set had included a glider too, it could have made for more variety in how it’s displayed, especially given the fact you can lean the kart back in the stand and make it look as if it’s taking off.

Still, this is a minor quibble for what’s otherwise a solid set that doesn’t have any difficult building moments and, when all’s said and done, looks fantastic on a shelf.