The K’NEX Mario theme was a peak gem

LEGO pricing children and casuals out and not selling well? Color me shocked

Lego Mario did it’s job. Sell to people desperate for the ip until people get bored, at which point lego releases what they actually wanted in the first place, effectively selling the same product twice.

Mario knex was my childhood and I don’t think Lego Mario minifigures will ever compare to the Mario kart knex tracks

It's sad, I do think they were better too especially for the price and now Lego will just monopolize it and probably make them smart brick sets. Rest in piece K'nex Mario 😢

Fun Fact: In Super Mario Land 2 there is a level made of plastic bricks. On one of those bricks has N&B written on it as a reference to Nintendo's own brick system.

Biggest flop they did here was no instruction manuals. And also these sets are darn big and breakable, it's hard to store them, thus taking a lot of room.

I cannot express the relief I felt after seeing that we're getting Mario minifigures next year. As somebody who has loved Mario all their life, I can't begin to express the disappointment I felt when I first saw the electronic Mario. Yeah some sets like the "?" Block and the giant Bowser were nice, but I would have preferred minifigure play sets. I find it rather ridiculous that other popular video games got minifigures, but Mario did not.

I think lego tends to design sets without caring if people can afford them, the mario sets were expensive due to the technology required to make them interactible; the thing is, sets and lego are interactible, they dont need technology to be interactible.   The sets were so expensive, specially outside of the US, what is worse is that I dont think they have learned from their mistakes looking at what we got from the over priced starwars interactible brick sets. Lego has to understand that creating something incredible wont sell whenever people cant afford them. Like they could have made a version of the three characters that were just figures

Lego Mario: thrice upon a time

Had the Bullet Bill cannon and Thwomp fortress sets. Building them was pain as a LEGO main, but the figures were absolutely the highlight. Still can’t believe it’s taken LEGO this long to do something K’Nex did from the start…

My son really enjoyed playing with the LEGO interactive Mario, but as a longtime LEGO enthusiast, I knew it would be dead end.  It’s not like my grandchildren will be able to play with these things, unless the fan sites preserve instructions for the sets.  I’ll make sure to update the electronics before the app goes offline, but guarding against electron leak will be difficult.  I doubt I’ll remember to power up the three figures often enough to protect them.  

So yes, I’d consider it a failure overall as well.

It’s so baffling Lego is trying so hard to push gimmicks now, a large part of their success was being simple and imaginative in an isle of gimmicks. Logos are fun because they aren’t all lights and sounds and action features. And a core draw of the Lego concept is being able to make up worlds and characters freely. Over reliance on branding kills that. We all know a box and a stick are more fun than a complex toy with no playability

Mario interactive figure sucks, I hated it since I saw it for the first time. Wario buildable figure is so much better and it made it a shame that the same cannot be done to Mario. But I'm happy that Mario minifigure is happening

Yooo you did a great job covering both the K'nex and Lego Mario lines! Glad I could help out with the K'nex portion! You really did the K'nex part justice since a lot of aspects to their Mario line wasn't very well documented, and in hindsight it makes sense why they ended their line when they did... As for Lego Mario, I really learned a lot of new information on how the Lego Mario line was developed from this, the trend of gradually moving away from the cookie cutter "3D Mario Maker" styled sets into the more focused themes over the years was barely noticeable, and it was smart for them to wait until the smart brick came to keep the bootlegs away lol

Personally K'nex will always have a special place in my heart but I gotta say those recent lego sets have rocked, I'm so hyped for the new minifigures next year!

I wouldn't call the smartbrick a "more accessible pricepoint" considering the most die-hard and well-selling line, SW struggles to push it.
If they do it in mario, they gonna need to do 3 things:
-Smartbrick in every set, or allow people to buy as many smartbricks seperately as they want.
-Minifigs cannot have ugly prints like trashcans and texts on them. They need to find a better way. Maybe have the electronic inside of the minifig removable, and only have the trashcan icon on the electronic inside.
-The builds need to look good without the smartbricks, they cannot look disfigured, wrong and hollow when no smartbrick is there.

They're back

Unfortunate to know that KNEX is no more. I liked it a lot. As a kid, LEGO was usually my go-to toy for things that looked cool, whilst I went with KNEX to build things that could do cool things. I wish they could've continued to co-exist.

This was an amazing sum up of BOTH lines in under 35 minutes!

If you ask me tho, nothing beats K'nex Mario Kart! The track system was and still is unmatched!

Well i think this needs an update