Initial images of next year’s LEGO Super Mario sets reveal that a big change is coming to the theme in 2024 – just not the one you might have expected.
Now heading into its fifth year on shelves, the LEGO Super Mario theme has seemingly been on the brink of big change ever since the LEGO Group brought forward the retirement of its three starter courses from 2026 to 2024. These starter packs are required for the interactive theme’s expansion sets and character packs to function, so news of their departure prompted plenty of discussion about what might come next for LEGO Super Mario.
The first two sets revealed for release in 2024 suggest not much is actually going to change, though – at least immediately – because 71429 Nabbit at Toad’s Shop and 71430 Penguin Family Snow Adventure are both standard expansion packs that require the digital Mario, Luigi or Peach figures to operate. What exactly the LEGO Group has planned for later in 2024 will be more interesting: are we likely to just see rebooted and refreshed starter courses for the same figures, for example?
All that said, there is one pretty monumental shift coming to LEGO Super Mario in 2024. The lifestyle images for those sets (published by German retailer JB Spielwaren) tease physical paper instructions for the models, marking a first for the theme beyond its 18+ range.
Until this point, every LEGO Super Mario starter course, expansion set and character pack has only included a small leaflet pointing builders in the direction of the theme’s app, which has then provided assembly instructions for each product. This was ostensibly to demonstrate to builders how to play and interact with the set at the same time as building it, but it did mean a screen was required for putting it together.
That’s seemingly all set to change from 2024, when 71429 Nabbit at Toad’s Shop and 71430 Penguin Family Snow Adventure arrive with full paper instructions in the box. But we won’t know for sure until we get our hands on the new LEGO Super Mario 2024 sets, because you can’t always rely on official LEGO imagery – those instructions could easily just be for display purposes only, or perhaps a printed version of the PDFs available online for each of the Super Mario sets.
71429 Nabbit at Toad’s Shop and 71430 Penguin Family Snow Adventure launch January 1, 2024 at LEGO.com, priced at €19.99 in Europe (according to JB Spielwaren). We’ll hopefully find out full international pricing soon.
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