How LEGO Accidentally Reignited the Console Wars: A Comparison of LEGO Mario to LEGO Sonic (and how both could be improved)
Luke Canady
A child of God (Christian); aspiring screenwriter and character designer; creator of Christian cartoon concept Eternity Kingdoms; attending Ball State University for MDIA Master’s Degree and working as a custodian there
The 1990s: A time of political intrigue, Power Rangers, TMNT wannabes and vitriol between video game companies.
If you were born between between 1986 and 1995, you were probably a veteran of what is now considered "the console wars". In one corner, you had Nintendo, the savior of the American gaming industry riding high off of its success with the Nintendo Entertainment System and continuing to innovate (Ninnovate?) with the handheld Game Boy and Super NES. In the other corner, you had SEGA, who'd found success with their SEGA Genesis after creating a zippy blue hedgehog with an attitude to serve as their mascot and created a handheld with a color screen and a diet for battery after battery known as the Game Gear. And both parties hated one another.
SEGA saw Nintendo as a proud old fart that needed to be dethroned; Nintendo saw SEGA as an arrogant brat they could outdo simply by doing what they'd always did- make good games worthy of the Nintendo Seal of Quality. The two companies attacked one another through their advertising, portraying the other company's fans as buffoons who either gave themselves brain damage to get color on the Game Boy (see here) or couldn't do the math necessary to understand that a Super NES with Super Mario World and Super Mario All-Stars was a better value than a Genesis with only Sonic 1 (see here).
By the end of the 16-bit console wars in 1996 (which is when I consider the era to have ended since Sony, Sega and Nintendo had all put out their 32-bit or 64-bit consoles by then), Nintendo ended up as the victor. SEGA kept trying to outdo Nintendo with chintzy add-ons for and offshoots of the Genesis; Nintendo simply pressed onward and made good games that reflected their design ethos. It was less about pushing boundaries and more about making something that was functional and fun- FUN-ctional, if you would.
It's been about 27 years since that last bout between Nintendo and SEGA occurred. SEGA dropped out of making consoles following the back-to-back failures of the SEGA Saturn and Dreamcast and became rather close with Nintendo following the release of the GameCube in 2001 (heck, they made tail-end Dreamcast release Sonic Adventure 2 one of the first GC releases). One would assume that there'd be no real reason for Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog to be rival franchises again...
... but that someone would be wrong.
It's no longer a battle waged between two video game consoles. Rather, it's waged between two ranges of toys produced by the same company. Since 2020 and 2023, respectively, LEGO has produced sets based on the Mario and Sonic franchises. However, the approach the Danish automatic binding brick company took with each series was different. One was given an almost entirely new system of play to work with; the other was kept traditional but hasn't quite gone all in on its potential.
This article is a direct comparison between LEGO Super Mario and LEGO Sonic the Hedgehog and what I think both themes could be doing better. Think of it as a spiritual successor to my "LEGO and DC" article (read here) from August 2023. Join me, why don't you?
Let's-a-gotta-go-fast!
LEGO SUPER MARIO: A Brick Too Far
Before we get too deep into discussing LEGO Super Mario, I think it's important to provide some context for why the theme is what it is. Prior to LEGO receiving the Mario license in 2020, K'NEX L.P.G. was the license-holder for Mario construction toys. They began in 2011 with sets based on Mario Kart Wii, which featured motorized and/or pull-back karts as well as buildable figurines. This expanded out into sets based on Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart 8, although these were unable to replicate the gimmicks of those games (MK7's gliding and underwater sections as well as MK8's anti-gravity racing).
2013 marked the start of K'Nex's first construction sets based on the larger Mario franchise, resulting in sets based on the most recent games at the time. These carried over figures from the Mario Kart sets, although this often created awkward scale issues such as Goombas towering over Mario and Luigi due to them being scaled to be obstacles for the karts rather than easily-squished-by-the-Bros foes. I picked up two sets around August 2013- one being a generic set featuring a Bullet Bill launcher, the other being a New Super Mario Bros. 2-inspired castle with crushing Thwomps, Fire Mario, and Silver Luigi.
As a LEGO enthusiast first and foremost, I found K'Nex's Mario sets to be rather disappointing. The figures themselves were quite nice and felt like LEGO minifigure-adjacent renditions of Mario and Luigi, but the enemies' awkward scaling bugged me quite a bit. Much of the detail in the build was created through stickers on flat panels (that you'd sometimes have to damage in order to hang coins from the wall; real smart design decision there, guys), resulting in sets that felt like half-finished dioramas rather than fully-realized playsets.
The build process was also quite tedious and not terribly friendly towards my thumbs, especially on the Thwomp castle set. Ultimately, I left both sets feeling kinda meh towards them. The figures were a delight and the "jumping" gimmick was cute (it was done better than LEGO's minifigure-damaging "Super Jumper" piece, honestly), but the build and end results just weren't worth it. Ergo, I decided to stop collecting K'Nex's Mario sets then and there.
K'Nex would go onto produce some more Mario sets, and among their greatest successes were series of blind-bagged figures from the larger sets (seems they recognized their strength early on). Apparently K'Nex did this with several of their licenses, which had the humorous results of Mario and Family Guy K'Nex blind-bags being on store shelves at the same time in 2014. No, I'm not kidding. K'Nex somehow got the Family Guy license and sold it at general retail! That kinda sounds like the set-up for a cutaway gag.
Chris: "Dad, I don't get why you want to make a deal with LEGO so bad. Can't we just do it with some other building brick company?."
Peter: "Chris, if we don't make the deal with LEGO, we're gonna have to settle for some second-rate knock-off like we did back in 2014."
[Cut to a still image of the K'Nex versions of the Griffin family from the Family Guy sets w/ eerie music overlaid atop it]
However, K'Nex ceased making any and all licensed sets following their purchase by Basic Fun! in 2018, resulting in the end of their Mario range of products. Three years later, LEGO picked up the license. If I had a nickel for every time LEGO picked up the rights to do sets based on a popular video game franchise after K'Nex lost the license three years prior, I'd have two nickels*- which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
*The other time it happened was with the Angry Birds license. K'Nex did sets based on the original game and the Space spin-off; LEGO did sets based on the first animated movie which were surprisingly better than expected. Unfortunately, the sets sold poorly and the molds for the birds and pigs ended up in the hands of a B-list company calling themselves Edukie, who produced officially licensed building sets based on the second film and then fell off the face of the Earth.
LEGO Super Mario's development process is unknown, but what we do know (my source is this video) is that LEGO themselves came up with the idea for how the theme would be executed, not Nintendo. You'd think that Nintendo was responsible for the idea of an electronic Mario figure that could interact with its surroundings considering how much they enjoy doing something radically different from their competition (ex: the Wii U), but no. They were game for normal Mario sets with minifigures, but LEGO wanted to do something new and different.
Instead of traditional sets with minifigures that sought to recreate certain locales from the Mario franchise as a whole, LEGO Super Mario was more focused on building your own courses using customizable modules spread throughout various sets and "playing through" them using an electronic Mario figure. While there were many people skeptical about this direction (people had wanted Mario minifigures for years), the sets proved to be incredibly popular and got the ball rolling for the next few years.
Year 1 of LEGO Super Mario (2020) wasn't half bad. There was a small set homaging Mario's house from the first three Paper Mario games (a surprisingly deep cut given how much Nintendo tried to avoid referencing those games despite them remaining the best three Paper Mario games), there was a big castle for Mario to fight Bowser in, a fortress that I interpreted as an homage to the castle from the end of each world of the original Super Mario Bros., and various "challenges" designed around certain enemies. Bowser and his minions were an easy highlight of year 1 for me, using both new parts and cleverly-used old parts to craft extremely accurate versions of the series' villains.
Of course, we can't go forward without talking about LEGO Mario himself. Ironically, the namesake of LEGO Super Mario is perhaps the divisive part of the theme. On one hand, he's a well-programmed piece of tech that can recognize what color of LEGO he's standing on, when he gets a power-up, or when he "stomps" on an enemy. On the other hand, though, he's drastically out of scale with his opponents (especially Bowser), needs to be turned on at all times or else he'll look quite unnerving (his eyes, mouth and part of his chest are all LCD screens), and he's a prerequisite to enjoy the theme as a whole.
See, if you wanted to actually build anything that wasn't the blind-bagged (later blind-boxed from late 2022 until early 2023) enemies or packs containing "power-up" accessories for Mario, you would need the LEGO Super Mario app and the electronic Mario figure from the "Adventures with Mario Starter Set". The instructions for anything above $15 were locked behind the app until 2024, and I can imagine that had to have been quite frustrating for parents trying to keep their kids off those dang phones and tablets. It didn't help that the app was necessary to update LEGO Mario and electronic figures like him through a Bluetooth connection with each new batch of sets' release, so if you bought the sets without the Wi-Fi connection necessary to update Mario or download the instructions, you were kinda screwed.
In my opinion, LEGO needs to get their noses out of app integration. Parents buy LEGO for their children because they know it fosters their imagination- it'll foster their imagination infinitely more than mindless scrolling through the depths of social media or video-sharing sites. And for LEGO to basically force app integration through themes like Hidden Side (2019-2020) and Vidiyo (2021) is usually a no-go for parents. Those themes were crippled by their dependency on their corresponding apps, and they flopped HARD because of it.
Somehow, LEGO Super Mario has mostly escaped the ire of parents who want LEGO to remain analog, and I think that's because there's still some human involvement. You don't need the app to fully enjoy the sets- you could just print out the instructions for whatever set you bought from LEGO's website (the only option for physical LEGO Mario instructions for quite some time) and just play with it as is. Still, though, it's incredibly frustrating that so much of LEGO Super Mario depends on technology in an age where kids would be better off with toys that don't require them to interface with it every waking moment.
Year 2 opened up with an explicitly themed bunch of sets based around the poisonous swamps of New Super Mario Bros. U's Soda Jungle (complete with a LEGO version of the Bramble enemy which debuted in NSMBU). It also marked the release of the first of the Koopalings, the young minions (formerly children; unfortunately, Bowser Jr's introduction led to the Koopalings being retconned into having no relation to the Koopa King) of Bowser who first appeared in Super Mario Bros. 3. Larry was LEGO's first Koopaling, and between 2021 and 2024, LEGO slowly released the rest of them.
However, the most exciting part of year 2 had to have been the release of a LEGO Luigi, finally reuniting the brothers Mario. While the theming for the summer wave of sets was a bit more slipshod (being primarily tower and castle-themed with some odd ducks standing out like sore thumbs), you could still see LEGO was putting a lot into it- for example, making both franchise staple Lakitu (tragically only in one 2021 set, although that may change in a year or so) and the Super Mario World minibosses known as the Reznors. The best set of the wave was Bowser's airship, which was a massive, meaty build that made surprisingly few compromises to work with the "Course Builder" system and worked well as a display piece.
Speaking of display pieces, I should probably mention the LEGO Mario 18+ sets. No, they weren't a recreation of Peach's "???" from Super Mario RPG, but rather nostalgic items or things from the past. 2020 got a set featuring an NES, a copy of Super Mario Bros., and a CRT TV; 2021 got a Super Mario 64-themed diorama that hid away inside a "?" Block (bafflingly, it used the more traditional "?" Block design instead of Mario 64's own "?" Block design). These are perhaps the best LEGO Mario offerings we've gotten thanks to their focus on providing both solid builds/playability and displayability, and they've only improved since 2021.
The last era of LEGO Mario I could really praise is the first batch of sets from year 3 (2022). Aside from a duo of seaside-themed sets, there were sets themed around the Luigi's Mansion games- my personal favorites of the theme. Not only were the builds more substantial than the average "expansion pack" set (actual structures instead of just piles of 4x4 tiles linked together by 2x8 or 2x10 plates), but it's clear the designers did their research in capturing aspects of all 3 Luigi's Mansion titles (even if they were leaning the hardest into the first game's trappings).
Also, Luigi got a "power-up" accessory that was exclusive to him- the ghost-sucking vacuum known as the Poltergust 5000 (with some darker overalls to go with it). While all the power-up parts made with Mario in mind were cross-compatible with the LEGO Luigi figure, some of them just didn't look right due to them being themed to Mario's colors. But here the Poltergust was to show that yes, character-specific power-ups could be done, and LEGO's designers knocked it out of the park. They even found a way to integrate the vacuum's ability to suck up ghosts into the LEGO Mario system!
Unfortunately, the beach/Luigi's Mansion wave was the last great batch of LEGO Super Mario sets. From August 2022 and onwards, the theme began a decline that it's yet to fully recover from. It began with the "Adventures with Peach Starter Set", which introduced Princess Peach to the theme... as an electronic figure like Mario and Luigi. While the set she's included in has the least terrible price-to-part ratio of the three starter sets (it was 354 pieces for $60 in contrast to Mario and Luigi's sets being around 200-something pieces for that same price) and it included Lemmy (my favorite of the Koopalings), the builds within seemed very scattershot, including a new "gift" mechanic that allowed the figures to "give" each other treats (it was dropped sometime after this).
Not only that, but I find Peach being an electronic figure to be rather frustrating because there's no way for her to be kidnapped by Bowser. This isn't to say I think Peach should've been a blocky, brick-built figurine or that I think she shouldn't have been made a "playable character" because I believe female characters in video games were at their best when they were just helpless, docile damsels- far from it. If a little girl and/or Peach enthusiast was made happy by her inclusion as an electronic figure, that's great. I personally enjoy seeing Peach engage in the same jumping and Goomba-stomping that the boys do, too.
It's just that I think some kids wanted to have a Princess Peach that their Mario and/or Luigi could rescue from Bowser like in the games. The electronic Peach is huge compared to Bowser! If I were a kid, I'd've preferred if there were two styles of Peach to work with- one being the electronic figure we got, and the other being a smaller figure that could be "kidnapped" by Bowser. Better yet, considering the 18+ set of 2022 was a massive Bowser puppet, why didn't LEGO's designers incorporate a "Mario, help me!" mode that activated when that "Mighty Bowser" set held her in its hands.
Aside from a cute Super Mario World homage set (recreating Yoshi's house from the game), the Peach wave was a mess. You'd think getting sets based on Peach's Castle would be a dream come true, but the resulting sets were extremely compromised to work within the Course Builder system, with more focus being placed on a playable interior than a good-looking exterior. There were a few sky-based sets, but they seemed rather chintzy compared to what had released even a year prior (the Lakitu set). Granted, the brick-built characters were still a delight (and I'm happy that Peach got her own dedicated version of the Cat power-up parts), but the actual structures of the sets seemed to be getting lazier and lazier as time went on.
One of the Summer 2022 wave's highlights was the "Big Bad Island" set, which included Iggy of the Koopalings and some super-sized members of Bowser's minions. It's one of the rare Course Builder sets that worked as just a display piece and it's a cute homage to Giant Land from Super Mario Bros. 3- even more so when you consider that Iggy was the boss the brothers Mario fought in that area. Frustratingly, this and a set from 2023 locked 3/7ths of the Koopalings behind difficult to find* and surprisingly expensive sets, leaving many collectors' Koopaling collections incomplete.
*I never saw Big Bad Island or 2023's "Larry and Morton's Airships" in person in any store in my area. Maybe they weren't stupid rare in other areas, but still.
That brings us to 2023- what I consider to be the worst year of LEGO Mario. It began with a wave of sets that, while creative, were incredibly incoherent in regards to theming (two ice world sets, one desert set, one grasslands set meant to go with Peach, one castle/lava set, and one miscellaneous set that had bits and bobs from every area) and the final batch of mystery-packed characters. The loss of the mystery-packed characters in particular kind of stings when you consider that the fifth and sixth series had stepped up their game in regards to the builds included, with more detailed scenery and wilder character choices (some of them even offered up multiple characters, like the Cat Goombas).
What I will argue is LEGO Super Mario's greatest mistake was its failure to do minifigure versions of Mario, Luigi, Peach, the Toads both specific and non-specific, and the Yoshi species at large. While this was an issue for many since the theme began, the increasingly sloppier builds and looser theming across the 2022-onward sets only amplified grumblings against it. However, I'd argue that LEGO's hyper-focus on the Course Builder system reached its nadir in 2023 for two reasons: the Donkey Kong Country sets and the failure to make ANYTHING for The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
Now, when I bring up Donkey Kong Country, one would assume that LEGO would make an electronic figure of DK himself and make the other characters brick-built like the Toads, Yoshis, and armies of Bowser. That would've been preferable to what we got, though. Instead of making an electronic DK figure, LEGO chose to make a brick-built Donkey Kong that had a strange harness gimmick that allowed you to put Mario/Luigi/Peach on his back and "play" as Donkey Kong.
This was utterly baffling. First off, the DKC games are almost entirely separated from the larger Mario franchise save for Mario cameoing in the second game if you achieved certain goals (with the red and white sneakers of a certain blue hedgehog in a trash can reading "no hopers"), so for LEGO to treat Mario, Luigi and Peach intruding on what seemed like otherwise ordinary DKC sets felt wrong. Second, Mario has never rode on DK's back in any Mario media, although one can presume that LEGO included this as a nod to how DK would let smaller Kongs like Diddy, Dixie, or his grandfather Cranky ride on his back. And lastly, while this would've been a perfect opportunity to do LEGO versions of DKC villains like the Kremlings, the Tiki Tong Tribe, or the Snowmads, they instead chose to only do a mole from a mine cart level. A single, solitary mole- oh joy.
To compound matters, the builds were just as compromised as 2022's Peach's Castle-themed sets, resulting in overpriced, hollow playsets that put so much emphasis on the play that they forget to look good in the process. While I'd love to praise the fact LEGO did all the Kongs that Nintendo is willing to acknowledge (DK, Diddy, Dixie, Cranky, and surfer dude pilot Funky Kong), the fact that none of them have printed mouths just leaves them feeling soulless. If LEGO intended the slit between the two rounded 2x1 bricks to work as a mouth... admittedly, it's somewhat clever, but it just leaves them looking like they had a freak accident that resulted in the Kongs becoming half-Funko Pops.
The actual Mario sets weren't much better, with a pathetic attempt at recreating the Mario's house set from year 1 being balanced out by a better-than-average "Dry Bowser's Castle Battle" set. That one earns points from me for how solid the build is compared to everything around it and how close it gets to having all-skeletal enemies, with the Bone Goomba and Bone Piranha Plant flanking Bowser's reanimated bones... and then you just have a Lava Blarggh over in the corner, pondering its life choices. I mean, it's not a terrible choice, but I'd've swapped it out for a Dry Bones for the sake of cohesive theming.
2023's only saving grace was the 18+ Piranha Plant set, which not only was a lovely display piece, but was surprisingly cheap for a set marketed towards its target audience. For context, most of the 18+ sets are in the $100+ range, so for this one to release at only $60 was a treat. It's also a perfect companion piece to the Big Bad Island set from the previous year since it could easily be repurposed as one of Giant Land's native Piranha Plants due to how gargantuan it is compared to its Course Builder-scale brethren.
With all that said about what released in 2023, let's talk about what didn't release that year- sets based on The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Words cannot describe how maddening sets based on the film NOT releasing was, especially given how well the film did financially. You would think that as one of Nintendo AND Universal's licensees, LEGO would've gone ham with doing sets based on the movie- but they didn't, instead giving us "Mario's Kong Rodeo" (as I sarcastically call the DK Course Builder sets) and sloppy leftovers (and the Piranha Plant too).
However, I have a few theories as to why there weren't LEGO Super Mario Bros. Movie sets. One theory is what I've dubbed "the Minions theory" (bear with me; this is going somewhere). See, in 2020, right after revealing the first teaser of LEGO Mario to the world, LEGO announced a series of sets based on the then-scheduled-to-release in 2020 Minions: The Rise of Gru. However, due to a series of pandemic-induced delays, LEGO ended up retiring all the Rise of Gru sets before the film finally released in 2022.
I'm going to assume this gave LEGO hesitance to go forward with any future Universal licenses until they were certain the film was coming out on time. Ergo, when they were presumably approached by Universal with the opportunity to do sets based on the Mario movie (which ended up getting delayed from December 2022 to April 2023), they got cold feet and politely refused. Alternatively, I think LEGO turned down the offer to do LEGO Mario Movie sets because it would've required them to either 1) create movie-themed Course Builder accessories and sets that would've needed audio from the film's cast or 2) create minifigure-scaled sets and, with them, actual Mario minifigures.
Neither of these options sounded good to LEGO considering how well the Course Builder system had been doing, so they turned down the opportunity because they were confident their "evergreen" sets would do fine. Besides, the last time they derailed an exaggerated, stylized theme to dedicate an entire batch of product to a risky movie was their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles range, and those sold so badly that LEGO ended up canning the entire theme*. Ergo, sets based on The Super Mario Bros. Movie didn't happen, and that's a crying shame because I could and still can see boatloads of potential within sets based on the film.
*Granted, LEGO TMNT had other things stacked against it- LEGO's own Ninjago had come out of retirement thanks to fan outcry against its early discontinuation, LEGO wasn't keeping up with the 2012 animated series as fast as I assume Nickelodeon would've liked them to, and the theme as a whole just seemed repetitive with how many copies of each Turtle you'd end up with by the end of each year. Ironic given how the 2014 movie-based sets were probably the best things LEGO did with the license.
There was the Kongs' city! There was the Mario Kart sequence! There was Peach's Castle! There was Bowser's throne! There was Mario and Luigi's plumbing van! All of that was right there, and yet LEGO chose to look the other way and give us more Course Builder stuff that wasn't even that accurate to the games anymore. By the time the Donkey Kong and vanilla Mario sets were out, the Mario franchise was back in a "weird era".
What I mean by that is that Nintendo was willing to get weird and experimental with the franchise again. Sure, things had technically been that way since 2017 with the launch of the Nintendo Switch, but it wasn't until the movie's runaway success and the release of the delightfully bonkers Super Mario Bros. Wonder in 2023 that the "weird era" was back in full swing. Heck, with the release of remakes of both 1996's Super Mario RPG and 2004's Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door in 2023 and 2024 as well as 2024's Mario and Luigi: Brothership, respectively, it seems like the series is willing to invest in telling bigger stories once more.
And here you have LEGO Mario, a reflection of those six years between 2011 and 2016 when Mario felt... hollow. Not in that the series was soulless, mind you; there were still innovative, clever games like Super Mario 3D World, Mario and Luigi: Dream Team, Mario Kart 8 and Super Mario Maker being made. It's just that there was just an emptiness that could be felt in this era whenever you looked at a Mario game, as if the developers went to a list of pre-approved characters and species, hit the randomize button, and picked out what they wanted to include in [insert Mario mainline or spin-off game here], resulting in very paint-by-numbers experiences that weren't all that memorable.
The LEGO Mario theme would've been just fine a decade ago, but now it feels like a relic of an era that many are glad the franchise is moving on from. Where are the sets based on Luigi's Mansion 3 with all of its weird and wild poltergeists for Luigi to foil with the Poltergust? Where's a wave of sets as dedicated to Super Mario Sunshine as the Luigi's Mansion sets were? Where were the Mario Odyssey-themed sets? All of those would've been great, and yet all we've been getting are generic Mario sets that occasionally dabbled in spin-off titles.
Thankfully, it seems like 2024 is the start of a turning point for LEGO Super Mario. For starters, they began to include physical instructions with every set. It's about two years too late, but it's welcomed. Bowser's muscle car from Super Mario 3D World became the cheapest way to get the Koopa King, Mario 64 got more love in the form of sets homaging Cool, Cool Mountain and Jolly Roger Bay, and even the Mario Party minigame "Messy Memory" got some love in the form of a set focused on a Toad Shop. The January wave was already an improvement...
... and then I saw what the summer batch of sets would be offering up. The Mario, Luigi, and Peach starter sets all got refreshes with redesigned versions of their electronic figures that swap out their need for batteries for a permanent rechargeable battery that can be charged via a USB-C cable. While I'd rather LEGO get rid of the electronic figures (or just make them optional via introducing minifigures), this is a welcome change since it means less battery purchases are needed. Doesn't hurt that the new starter sets are all $10 cheaper, too.
The rest of the summer sets look like a delight, almost as if LEGO realized the builds of the 2023 sets were too puny and spindly compared to their other ranges before I even brought that complaint forth here. Soda Jungle from New Super Mario Bros. U got a whole "maker" set (encouraging builders to use its parts to expand upon the Soda Jungle-themed sets from years past), the Bowser train from 3D World got a faithful polygon-to-plastic translation, and both King Boo's ghost house and Peach's castle got fuller, better-constructed redos. It's the best wave since the beach/Luigi's Mansion wave back in 2022, and I hope that LEGO keeps the theme going in this direction.
Also, 2024's 18+ offering is a recreation of Mario riding Yoshi as they appeared in Yoshi's debut game Super Mario World. It's the first time LEGO has tried to recreate the sprites of the video games since 2020's NES set, and while I'm not a fan of sets that require excessive tile placement, it's a very pretty display piece with a fun gimmick that animates the whole thing as you turn a crank. You can even make Yoshi stick out his tongue!
Overall, LEGO Super Mario has been... frustrating. While it's sold incredibly well and there's a lot that it's done that I like, there's still a lot that I don't. The electronic figures are holding the theme back (see how Donkey Kong was handled) and there were and still are some builds and price-per-piece ratios that would be pitiful if they were for any other theme. But I can't stay mad at it when it does smart things like the Luigi's Mansion wave and when LEGO themselves listen to customer feedback (as 2024 has demonstrated). Hopefully this improvement in quality sticks around for the Mario franchise's 40th in 2025!
LEGO SONIC THE HEDGEHOG: Gotta Go Faster (But Not THAT Much)
Unlike Mario, the closest thing that the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise had to a series of building sets prior to SEGA partnering up with LEGO were a few sets made by Meccano. Yes, the Erector folks. These sets were themed around the 2010 Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing video game, resulting in them being focused on building cars for Sonic and other characters... unfortunately, by "other characters", I mean only Knuckles.
The Meccano Sonic sets were decidedly poor, with the Sonic & Knuckles (tee hee) figures being stuck in awkward poses meant to help them ride their included vehicles and only doing a select batch of locations from the aforementioned ... and SEGA All-Stars Racing as tracks for the Sonic and Knuckles vehicles to zip around on. Considering these came out in 2012, it's possible that these sets were designed to be competition for K'Nex's Mario Kart sets. Since Meccano never produced anything past two karts and three sets, you would be right to assume that Meccano's Sonic range was a failure.
Four years passed, and during the tail end of the "toys-to-life" wars (which started with Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure in 2011 and ended with Skylanders: Imaginators in 2016; only Nintendo's amiibo figurines have survived and kept their place on store shelves), SEGA allowed for LEGO and Traveler's Tales to slot Sonic into their massive crossover toys-to-life game LEGO Dimensions. While Dimensions was a failure thanks to poor optimization on the Wii U, certain characters being impossible to find, and pricey expansion packs, it's hard to find anyone who'd argue against the Sonic expansion being a hit.
Through the purchase of the Sonic "Story Pack", one would gain access to micro-builds of Sonic's car from ... and SEGA All-Stars Racing and plane as well as a minifigure of Sonic himself. For LEGO's first attempt at doing a Sonic minifigure, they nailed him on their first try. He was the right shade of azure, he had the necessary printing and molding to capture the likeness of his shoes, belly, and gloves, and he had a big molded head piece that was ready-made to be modified with new expressions suppose the Dimensions pack led to a full Sonic theme.
Oh, and you got a new level for LEGO Dimensions itself too. This level served as a self-deprecating, silly journey across Sonic's world that saw Sonic trying to save his friends from Doctor Eggman and led into a larger open-world area that touched on various locales from early games. Keep in mind, "Sonic Dimensions" released during what many call the "meta era" of Sonic, a time when the franchise took seemingly endless jabs at itself and never took itself seriously because of critics lambasting the series trying to be "too serious" in the late 2000s (all it took was Sonic '06 being terrible after a few mediocre at worst games, and suddenly the entire franchise's reputation is called into question).
While some of the "ha ha, this part of Sonic's history was dumb" jokes get rather groan-worthy, it's by no means a bad campaign. Traveler's Tales clearly understood what makes a good Sonic game (they developed Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic R, after all): the sections based on past levels were clever and they got to slot in all sorts of references to almost all corners of the franchise. Not only that, but they got to design LEGO versions of characters who wouldn't get physical versions until 2023 at the earliest (some of them being more accurate to their Dimensions designs than others; looking at you, Eggman). It's overall quite the solid experience and the physical Sonic minifigure was a bonus.
Following the end of LEGO Dimensions in 2017, LEGO didn't really do anything with the Sonic license until 2022. A Sonic Mania-inspired set based on that game's depiction of Green Hill Zone (complete with the Death Egg Robot) was pitched using LEGO's "Ideas" platform. As pitched, the set looked like it'd be great, especially as someone who's played Mania over and over again. It had an alternate build, incentive to buy two of them (both builds would give you the full coster of Mania's colorful squad of Eggman goons known as the Hard-Boiled Heavies), and clever parts usage.
The set concept was approved by LEGO... and unfortunately, when it finally released in 2022, many changes had been made to the original idea. The depiction of Green Hill was shifted to its more recognizable form from Sonic 1, the Death Egg Robot was replaced with the Sonic 1 version of the Eggmobile, Eggman was given a far inferior build compared to what was pitched, and the build just looked puny for its $70 price point. It was a massive disappointment, especially knowing what the set could've been.
Thankfully, that wasn't the last of the LEGO Sonic sets, as 2023 would become what amounted to "year 1" of the theme. Right off the bat, the theme seemed like it was off on the right foot (fitting for Sonic given how much he runs). Actual minifigures were revealed (including physical versions of Dimensions's depiction of Tails and Amy), the builds were the primary focus, and the play feature of a "speed sphere" launcher was mercifully not required to fully enjoy the theme. It wasn't just shaping up to being a solid licensed theme; it was shaping up to be the anti-LEGO Mario.
The first wave of the theme set down a firm foundation for the theme. Sure, it was limited to only five named characters and the single location of Green Hill Zone, but within those limitations LEGO crafted extremely solid sets. The smallest and largest sets of wave 1 were dedicated to the speed sphere gimmick, with the former acting as a "starter set" that showed what to expect from the theme (brick-built badniks, a mix of game-derived imagery and LEGO-original ideas, and deep cut references) and the latter being both a "boss battle" against one of Eggman's machines and a stunt show utilizing ramp and loop pieces from the short-lived "Stuntz" subtheme of LEGO City.
These two speed sphere-focused sets were admittedly genius, capturing the thrill of zooming through Green Hill's loops and ramps and busting up Eggman's war machines to free the trapped animals inside from the games. Sure, LEGO Mario had the electronic figures make noises and sounds you'd expect from a 2D Mario platforming game, but they robbed builders of the opportunity to imagine those sounds and severely limited the creative potential of how you could build thanks to how specialized the Course Builder modules are. Conversely, LEGO Sonic maintains the design ethos of both LEGO and the Sonic franchise through its play pattern- you get to send Sonic zipping through those loops and you can arrange things however you like.
The other three sets focused on either replicating locales from the games or doing LEGO-original concepts inspired by the games' content. Tails's workshop and the Tornado biplane were packed together as a $40 set, resulting in an accurate depiction of the plane as it appears in modern media and a barebones lab that wasn't that accurate to any past version of Tails's home. I personally wish that the Tornado was sold on its own for about $20 with Sonic and Tails included as an introductory set, because locking it behind a set that's double that price for an incredibly underbaked take on Tails's workshop feels kinda scummy. Heck, if SEGA wanted a $40 set in the first wave, why not do a fuller, more realized version of Tails's lab as depicted in one of the past games?
Another set that I feel was dragged down by the inclusion of extra side builds was the set featuring the Death Egg Robot, final boss of Sonic 2. The Death Egg Robot itself is a fantastic build with good speed sphere compatibility, but there are so many little builds in the set that seemingly exist solely to jack up the price to $60. This is one of my pet peeves with modern LEGO- sets that would be great if they put their whole budget into just one build are compromised thanks to the need to add more and more just so both sides have something to work with (the "combat-in-a-box" formula which plagues LEGO's post-2007 action themes) or there's some extra scenery to make it look like a scene from a blockbuster.
If it were up to me, the Death Egg Robot set would only have the speed sphere launcher, a ramp, the Death Egg Robot, and minifigures of Sonic and Doctor Eggman. That's it. It'd probably have been about $10 or even $20 cheaper if the miniature Eggman lab and the spike trap had been excised, but I get why LEGO gave Eggman more to work with since he doesn't really have anything to call his own aside from the robots you find in Green Hill (Motobug, Buzzbomber, Newtron, Chopper, and Crabmeat), the Death Egg Robot, and a Sonic Adventure 2-inspired armed walker (from the $100 loop set) in this first batch of sets.
To my surprise, the best set of LEGO Sonic's first year ended up being "Amy's Animal Rescue Island", a set focused on carving out a cozy nook in Green Hill for Sonic's perky admirer Amy Rose to relax and care for the little animals that Eggman so often turns into robot batteries. The build was surprisingly retro (that is to say, it was more focused on bricks than Technic rods and increasingly smaller and smaller tiles), it had a good deal of play features, and it was very spacious (which is ideal for a playset). Also, you get Amy, Tails and a Crabmeat badnik. That's really all you need.
I should also note that the "Animal Rescue Island" could be read as an homage to the much-beloved "Chao Garden" virtual pet-raising mode from the Sonic Adventure and Sonic Advance games. It has many of the accoutrements one would expect from a Chao Garden (snacks, a pool and beds) and even goes as far to include a pale yellow egg piece (first introduced in the Angry Birds Movie sets back in 2016) that represents a Chao egg. Unfortunately, LEGO didn't have the budget for dedicated Chao molds (and they didn't have dedicated molds for all the little animals, either; the pig is actually a cleverly reused dog piece from the Friends sets), so they ended up making it a little resting place for those little animals once Sonic and co have saved them from Eggman's mitts.
Despite how hard I've been on two of the five sets for doing too much or too little, I'd say that LEGO Sonic's first year was a success. Most of the franchise's main characters were made, it established a solid gimmick for future sets to iterate on, and it touched on many of the most iconic things from the franchise's 90s heyday (ex: the Death Egg Robot, the loops of Green Hill Zone, Sonic's plane, etc). It's perhaps the best introduction to a licensed LEGO theme since LEGO Toy Story back in 2010.
Before we move on, I think I should talk about the minifigures that 2023 gave us. Sonic is both an upgrade and a downgrade from his Dimensions release, now featuring printed buckles on the side of his legs (that's good) and having eyes that are a touch too far apart for my liking (that's bad). I get that the Dimensions figures were meant to be exclusive to their packs, but I don't think it would've been that hard to make Sonic not look crosseyed. At least he's got a winking variant that lessens the issue.
Tails and Amy are fantastic translations of their Dimensions designs that are really only brought down by being stuck with the same open-mouthed expression in the two sets they're featured in. Eggman is the last of the year 1 minifigure characters to discuss, and he's perhaps the biggest surprise the year had to offer. Following their reintroduction in 2022 for sets based on the first two Avatar movies, the long leg pieces first seen in LEGO Toy Story were used in conjunction with a newly tooled torso and new arm pieces borrowed from 2018-onward LEGO Hagrid to craft the bad doctor in LEGO form. It's a genius use of parts and a great way to keep Eggman in-scale with the rest of the cast.
But we're not done yet, folks. The last named character introduced in year 1 was Cubot, half of Eggman's assistant robots first introduced in Sonic Colors. While I'm critical of the many extra builds slotted into the Death Egg Robot set, he isn't one of them- he's somehow made from only pre-existing parts (including a battle droid torso and arms) and looks accurate considering what he's made of. My only complaint is that we didn't get his smarter counterpart Orbot to round out the duo, but perhaps he'll be put in a set next year.
Year 2 (2024) opened up with extreme promise, with two sets and a polybag. The polybag, while limited to only a Kiki badnik and a Flicky bird, was one that struck me as ideal for army-building. Interestingly, the two sets released in January 2024 had no sign of Sonic, Tails, Amy or Eggman, showing a surprisingly high level of faith by LEGO in the Sonic brand alone to sell the sets.
The smaller of the two sets, "Shadow's Escape", is modern LEGO excellence concentrated down into a $20 set. Aside from a Rhinobot badnik from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, this entire set is focused on elements from Sonic's on-off brooding rival Shadow's era of origin- the early 2000s. It's got his stasis pod from Sonic Heroes (albeit modified to double as a faux-toll booth) and his motorcycle from Shadow the Hedgehog. Throw in an incredibly well-detailed Shadow minifigure that stands as the current best figure of the whole theme, and you've got a contender for best value the theme has to offer.
"Shadow's Escape" takes me back to that era in the mid-2010s when LEGO would put out $20 sets for DC and Marvel that gave you about 3 or so heroes and/or villains and a decently-sized build or two to work with. It's a perfect gateway for young 'uns and collectors into a theme, especially if they can't afford larger sets. Personally, I want LEGO to make more sets in this style across all their themes, regardless of whether they're licensed or not- LEGO is pricing out middle-or-lower class buyers (especially with Star Wars) and impulse buy sets help curb that pricing out.
Conversely, the other set, named "Knuckles's Guardian Mech", is a mix of surprisingly good and very frustrating. It gives Knuckles and his coquettish jewel thief rival Rouge the Bat proper minifigures (both are lovely) and LEGO-original vehicles to call their own. While I went into the set expecting to only like Rouge's glider with a cleverly constructed bat snout made from 2019-onward 1x1 heart pieces, the set's namesake ended up pretty solid. It's a very Knuckles-y mech that incorporates his iconography of his spiked gloves and his shoes (making a 30-year fandom joke that his sneakers looked like LEGO pieces all the funnier) into the mech's physique.
However, this set is tainted by one that came out several months later- "Knuckles and the Master Emerald Shrine". The mech comes with the Master Emerald, but the Master Emerald shrine inexplicably... doesn't. It doesn't help that the set has Knuckles AGAIN (albeit with a great snarling expression variant), so between it and the mech, you'll have two Knuckles minifigures. This is an example of what I've dubbed a "DLC set", so named because of how they function akin to video game DLC (downloadable content).
I've noticed that in recent years, LEGO has gotten a wee bit exploitative with the DLC set concept. 2023 saw the release of a set based on Spider-Man: No Way Home's spoilerific final battle, featuring the three Spider-Men fighting Green Goblin, Doc Ock, and Electro. One year later, we ended up getting a smaller set focused on Tom Holland Spidey battling against Sandman, a less flashy version of Electro, and the Lizard... that could combine with the larger set.
Between the two sets, you'd end up with two Tom Holland Spider-Mans, two Electros, and some leftover scaffolding from the Sandman set. You'd think the smart thing would've been to put Andrew Garfield Spider-Man in the Sandman set (since Electro and Lizard were HIS villains), but noooooo. We have to keep Tobey and Andrew's Spider-Men minifigs rare and set-exclusive instead of giving the smaller set some added value.
What’s funny is that LEGO Star Wars had two pairs of sets back in 2012 and 2013 that did the whole “DLC set” concept better. 2012 did Jabba’s Palace and the Desert Skiff; 2013 did the Rancor Pit and Jabba’s Sail Barge. You could combine the palace and pit and the barge and skiff OR you could enjoy them as individual sets (which I did; I was gifted the Desert Skiff for my 11th birthday and enjoyed it even without the Sail Barge to “complete” the scene”).
You can’t do that with the Sandman/Lizard Spider-Man set or the “Master Emerald Shrine that doesn’t have the Master Emerald in it” Sonic set. They will always remind you of the other set you need to get to “complete it”. In my mind, that takes away from the experience of building a LEGO set- these DLC sets either exist to complete an otherwise incomplete set or are incomplete themselves, waiting for a later set to complete them.
And to finish building a LEGO set feeling like it’s incomplete will always be disappointing.
Granted, the Guardian Mech set doesn't feel all that incomplete on its own, but MAN does it suck to have to spend $35 twice between this and the currently-forthcoming Master Emerald Shrine to have a "complete" chunk of Angel Island to display and/or play with. LEGO missed the opportunity to give the Master Emerald shrine set a bigger, more game-accurate version of the gemstone (the one included in the mech's set is made from a pair of jewel pieces first introduced in Disney Princess sets in 2023), and I'd gladly have traded the Amy minifig included in that set for either Amy with an expression variant or another brick-built badnik. That being said, I don't think the Master Emerald Shrine set is all that bad.
You get an EggRobo from Sonic 3 & Knuckles (fitting considering that a single EggRobo replaced Eggman in Knuckles's campaign of the game), a grapevine for Knuckles to take care of (it's canon that he loves grapes), and the shrine itself has some living quarters for the echidna to call home. Were it not for the lack of the Master Emerald, I'd say this set was as good as "Shadow's Escape" just in capturing the iconography most associated with a Sonic character. However, it's permanently tainted by its nature as a DLC set.
The other two sets part of the summer 2024 LEGO Sonic wave are something of a grab bag. "Tails's Adventure Boat", despite being rather rough in the price-per-piece ratio department, is notable for being a follow-up to Tails's submarine from cult classic Tails Adventure for the Game Gear. Granted, the "Sea Fox II" depicted in the set is a LEGO-original design with a speed sphere launcher built into the hull and bears little resemblance to the original Sea Fox, but it's awesome that the design team is willing to reach that far back in terms of references. It's also got Tails with a unique winking expression variant, a life jacket-clad Sonic, another slice of Green Hill and a Jaws badnik- all of which are welcome additions.
However, the biggest set, "Super Sonic vs Egg Drillster" is just... bizarre. On one hand, it brings the Dimensions roster of characters to near-completion through the inclusion of Sonic's Chaos Emerald-fueled "Super" form (with a unique yelling expression), provides collectors with a chance to get Shadow (with good reason; he's the best LEGO Sonic minifigure so far) with a growling expression and has a cute side build for Eggman's personal lab (complete with a printed 2x2 tile with a picture of his late cousin Maria and Shadow). Unfortunately, that's where my praise ends.
The rest of the set is dedicated to an oversized version of Sonic 2's first boss (the Egg Drillster), a speed sphere launcher, an inaccurately-colored Egg Pawn (it should be more reddish-orange; it's especially baffling considering that LEGO introduced a more accurate color for them earlier in 2024), and a Gun Wing robot said to be reprogrammed by Eggman in the product's description. While I've got no issues with the Gun Wing and speed sphere launcher, the Drillster has been altered so severely by LEGO that it's barely recognizable as the chintzy drill tank from Emerald Hill's second act. It's not a bad LEGO vehicle by any means- in fact, it's hitting me right in the Power Miners nostalgia button due to how it's designed- but calling it the Egg Drillster after redesigning it so heavily is just absurd.
To compound matters, the battle the set offers up just doesn't make sense. Like, you're telling me that the Egg Drillster, the comedically easy first boss of Sonic 2 that would be no challenge to Super Sonic whatsoever, is meant to be treated as a threat by Sonic and Shadow? Come now, LEGO. That's just absurd.
If LEGO wanted to pit Super Sonic and Shadow against a tough Eggman creation, why not have them fight Big Arms (final boss of Sonic 3 without & Knuckles), one of Eggman's only creations capable of hurting Super Sonic? Not only would that have been a more logical choice for the set, but it would've been a perfect nod to S3&K's 30th anniversary. Sadly, we're stuck with the oversized and redesigned Drillster in an $80 set that's so overpriced it'd make LEGO Star Wars after Disney's purchase of Lucasfilm look reasonably priced.
That, and the second 18+ Sonic set after the Ideas Green Hill Zone set is a bust of Shadow's head... a bust that looks so comedically off-model it brings to mind the European box art for Sonic 3D Blast's SEGA Saturn release. Oh dear. The biggest issues this set has are that they made Shadow's central spine too short and his brow too low; if those issues were corrected, it'd probably look less wonky. Also, since the Super Sonic/Drillster set teased her, maybe this set could've included a minifigure of Maria?
All in all, the summer 2024 wave of LEGO Sonic is rather disappointing, with the best set being Tails's boat. I was honestly expecting a lot better from the theme after how strong the January 2024 wave was, but the Master Emerald-less Master Emerald Shrine, Shadow bust, and Super Sonic/Egg Drillster sets feel like they both should've gone through more revisions before being sent out to general retail. Hopefully this isn't a sign of what LEGO Sonic will be like going forward.
In summation, I like LEGO Sonic quite a bit- a lot more than I like LEGO Mario. Heck, it's my current favorite licensed theme. However, I feel like the theme could use some more character variety, smaller builds, and lower prices. It's operating at about an 8 out of 10, but I can see the potential for it to be going at a 10/10 if certain things were just done differently.
Speaking of which...
HOW TO IMPROVE LEGO SONIC AND LEGO MARIO
I should make things clear that I'm no expert at LEGO design. The most I can take credit for are some rebuilds of preexisting sets I've done here and there (notably, I turned a Creator 3-in-1 excavator into a mech for an Emmet minifigure obtained from the LEGO Movie 2 collectible minifigure series). However, as a customer of LEGO for many, many years (since the first Star Wars AT-AP set in 2007), I believe I've got the ethos to explain how both themes could be improved.
Let's-a start with LEGO Mario. First off, make actual minifigures. This one is a no-brainer and is demanded more and more as time goes on, especially as other Nintendo licensed themes based on Animal Crossing and The Legend of Zelda get to have proper minifigures while Mario is stuck with three clunky, somewhat unnerving electronic figures. I'm expecting LEGO to go the Toy Story/Animal Crossing route and just make the minifigures have dedicated molded heads, but plain minifigure heads with newly-tooled hair and headgear would be just as welcome.
The best part is that I don't think you'd really need to change the sets all that much to accomodate the introduction of minifigures. The enemies and other characters like Yoshi or Nabbit could remain the same, but now they'd scale near perfectly with the newly-introduced minifigure versions of the brothers, princess and Toads. All you'd need to do would be to include alternate 2x2 tiles to replace the tags that the electronic figures used to scan to "stomp" enemies.
This would also make the theme far more collectible, as powered-up versions of characters could now be made as individual figures instead of overpriced add-ons to the electronic release. The K'Nex range of figures thrived on making power-up variants of Mario and Luigi (as well as a singular Fire Peach from one of the blind-packed series of figures), so why not downsize the cast into forms that allow for LEGO to do the same? Granted, LEGO is hesitant to copy what a previous license-holder did with a licensed theme, but if they did this, it'd certainly make the theme a lot cheaper (besides, the power-up sets for the electronic figures have sold rather poorly).
Second, broaden the horizons of what gets used as inspiration. The Luigi's Mansion wave from 2022 was excellent because of how tightly focused it was on elements, locations and characters from the first three games. Why not use that model of dedicating a whole wave of product to a single game to carry the theme forward? There are tons of games that I think would be ideal for the Luigi's Mansion treatment, but for the sake of keeping this article at a reasonable length, I'll only list a few:
Lastly, maintain the improved build quality seen in 2024-onward sets. When I started writing this article, I was an adamant boycotter of LEGO Mario of four years because of the lack of minifigures and what I perceived as shoddy builds. However, I recently picked up the "Bowser's Muscle Car" set, and... I loved it. I really, really loved it. While Bowser is impressively expressive for someone with only two ball-jointed shoulders, his car is an utter joy to build.
So many parts are used and combined together in clever ways (how the doors and "eyes"/headlights are built will make your jaws drop), and the end result is an extremely accurate yet distinctly LEGO version of Bowser's sick ride from 3D World. It's perhaps the most fun I've had building a LEGO car since the Batmobile and Notorious Lowrider from The LEGO Batman Movie range of sets. I already said that 2024 looked like an active improvement on the mediocrity of the 2023 range of sets, but actually experiencing one of these sets in hand really convinced me that things have changed for the better.
For LEGO to go back to the barebones builds of the late 2022-2023 sets would be utter Biblical foolishness, especially with the Mario franchise turning FORTY next year. While I'm not expecting minifigures yet given how dedicated LEGO is to the electronic figures (but it'd be a pleasant surprise if LEGO put out a collectible minifigure series to celebrate the big four-o), I am expecting the level of quality from this year to carry forward into next year. Besides, if the confirmed-for-2025 Mario Kart sets are as good as the Bowser car, then the theme is set for high sales for another few years.
With that said, let's move onto LEGO Sonic. Admittedly, I'm way more biased towards Sonic than I am Mario, so I might have a bit more to say about the ways in which the LEGO Sonic theme could be improved. And by a bit more, I mean something that's probably twice as long as the list of improvements the LEGO Mario theme needed.
First, increase the variety of characters included in sets. Unfortunately, this can't really happen as quickly as I'd like it to. For more characters to get made, LEGO has to develop new tooling for their specialized heads, upper torsos or any other new parts that need to be made in order to please the licensor (in Sonic's case, SEGA). The more new parts are included in one set, the higher the price will be until there are enough of the new parts made spread across multiple sets that the cost of making the tooling is paid for. It's the same reason why other toy companies like Hasbro will put out recolors or tweaked versions of the same mold in toylines like Transformers: the more often a mold gets used, the cheaper to produce it becomes.
Ergo, we have to be patient with LEGO when it comes to new minifigure characters in LEGO Sonic. The characters who I think would be the most logical next choices would include Cream the Rabbit and Big the Cat (both of whom would complete "Team Rose" as first established in Sonic Heroes; Cream just needs a new head while Big would need a new nearly-everything to look accurate), the Chao species (done in the same style as the small animals with a 1x1 anti-stud base; this could also allow for the creation of Cream's Chao friend Cheese), Orbot (because we already have Cubot) and Sage (Eggman's AI "daughter" first introduced in 2022's Sonic Frontiers and already a fan favorite). While I don't think they'd be guaranteed sellers, I think they'd be valuable additions to the roster we already have.
Speaking of which, the Knuckles, Tails, and Shadow variants introduced in the summer 2024 wave make it clear that LEGO Sonic needs more main character variants. Give us open-mouthed Sonic and Knuckles minifigs! Give us closed-mouth Tails and Amy! Give us a screaming Shadow or a coquettishly grinning Rouge! Granted, Eggman's kinda screwed on this front since his head/torso piece doesn't have a visible mouth, but the rest of those should be fairly easy compared to tooling up heads or accessories for new characters.
Something ideal for the LEGO Sonic theme would probably be a CMF (collectible minifigure series). This would allow LEGO to tackle the weirder characters or oddball variants of franchise mainstays without dragging an actual set's chances of selling well down, and there's a surprising amount of both within the series. Here's what my ideal Sonic CMF would look like (limiting myself to the post-2021 limit of only 12 figures per series):
Another thing that would be great for LEGO Sonic minifig-wise would be "Classic" variants of Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Eggman. While Eggman and Amy would require new parts (a new head/torso for Eggman and a new head for Amy), the S/T/K trio would be simple recolors of their current figures with the brown eyes they had between '91 and '98. In fact, there's precedent for this from the Ideas Green Hill set's inclusion of a Sonic in a lighter shade of blue, so it's honestly surprising that LEGO hasn't tried putting out "Classic Era" sets even though Sonic Superstars was a perfect opportunity for them to put out Classic-themed sets.
It gets worse when you consider that Superstars had LEGO-themed DLC that replaced the character models with alternate LEGO versions... based on the characters' modern designs. The opportunity to make Classic Sonic minifigures was right there, but so far it's been ignored by LEGO. I suppose it's to avoid the Classic sets' sales being cannibalized by the sales of the "Modern" sets, and that's perfectly understandable from a business standpoint. It's just that it would also make perfect business sense for LEGO to get more usages out of the head molds they made for this theme.
Second, the theme needs more cheap sets. This technically extends to LEGO's other licensed themes (something something LEGO Star Wars charging $20 for battle packs and nearly $50 for X-wings), but LEGO Sonic in particular needs some more entry-level sets. If the cheapest set to feature Sonic himself is $35 (the smaller of the two Green Hill speed sphere-focused sets), I don't think parents are going to want to start collecting.
What's nice is that SEGA has provided a way for LEGO to do cheap sets under $30. The mechs that first entered LEGO Marvel in 2020 and LEGO Star Wars in 2023 would fit LEGO Sonic like a glove thanks to Eggman's many walkers from throughout the series (and also some of his robots; I can see repentant E-102 Gamma and trigger-happy defector E-123 Omega being done this way). Many of Tails's vehicles could be done under $25, especially if they use one of them as a way to release "Team Sonic" (Sonic, Tails and Knuckles) all in one go. And I don't think one of the cars from the series' many racing games would be a bad $20 purchase.
Third and conversely, the theme needs more big "final boss" sets and more villain-oriented sets. This is a problem that LEGO at large has suffered from since 2019- they give the heroes of their many themes loads of things to call their own, but the baddies always end up with either pitifully small side builds or one or two dedicated sets that aren't really that worth it because you already have most of the figures included in the sets. I think this started after the failure of the painfully generic baddies of Bionicle's 2015-2016 reboot and The LEGO NInjago Movie's sea creature-themed minions (the latter were honestly really fun and a great value for their price). In LEGO's mind, why waste time on designing sets for villains if they're not going to sell that well*?
*You know, ignoring the fact that they'd designed villain vehicles and villain-focused sets for YEARS on end prior to 2019.
LEGO Sonic doesn't really suffer from it too badly, but it's kind of sad how the closest we got to sets solely dedicated to Eggman was the Death Egg Robot last year and the heavily reworked Egg Drillster this year. Considering how iconic Eggman's many giant robots and mechanical monsters are among the villains of video gaming, I'm shocked LEGO really hasn't delved that deep into his fleet. I'd suggest the Egg Beetle and Egg Dragoon from Sonic Unleashed (the latter would be a great opportunity for a minifigure of Sonic's Werehog form an a 1x1 statuette of his buddy Chip), Big Arms from Sonic 3 and Knuckles as suggested in the previous section, and Metal Overlord from Sonic Heroes. Also, I just want a $30 set based on Eggman's computer from the last decade's worth of games (I think it first appeared in Sonic Colors) that serves as a cheap way to get him and Sage.
Eggman's not the only villain who'd be getting more sets, though. The Titans from Sonic Frontiers would make excellent 18+ sets (and I'm not just saying that because we deserve better than the Shadow bust from this year), the Deadly Six from Sonic Lost World would be fun figures despite their unpopularity, and even one-off villains like Merlina from Sonic and the Black Knight, Black Doom from Shadow the Hedgehog, and Infinite from Sonic Forces could get a chance to shine if LEGO chose to touch on them.
Fourth, LEGO needs to expand the theme beyond just the games- and by that, I mean make sets based on the comics from IDW Publishing and the films and Paramount+ show from Paramount Pictures if possible. Of course, both are held back by the problem of new characters requiring newly-tooled parts, but considering how big both IDW's work and the Sonic Movie Universe (SMU) have been, I wouldn't be surprised at all if LEGO has some tie-ins for both in the works. Besides, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Shadow all have their head molds ready for the SMU stuff; all they'd need there are the 2018-onward "mid-legs" and some reworked printing to set them apart from their game canon selves.
We'd probably get SMU-based stuff sooner than IDW-based stuff due to the lack of new tooling needed and greater amount of source material to draw from. However, I don't think IDW Sonic sets would be that costly if they did them right. All they really need to do is dedicate a wave or two to the "Metal Virus" arc and do shiny "zombot" variants of all the comic-original characters who were infected (which is a surprisingly high amount of them) until all the new molds are paid for.
Admittedly, I don't think LEGO would be willing to go THAT dark for their first comics-focused wave (and as someone who feels like the Metal Virus overstayed its welcome and made the comics an utter slog to read until the storyline was over, I wouldn't want it to be the focus of wave 1 of the comics sets either), but it'd certainly help speed up the rate at which we get comics-original characters. Ideally, I think we'd get a spread of events from all over the IDW run, which would also allow for LEGO to tackle some of the improvements I've suggested beforehand (more cheap sets and more villain-oriented sets). The sooner we can get LEGO versions of Belle the Tinkerer (my favorite IDW character), Surge the Tenrec and Kit the Fennec, the better.
Regarding SMU-based sets, I think that by the time LEGO gets around to tackling the movieverse, the third movie will have released. Perhaps LEGO could do what they did with Marvel's "Infinity Saga" branding (covering everything between Iron Man and Avengers: Endgame) and put the movies under their own special sub-branding separate from the "main" sets. Like the Infinity Saga sets, these would cover the most iconic scenes from the trilogy and the Knuckles Paramount+ show. Here's a list of what I think would fit each film (and the show):
However, the future of the movieverse is uncertain at the moment (the Knuckles show received divisive reception, especially from Sonic fans, and Jim Carrey is unlikely to return as Eggman after movie 3), so I don't think LEGO is willing to jinx the future of LEGO Sonic by putting out product dedicated to films and a show that might not continue after this year. Then again, with how successful the films have been, LEGO might want a slice of the pie and do SMU sets to make up for lost time. Once again, this would make SMU-based sets like the Infinity Saga sets, which also sought to do sets based on Marvel Cinematic Universe films that either came out pre-2012 (prior to when LEGO had the Marvel license; for example, they made the Iron Monger suit from the original Iron Man) or weren't covered to their fullest (ex: Surtur from Thor: Ragnarok or pretty much anything from Spider-Man: No Way Home).
Fifth, make sets based on the Classic era. While this was touched upon in the character roster section, I feel like Classic Sonic sets would sell extremely well and allow for the "Modern" sets to tackle stuff that's actually from the Modern era (1998-onward). There's a plethora of locations and vehicles that would keep the theme going for years on end from just the first dozen or so Sonic games and the post-2017 retroactive additions to the Classic era that are Sonic Mania (a Studiopolis playset would rule) and Sonic Superstars (I could imagine a customizable set based on the Metal Sonic-like boss of Cyber Station in the same vein as the Star Wars "Creative Play Droid Builder" set).
The tricky part about LEGO potentially making Classic Sonic sets is that once they get past Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Eggman, it gets kinda awkward. I can see them doing Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel (so you'd have the full Sonic Mania roster) as well as Fang the Hunter and Trip the Sungazer since they appeared in Sonic Superstars, but past that, I have no idea what they could do. SEGA is unwilling to acknowledge the Classic versions of the Chaotix since they're so radically different from their modern counterparts, and the further you go down the Classic era character rabbit hole, the less likely the characters are to sell. With that in mind, I think LEGO would have to be really careful when it comes to spreading out the Classic characters so they wouldn't burn through them all in a year and then stop making Classic Sonic-based sets save for the occasional release to fill out a wave.
Sixth and finally, make a LEGO Sonic video game with Traveler's Tales as developers. If the "Sonic Dimensions" expansion for LEGO Dimensions said anything, it's that TT really, REALLY wants to make another Sonic game- so why not let them do that? Make a game that tells a wholly original story, has a massive character roster, and plays like the best of the post-LEGO Batman 2, pre-LEGO Movie 2 Videogame games. If all that is done, then SEGA and TT would end up with a title that would sell millions of copies. However, given the rather unfortunate workplace conditions of TT that were exposed back in 2022 and the difficulty of programming LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga with a new but VERY janky game engine, I don't want such a game to be made until TT sorts things out.
And there we've done it, chaps. That's all LEGO needs to do in order to improve their output for LEGO Mario and LEGO Sonic. Will any of what I've suggested be done? I don't know; LEGO can be a rather maddening company to predict the actions of. But I do hope that what I've said is taken to heart by someone working on either theme.
Thanks for reading everyone. God bless!