LEGO Super Mario 72052 Mario's Pipe Jump set with Mario minifigure and Goomba
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Gamescom Becomes LEGO's Reveal Stage

Gamescom did the heavy lifting this week: LEGO used the show to launch the longest set it's ever released, hand Super Mario its first true minifigures, and reveal a Cities: Skylines-style city builder. Add a themed design challenge naming LEGO Ideas' next gift with purchase, and it's the busiest stretch of the summer.

LEGO Super Mario 72052 Mario's Pipe Jump minifigure-scale set

LEGO Super Mario Ditches SMART Play for Real Minifigures

Eight sets debut the theme's first true minifigures on January 1, led by the 850-piece, $99.99 Fire Mario & Bowser's Castle. The wave drops SMART Play's interactive bricks entirely, and Brick Fanatics flagged that the new Luigi figure isn't sized taller than Mario, as fans expected.

Minty Take

LEGO Super Mario built its identity on the SMART Play interactive brick, the whole reason it existed as a separate product category. Swapping that out for a straight minifig scale wave signals a bet that the Nintendo license alone, plus sub-$100 pricing, can carry the theme without any tech gimmick attached.

LEGO Star Wars 75457 UCS Executor Super Star Destroyer lifestyle build shot

LEGO's New UCS Super Star Destroyer Is the Longest Set Ever

The 75457 Executor Super Star Destroyer ships October 1 with 6,130 pieces, seven minifigures including Darth Vader and all six Empire Strikes Back bounty hunters, and a $799.99/£649.99/€749.99 price. At 136cm, it edges out LEGO's own records to become the longest set ever released, by about a centimetre.

Minty Take

Fifteen years after the first UCS Executor, this remake trades subtlety for scale: bigger, pricier, and reportedly still a mostly grey plank from some angles. At $799.99, the built-in bounty-hunter bridge diorama makes clear this is a display piece for the shelf, built to be seen rather than handled.

A Cloud Full of Hope, the winning LEGO Ideas Hidden Secrets design by Memorph, showing the closed raincloud model

'A Cloud Full of Hope' Wins LEGO Ideas GWP Vote

Memorph's raincloud design, which opens to reveal a hidden rainbow, won LEGO Ideas' Hidden Secrets fan vote and will become a future LEGO Ideas gift with purchase, though no release date has been set. The designer earns 10 copies of the finished set plus additional prizes, per The Brick Fan.

Minty Take

Hidden Secrets is a smart way to source GWPs, since a themed design challenge is more predictable than waiting on the regular Ideas review cycle. But Brickset's point stands: the backlog behind sets like this keeps growing even as LEGO ships more of them, so 'future' is doing a lot of work in that release note.

Blocks Issue 143 Goes Deep on LEGO X-Files
Issue 143 pairs exclusive interviews with X-Files creator Chris Carter and actor William B. Davis with fan designer Brent Waller's take on turning his Ideas set into reality.
LEGO Skylines Brings Cities: Skylines to LEGO City
Announced at Gamescom's Opening Night Live, LEGO Skylines lets players build and manage a LEGO city using buildings modeled on existing and past LEGO sets.
LEGO Pick a Brick Gets 180+ New Elements
Around 180 new elements land in Pick a Brick on September 1, including minifigure parts and decorated pieces pulled from sets released in May, per New Elementary.
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Trend Watch

Four Reveals, One Gamescom Show

LEGO Skylines, the Super Mario minifigure wave, and the Executor Super Star Destroyer all launched around Gamescom's Opening Night Live and show floor this week, alongside a Batman Mayhem DLC push. That's four major reveals condensed into one show. If LEGO keeps stacking announcements here, Gamescom starts to look like a second Toy Fair on the calendar.

LEGO's Game Portfolio Keeps Widening

Skylines adds a city-builder to a roster that already spans action-adventure in LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, which just picked up a free Mayhem Collection DLC and a Switch 2 launch a while after its original release. LEGO's gaming strategy now leans on long post-launch support as much as new titles.

LEGO Ideas Leans on Themed Design Challenges

A Cloud Full of Hope is the latest LEGO Ideas GWP to come out of a themed design challenge rather than the standard 10,000-supporter review queue, a route that lets LEGO source specific occasions (a hidden mechanism, in this case) on its own schedule. The design now heads to LEGO's Ideas team for refinement, with no release window confirmed yet.

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