There’s a new Mario Kart on the horizon, and even though its pixels are yet to be played by anyone outside of Nintendo, Flickr’s Clement has managed to recreate a trio of characters from the available gameplay footage. And if a cow on a scooter doesn’t get you excited, nothing will! Smash that crate, drop a banana skin, and fire a green shell via the link above!
LEGO’s expansive new Formula 1 range is now on sale, bringing every single Formula 1 team into the line-up. Which is cool and all, but Formula 1 will never be as entertaining as an Italian plumber racing to free a Princess from the clutches of a giant tortoise. Or something. We’re a bit hazy on the plot to be honest, but who cares when you can fire shells and drop banana skins in front of your foes!
Yes Mariokart is now skidding into the LEGO line-up, with the brand new LEGO Super Mario 72037 Mario & Standard Kart set!
Aimed at ages 18+ and constructed from nearly two-thousand pieces, 72037 brings the aforementioned Italian protagonist to bedroom floors and – more likely given the price – shelves everywhere, and includes a posable Mario figure in his Standard Kart, mounted on a stand that “enables fans to display the kart at dynamic angles, as if Mario is speeding through a high-stakes race or drifting in true Mario Kart fashion”.
We note that none of those two-thousand pieces are to create a green shell or a banana skin, which feels a bit miserly, but those printed eyes and Mario’s new moustache piece almost make up for it.
On sale from 15th April 2025, the new LEGO Super Mario 72037 Mario & Standard Kart can be had for €169.99 / $169.99 / £139.99 (just bring your own banana skin), or if you fancy something for less than half the price but with equally amazing nasal topiary, there’s always Nigel Mansell…
The kiddie-based cuteness continues here at the Lego Car Blog. Recreating what their kids imagine when they’re riding on their toys outside, Cecilie Fritzvold‘s ‘Baby Mario Kart’ captures all the madness of Nintendo’s finest work, complete with shells, banana skins, item boxes, Lakitu’s cloud, and some very hungry plants. And with LEGO releasing their own officially-licensed Mario line, perhaps an official LEGO Mario Kart set is just a rainbow road away.
Recent bloggee Nathan Hake is continuing to find ways to put his newly acquired vintage Technic figures in peril. Today’s is behind the wheel of a racing go-kart, with all the speed of a racing car, and all the safety of a paper bag. Still, if he needs a few replacement body parts his last Technic figure won’t be needing them anymore before long. Join the race on Flickr via the link above!
…Is not Forza, Gran Turismo, or some other ultra-lifelike simulator. It’s Mario Kart, specifically on the ancient N64 console. Because where else can a dinosaur annihilate an Italian plumber with a dead tortoise? Exactly.
Flickr’s cshowd has captured the vintage Mario Kart madness wonderfully, and although his characters from the iconic video game are only built in digital form, if anything their slightly pixelated appearance is more appropriate!
There’re more to see of Bowser, Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Mushroom and the other Mario Kart characters at his photostream – click the link above and fire that green shell!
It’s race day at the lunar track, and an eclectic mix of characters are watching the kart-based antics of the Classic Space-kids. Flickr’s Frost (aka TFDesigns!) is the builder and – if you’re weird enough – you can join the spectators trackside via the link above.
People have been lobbing green shells at one another for three decades, and the glorious carnage that is Mario Kart is just as appealing now as ever!
Mario Kart 8 was released in 2014, enabling Mario and his assortment of fellow racers to hover in ‘anti-gravity’ mode for the first time. And you could still lob green shells.
Cue Stephan Froden, who has recreated everyone’s favourite Italian plumber and his anti-gravity go-kart from nearly 23,000 LEGO bricks.
There are LED lights inside as well as motorised movements, and there’s more to see of Stephan’s wonderful homage to Mario Kart 8 at Ryan McNaught’s ‘Brickvention 2022’ album on Flickr, of which Stephan’s model and many other equally stupendous creations are part. Click the link above to lob your green shell!
Constructed for a Eurobricks contest, this is dazzz99‘s homage to the vintage 8842 Technic Go-Kart set, re-engineered using modern studless pieces, and with some rather lovely details too, including a radiator, oil filler cap, and air-filter attached to the working single-cylinder piston engine.
It’s an engine that’s far more appropriate than that found on original set too, which pre-dated LEGO’s purpose-built cylinder and piston parts and instead used an enormous brick-built mechanism that would’ve been larger than the driver. And probably killed them.
There’s more to see of dazzz’s lovely 8842 redux on Flickr via the link above, plus you can check out the contest in which it’s entered, the original 1980s Technic set that inspired it, and our review of a multitude of LEGO Technic Go-Kart sets via the respective links in the text.
And Ima here to ruin your day!
No one wants to be blue shelled, but it looks like we’re going to be thanks to Cecilie Fritzvold‘s ‘Iron Builder’ entry. Mario’s kart might just be two wheels, a steering wheel, and an ‘M’ badge for all we can see, but so wonderfully edited is this shot it’s all it needs.
Join the race via the link above and cross your fingers for a Starman power-up!
Your first car was your best car. Well, it was almost definitely your worst car, at least in TLCB’s home nation where astronomical insurance costs prevent new drivers from owning anything with an engine larger than a lawnmower, but it was still your first taste of freedom.
However step back around ten years from your first actual roadworthy* vehicle, and you may have owned something even more special. For some of you it might have been the gloriously lethal Radio Flyer Wagon, alternatively it could have been this, the marvellous Kettler Kettcar.
Produced from the 1960s right up until Kettler’s sad bankruptcy at the start of this year, the Kettcar was a superb design that taught handbrake turns to decades of children.
Along with that simple handbrake the Kettcar was also fitted with a rudimentary gearbox, enabling drive via the pedals or neutral for free-wheeling down big hills, where that handbrake would be hopelessly inadequate.
Recreating the pedal drive, handbrake, and gearbox is Clemens Schneider, whose brilliant Technic recreation of the Kettler Kettcar was suggested to us by a reader. In fact so accurate is Clemens’ Technic replica that it would probably drive just like the real thing if you were small enough to fit inside.
There’s more of the Kettcar to see at Clemens’ photostream – click the link above to pull the handbrake!
*Definition of roadworthiness is – in our case at least – loose.
LEGO have had a lot of officially licensed themes over the years. Some have been marvellous, including the current tie-up with a multitude of vehicle manufacturers to recreate real-world vehicles (keep these coming LEGO!), whereas some… Micky Mouse? Pirates of the Caribbean? Scooby Doo? Even we’d forgotten about the last two.
The new Nintendo Mario theme is, we fear, going to drop straight into whatever the equivalent of a Bargain Bucket is for LEGO sets. Still, this most tenuous of upcoming partnerships hasn’t stopped TLCB regular SP_LINEUP from building his own Mario-themed model, creating this neat Mario Kart complete with a brick-built Italian plumber on board.
Neither has the absurdity of LEGO’s newly licensed theme stopped fellow Flickrist BenBuildsLego from creating his own Mario-themed MOC either, with his admittedly rather wonderful homage to some of Mario Kart 64’s most infamous tracks, including the perilously difficult ‘Rainbow Road’ which makes us nervous just looking at it.
Click the links in the text above to fire up your engine and to fire that red shell, whilst we await LEGO’s new theme with minimal excitement.
Every Lego fan has wanted to do it. We’ve all imagined what it would be like, dreaming that one day, if we tried hard enough, it might just be possible. And some have even got close. No, we’re not referring to talking to a girl, but building a real, ride-on, controllable Lego creation.
That unrealised dream has now become a reality for the guys at third-party bluetooth brick builders BuWizz, who have built an actual ride-on go-kart (OK, ‘mobility scooter’ might be a better description…) from seven thousand LEGO pieces!
Thirty-two Large Power Functions motors power all four wheels (via individual in-wheel motors actually, meaning their creation could feature torque vectoring!), with eight BuWizz bricks providing the power and control via the BuWizz mobile app. They’ve even managed to talk to a girl and convince her drive it.
You can watch their amazing creation in action via the video below and read more about it at the BuWizz website, plus if you’d like to learn more about the little bluetooth battery control that allows a creation like this to happen you can read our review of the BuWizz brick here.
YouTube Video
Much like our Elves, go-karts are small, noisy, and deceptively fast. However unlike our Elves they’re also great fun, and – being rear-wheel-drive – they’re proper driver’s tools too.
This wonderful little Model Team recreation of a generic rental kart comes from previous bloggee Angka Utama, and the detail he’s squeezed into it is simply astounding! Pedals, steering rack, brake lines, fuel lines, single cylinder piston engine… there’s more to see at both Flickr and MOCpages – click the links above, aim for the chequered flag, and win that little plastic trophy!
First appearing in 1981’s ‘Donkey Kong’, Mario the dumpy Italian plumber has had quite a life; rescuing princesses, collecting gold, featuring in over 200 video games, and in doing so becoming the single most successful video game franchise of all time.
His highpoint (in our opinion) came in 1992 on the SNES, when he took a break from rescuing princesses in castles to start his own racing series. ‘Mario Kart’ is very probably the greatest racing game ever made, pitting a variety of unlikely characters together in a gloriously whimsical race for glory.
This brilliant depiction of Mario’s finest hour comes from polywen of Flickr, who has created a marvellous cuboid ‘Brickheadz’ style Mario, his go-kart, and a green shell in Lego form. Click the link above to join the race for 150cc Cup!
We’re kinda get the feeling that here at The Lego Car Blog we’re a regular annoyance to the proper Lego blogs The Brothers Brick and Bricknerd. That might be because we do regularly try to annoy them though. Nevertheless, Bricknerd do have a neat competition running currently, where their nerdy mascot, er… Nerdly*, is making appearances in LEGO form. Here he is tackling Mario Kart’s fearsome Rainbow Road, and he’s still got two balloons left and a blue shell! Flickr’s [Clever Lego Reference] is hoping for the win and you can see more of his nerdy racer at his photostream via the link above.
*We’ve considered doing something similar with our ‘mascots’, the Elves, but you really wouldn’t want that**.
**Still, at least they’re not that bloody lemur.