Review: 71407 Cat Peach Suit and Frozen Tower

Posted by benbacardi, 05 Aug 2022 15:30

With the introduction of Princess Peach to the Super Mario lineup in 71403 Adventures with Peach, LEGO also released two expansion sets specifically designed for the royal hero.

The smaller of the two, 71407 Cat Peach Suit and Frozen Tower, contains a new outfit, two antagonists, and a friendly Toad to rescue, trapped at the top of the tower. Let's take a look!

Summary

71407 Cat Peach Suit and Frozen Tower, 494 pieces.
£59.99 / $79.99 / €69.99 | 12.1p/16.2c/14.2c per piece.
Buy at LEGO.com »

A decent expansion set, great to have Peach-themed options. Visually striking and fun mechanics.

Decent size
Fun to play and rescue Toad
Adds impact to your course

Relatively costly
Cat Suit a little pointless

The set was provided for review by LEGO. All opinions expressed are those of the author.

Cat Peach Suit

First introduced in Super Mario 3D World, the Cat Suit was a form that the playable characters (including Peach) could transform into by collecting a Super Bell from a question mark block. It provided a handful of additional abilities, such as being able to briefly climb up or cling to walls.

Peach's suit consists of a replacement for her dress with little moulded paws, cat ears to sit beneath her crown, and paw-shaped gloves for her hands. When the suit is put on, the Super Bell appears on Peach's screen (a nice callback to the original games), and she makes a small meow sound.

The rear of the suit is printed with a tail. Although pink, and clearly designed for Peach, the suit also fits Luigi (and presumably Mario, but I don't have the Mario Starter set to test with), but it half covers his screen. As they move around, wearing the suit, they make a variety of cat noises.

Minor Builds

The star of the set is undoubtably the frozen tower, but a handful of ancillary builds surround it. The first is a small tree, with space for a yellow fruit in front of it that Peach can eat or give to Toad. The second is a small enemy, a Cat Goomba, appropriate for Cat Peach to defeat! It has a unique barcode tile on its back, though I cannot see how it is treated any differently to a normal Goomba. Perhaps only for the app to provide appropriate visuals at the end of the course?

The final mini build is a block sitting beneath a frozen dome. Peach can jump on the lever to break the ice, revealing a barcode tile to scan and receive a coin.

The Frozen Tower

The Frozen Tower itself consists of a couple of levels, built independently and attached together at the end. The lowest level is the largest, built on the edge of some water, and houses a trio of pedestals that present the three parts of the Cat Suit.

The whole grey section slides backwards into the tower, lifting the ears and the gloves up as it does, to keep the suit stored away. In order to retrieve it, Peach must pull the grey steps forwards, sliding the mechanism out of the tower and lowering the two outer pedestals.

A small waterfall cascades down one side of the tower, with little 1x1 round tiles printed with a cat pawprint on them. It's intended for Peach to use this to climb the tower, but in reality there is nothing stopping you bouncing her up any side you like.

The top of the tower is built in two sections, and is surrounded by large frozen ice blocks preventing Peach from climbing any further to rescue poor Toad who is trapped at the top! Not only that, Kamek is flying round on their broomstick, ready to repel any attempts at a rescue.

On each side of the tower is a large round tile, connected to the other side via an axle running through the middle. Punch the tile hard enough, and the corresponding ice block on the opposite side will fall off. Do this for the tile on the left of the tower, and it'll reveal the one on the right.

Once the two ice blocks on the sides are gone, this frees up two POW blocks opposite each other. They're joined through the middle of the tower, and hitting them repeatedly back and forth causes the broomstick to swing wildly, hopefully knocking Kamek to the ground, at which point Peach can jump on his back to defeat him. A barcode tile on the broomstick itself lets Peach ride it, gathering coins as she does.

Kamek gone, and the last ice block can be knocked off, freeing Toad. The top part of the tower rotates, but was held in place but the ice. More cat prints lead up the side to a space on the top where Peach can stand (although there's no way to gain any coins from being up here).

Toad's wearing a suitably shocked expression for having been trapped at the top of the tower awaiting rescue.

Kamek and his broomstick are unchanged from his first appearance in 71391 Bowser's Airship, except for the ice firing from the end of his wand.

With the tower assembled, it has quite some height - standing at over 35cm tall.

The two halves are held together by Technic pins and large transparent stand, and the model certainly does not look its most attractive from the rear.

Three connection points on the bottom (left, right, and front) allow you to add in the rest of the build, and the expansion set is complete. Time to crack out the starter course, join on a warp pipe and a finish flag, and get playing!

Conclusion

There's no doubt that this set is visually striking - it has an impressive height, bright colours, and a baddie flying around on a broomstick. It's also great to see a costume change for Peach introduced already (and I'm glad that the other characters can use it too—although Luigi did need a software update in order to understand).

That said, I'm not sure of the point of the Cat Suit. There doesn't seem to be anything in the set that Peach can't accomplish without it, unlike Luigi's Poltergust from his Mansion range of sets last year. On the one hand, it's good that for other expansion sets this one won't be a requirement, but it would have been nice if there were some part of the course that couldn't be done in her usual dress.

Exploding the tower to remove the ice was fun, and the mechanics to defeat Kamek and free Toad certainly enjoyable. Changing into the Cat Peach suit takes quite a bit of time, with the gloves and ears as well as the suit, so I would have appreciated the inclusion of some kind of extra time block - otherwise adding this to any other expansion set or starter course will make it challenging to complete in the usual time limit.

At $79.99 / £59.99 / 69.99€, there are cheaper expansion sets (though not in the Peach-specific range), but I like that this one is a single large building, rather than a set of smaller disparate elements. I'd consider it worth checking out to add to your Mario collection, assuming you have the Peach starter set.

71407 Cat Peach Suit and Frozen Tower is available from LEGO.com for £54.99 / $79.99 / 69.99€.

45 likes

8 comments on this article

By LegoSonicBoy in Singapore, 05 Aug 2022 17:01

Other than Kamek, and maybe the Cat Goomba, nothing else about this set strikes me as interesting for that price. The castle is nice but just not substantial enough. The Guarded Fortress provided better value (smaller structure with one play feature, more expansive play area) at two thirds of the price. The Big Urchin Beach Ride provides similar value at $20 less in both USD and my currency and I'm on the fence on that one as well because all I want out of it are the Big Urchin and the Yellow Yoshi.