LEGO Super Mario Piranha Plant Power Slide Expansion Set 71365 Action Building Toy for Kids (217 Pieces)

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] At first my kids thought this was just a standard Lego set, that was until Mario burst into life leaving them amazed and also intrigued. We built the course together (straightforward as expected from Lego) and then the real fun began. We took it in turns to configure the course in different ways to challenge one another and that was great fun, but as we played more and more the games just kept getting better. We realised that each interactive block gave you more points/bonuses depending how many times you 'jumped' on it, also some characters could make you lose all your coins if you interacted with them too many times. The while family have had much enjoyment creating our own games and will continue to do so by purchasing more expansion packs and also the 'blind bags' of characters.

Build time : 55 minutes, my 3 years old helped me on 30% of the bricks, it was the second set of the day in we were in late afternoon. This is one of the few sets that has the yellow desert bricks (there are 4 in total if we include the launch promo set). In this one we have a variation of the sliding platform for collecting gold coins, but with a wagon and tracks caught between two piranha plants. Having seen my son play with it, just the presence of the piranha plants is a danger for Mario. However, since Mario stays in his wagon, his base will never touch the plants so he has nothing to fear! We still try to move the wagon and we stop as soon as the wagon hits the plants a few times. There is a baby cactus and a mother cactus (they are names used by my son to define them), a time bonus and two other characters (the Koopa Troopa and the Goomba). They are elements to interact with, sometimes we jump over them and sometimes we jump on them. As a parent who helps his child building the set, what I preferred to assemble were the piranha plants. What's interesting is that they don't have barcodes, so it's possible to have all the bricks at home to build more, but I admit that it takes a lot. My son finalized the construction by putting the teeth on them. For him, building the tracks was the most important thing.