Nintendo/LEGO

No one could have been more excited for LEGO Super Mario than me.

As a bearded forever-child who has played every Mario game in existence and owns way too many LEGOs, I am literally the exact target demographic for a Nintendo/LEGO collaboration. The prospect of collecting official Nintendo-branded LEGO Minifigures is almost too much to handle. I'm not just talking about Mario LEGOs either; we could see a Link LEGO, a Samus LEGO, maybe even a Pikachu LEGO. This is what's at stake. To put my excitement (and privilege) into perspective: If Nintendo LEGOs had turned out the way I imagined they might, I would've considered 2020 an excellent year, even if half the population fell to the COVID-19 Pandemic and Trump got re-elected. And then this trailer dropped:

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I'll be frank: What the f*ck is this?

Rather than making LEGO Mario look like...a LEGO version of Mario...Nintendo and LEGO seemingly wondered what it might look like if Kamek attempted to animate a Mario clone out of a trash can, or perhaps how a giant baby with a full diaper would appear with a mustache.

This was so easy, guys. This should have been a slam dunk. If someone told me two days ago that the Nintendo/LEGO partnership would result in such an abomination, I might have slapped them for lying to my face.

But alas, here we are with big fart pants Mario getting aroused by child hands.

The worst part is that there are some genuinely super cool concepts at play here. Interlocking, swappable level pieces is an absolutely perfect premise for a line of LEGO Mario play sets. I've always wanted to build my own physical Mario levels (kind of like Mario Maker in real life), and the Mario LEGO sets hold the potential of making that a reality. Moreover, the integration of electronics that allow the Mario "LEGO" to have unique interactions with different pieces is both novel and fitting. After all, Super Mario is a video game franchise, so bringing electronics into the mix makes a lot of sense. I love the idea of a LEGO Question Block that actually makes the same noise that it does when Mario hits it in-game, and there's even a certain joy at seeing Mario collect coins on his weird chest screen. But as soon as I look up at Mario's face, all joy fades as I remember the vast emptiness beneath his shifty electronic eyes, always lying just a few dead pixels away.

Unfortunately, Nintendo's official press release provides absolutely no insight into why they decided to turn LEGO Mario into a monstrosity. "The new product we created together with the LEGO Group seeks to combine two different styles of play," said Nintendo executive officer and game producer Takashi Tezuka. "One where you freely build the world of Mario and the other where you play with Mario in the very world that you have created."

Yes, that's great and all, but you could have done the exact same thing without...whatever the hell this is.

Lego mario deadNintendo/LEGO

I lied about the worst part though. The worst part isn't how horrible it looks. The worst part is that I'm still going to buy it, anyways.

Nintendo/LEGO

You're probably wondering why Mario Day, the annual celebration of the entire Mario franchise, takes place on March 10th.

Well, there's a very good reason for that. See, if you shorten March to "Mar" and write it next to "10," it looks like this: "Mar10." If that's not a good enough reason then sorry, go ruin someone's day elsewhere. The world is dying and we don't have time for your bad attitude, Gregory.

For everyone else, it's Mario Day, and that means lots of sales on Mario games, which is pretty great considering it's one of the only franchises in history where you can pick up almost any game and trust it's going to be phenomenal. Seriously, if you haven't played Super Mario Odyssey yet, there's no better time to play it. If you start today, you might even finish just in time to leave quarantine.

But the most exciting Mario Day news comes directly from Nintendo's official Twitter account with a not-so-cryptic Tweet:

Yes, at long last Nintendo and LEGO are teaming up for a LEGO Super Mario collab.

The trailer brings to mind the Mario Zone from Super Mario Land 2: 6 Gold Coins on Gameboy, and while its probably not an intentional homage, one would expect that a LEGO foray into the Mario franchise would be full of easter eggs.

Mario ZoneNintendo

A Mario LEGO collab is a big deal for a few reasons. Firstly, LEGO fans have been musing about how cool Mario LEGOs would be since at least as long as LEGO forums have existed. Secondly, Nintendo rarely licenses their franchises out to major toy companies, so despite the obvious market for Mario LEGOs, this was never an inevitability. And finally, the potential for a Nintendo LEGO line is insane.

While pre-constructed Mario sets would certainly be cool, imagine building an entire Mario level out of LEGOs? What better tool could their possibly be for modeling block-based levels in physical form than, well, toy blocks?

Of course, Mario isn't the end of the line either. Mario LEGOs open the door to tons of other Nintendo franchise LEGO sets. We could see Legend of Zelda LEGOs, Metroid LEGOs, and maybe even the holy grail of all "I wish this existed" LEGO series of all time––Pokemon LEGOs.

But alas, we don't even know if the Super Mario LEGOs will be physical yet. There's a distinct possibility that we'll just get a LEGO Super Mario game, which would certainly be fun and exciting, but not quite the same as actual, buildable toys. With no stated release date, we'll just have to wait and find out (assuming the world survives long enough). Until then, we might as well escape to Mario Odyssey, because New Donk City doesn't need to worry about infectious disease.