Review: 71419 Peach's Garden Balloon Ride
Posted by benbacardi,
LEGO continues to fuel the apparent popularity of the Super Mario theme, with five expansion sets released so far this year. At 453 parts, 71419 Peach's Garden Balloon Ride is not quite the largest of the wave, but is the only one dedicated to Princess Peach (although, of course, all the expansion sets can be paired with any of the three protagonists).
It is typical LEGO Super Mario fare: bright and colourful, with standard game mechanics, introducing a new character and recycling some old favourites.
Summary
71419 Peach's Garden Balloon Ride, 453 pieces.
£44.99 / $49.99 / €49.99 | 9.9p/11.0c/11.0c per piece.
Buy at LEGO.com »
A typical LEGO Super Mario expansion set; nothing groundbreaking, but still fun.
- A new character
- The balloon is fun
- Nice for Princess Peach to get more dedicated sets
- No particularly new gameplay mechanics
- Usual relatively high price
The set was provided for review by LEGO. All opinions expressed are those of the author.
Pom Pom
The main antagonist of the garden balloon ride is Pom Pom, her first appearance in the line. Similar to a Boomerang Bro, she's a shelled turtle-like creature and attacks by throwing boomerangs at you. Her shell is red, and she has a high ponytail of blonde hair tied upon her head, cleverly represented here with a banana.
As usual, the shell has a unique barcode tile on it, and Pom Pom takes eight jumps to destroy and give up her coins.
A small cloud platform is provided for Pom Pom, pretty low to the ground, with three clouds floating above it.
The clouds up high can be pushed sideways and fall to the ground, allowing you to knock Pom Pom from her perch and scan her tile.
There is also a small Lava Bubble in the set, but I'll show you where it's hiding later!
Yoshi and Toad's House
The set also contains a couple of friendly faces for Peach. A pink Yoshi (previously available in set: 71387) is sitting amongst the flowers in the garden, with the usual Yoshi barcode tile.
Peach can also visit a blue Toad, who apparently lives in the garden and tends to the plants, equipped with a watering can. Toads appear in many Mario sets, although a blue one has only been available before in 71390 Reznor Knockdown.
Toad lives in a small house in the garden, with a chimney puffing out smoke. What's that hidden next to it?
The cloud of smoke is hinged on one side, and can be flipped over to reveal a star block hiding beneath it! The back of Toad's house is pretty unsightly, and is clearly only meant to be viewed from the front.
The Garden
Turning to the rest of Peach's garden, the main focal point is a large but rather plain fountain.
The top of the fountain can be knocked off (there's a common theme throughout this set!) revealing a hidden coin tile.
Elsewhere, there's a small patch of earth growing a seemingly sentient turnip! The turnip can be picked by pressing on the end of the lever, which topples it over revealing the barcode tile on its rear.
This unique tile will yield a turnip that appears on Peach's screen, which she can eat (by repeatedly leaning forwards), and gain a number of coins for doing so.
Peach's Balloon
The main feature of the set is the titular balloon, a large pink hot air balloon with a basket sized just right for Peach to sit inside. It makes use of the quarter-balloon part first introduced in 2020 in 41252 Poppy's Air Balloon Adventure, four of which come together to form a relatively realistic hot air balloon shape. It's elegantly decorated with small heart tiles, plant pieces, and little white flowers.
Inside the basket is a new barcode tile with a picture of the balloon, positioned so that when Peach is sat inside, it activates her new "in a balloon" mode. When adding this set to the app for the first time, Peach had to spend what felt like a long few minutes being updated in order to work with the new features.
With her inside the balloon, her music changes, and she responds to being swooped around as if the balloon is flying with various sound effects, and earning the occasional coin.
But what's powering the balloon? There's clearly no burner below, so let's take a look inside. One of the four sides of the balloon isn't attached at the bottom, and can be hinged open to reveal the hidden Lava Bubble! Peach is clearly putting her enemies to good use.
Now the aforementioned "theme" to the set—exposing the tiles by knocking things over—makes sense: the idea is to get Peach in the balloon, and fly her around knocking into the clouds, chimney smoke, and enemies, to get at their barcode tiles and earn coins along the way.
Conclusion
As far as the Super Mario expansion sets, 71419 Peach's Garden Balloon Ride is not bad at all. I like the balloon; it was fun to give Peach a vehicle to fly around in, but other than that there isn't really anything particularly new about the set. You would need to be a serious Mario and LEGO fan to collect these, or spend the relatively high price they command on a regular basis.
I am wondering how much further they can continue the theme before they run out of material! But then again, they've been producing City police sets for far longer…
71419 Peach's Garden Balloon Ride is available at LEGO.com for £44.99 / $49.99 / 49.99€.
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28 comments on this article
“Apparent popularity”
I have to agree, apart from just2good and some other YouTubers I haven’t seen any demand for these sets, and personally I haven’t been interested in any of the sets apart from the CMF packs, and that’s just for the parts….
Where is the “limited appeal to AFOLs” tag?
@Goujon said:
"“Apparent popularity”
I have to agree, apart from just2good and some other YouTubers I haven’t seen any demand for these sets, and personally I haven’t been interested in any of the sets apart from the CMF packs, and that’s just for the parts…."
Can confirm as someone who bought a lot of the first waves, yeah, we played with them for a little and then just stopped. Virtual Super Mario is just that much more fun.
The fact that you see few AFOLs buying Super Mario sets isn't the definitive proof that the sets don't sell. AFOLs need to learn that there's a lot of people who buy Lego who don't even know about Brickset and other AFOL sites, the entire fanbase of Lego isn't here or at YT.
These Mario sets aren't for me, but when I look at them, I can definitely see the Nintendo ethos of "putting smiles on the faces of everyone Nintendo touches”
I'll be honest with you - I don't think that Lava Bubble is Peach' enemy. According to the SMB instruction manual, Peach alone has the power to uncurse the people from the Mushroom Kingdom who have been turned by Bowser into bricks and plants, and 40-something years later, she's made no effort to help her people at all, instead being content to let overweight blue-collar workers smash those bricks and rip out those plants.
We know Bowser cares for his subjects. Princess Peach empirically does not. Peach is the true evil, hiding in plain sight.
Vote Bowser.
I have been a skeptic since the beginning of this theme, but I finally picked up a Mario starter set for my kids last month (January 2023) ... and they LOVE it. My skepticism has melted, and now we buy expansion sets (but usually only at a discount). My son picked out 71419, and it's their favorite one of the bunch so far.
A friend who's a teacher with young kids told me the Mario sets were really popular at her school. The kids love taking Mario and others on their adventures, they jump and swoosh the characters around and all. So there definitely is a lot of interest, just to a completely different demographic who use Lego toys in a different way. Maybe we've forgotten about that way to play as adults...
I don't know who needs to see this, but the video ads on mobile are going to make me stop using this site. Get rid of them, they are ruining your website.
@drewtstew said:
"I don't know who needs to see this, but the video ads on mobile are going to make me stop using this site. Get rid of them, they are ruining your website."
If you log in, you won't see ads.
@560heliport said:
" @drewtstew said:
"I don't know who needs to see this, but the video ads on mobile are going to make me stop using this site. Get rid of them, they are ruining your website."
If you log in, you won't see ads."
That works for me, but why would anyone new ever sign up for a site with video ads? It's not at all obvious that they will go away if you have an account. All video ads do is chase people away
@drewtstew said:
" @560heliport said:
" @drewtstew said:
"I don't know who needs to see this, but the video ads on mobile are going to make me stop using this site. Get rid of them, they are ruining your website."
If you log in, you won't see ads."
That works for me, but why would anyone new ever sign up for a site with video ads? It's not at all obvious that they will go away if you have an account. All video ads do is chase people away"
The adverts conversation has been done to death in the comments here; they're how the site is funded and necessary for it to stay online. Logging in removes all ads, and if it was negatively impacting new users in a way that had a noticeable impact on the site, it would be a different story. Let's use the comments to focus on the article, shall we?
@ao_ka said:
"The fact that you see few AFOLs buying Super Mario sets isn't the definitive proof that the sets don't sell. AFOLs need to learn that there's a lot of people who buy Lego who don't even know about Brickset and other AFOL sites, the entire fanbase of Lego isn't here or at YT."
I agree with everything you say here! Shame this tone and insight wasn’t prevalent in the BTS review and announcement articles..
@drewtstew said:
" @560heliport said:
" @drewtstew said:
"I don't know who needs to see this, but the video ads on mobile are going to make me stop using this site. Get rid of them, they are ruining your website."
If you log in, you won't see ads."
That works for me, but why would anyone new ever sign up for a site with video ads? It's not at all obvious that they will go away if you have an account. All video ads do is chase people away"
If you're savvy enough to find and have a need to create an account here you know how to workaround video ads and don't see them anyway. Having said that, I enjoy this site enough to pay for "Brickset Pro" or whatever should there be one.
As an AFOL, I admit I raised an eyebrow when they introduced it, but since then fall in love with this theme. It's just fun. Be it playing with the kids, or just display. Also comes with some nice building technics and printed parts. Its short life span and the need for starter kits plays for me, as it's VERY easy to find these sets for dirt cheap on marketplace and even new they always get 30% off minimum shortly after release, so their pricing is not really a problem, at least in Canada, just don't get them Day 1
That Toad's face is adorable. I haven't bought a Super Mario set since 71404, and may not buy another one (although a Daisy Starter set would tempting), but I'd be sad to see the theme go. I loved the parachutes in 71386 and 71394, not just for the printed parachutes, but the way they were built. And as for people wondering how the line is still going, you see this in a lot of fandoms; especially toy-related ones, where people assume that their personal interests and tastes are shared by the entire fanbase.
@Ridgeheart: And then it turns out Bowser isn't actually kidnapping Peach; it's all just kinky roleplay. And Peach refuses to use the safeword.
@benbacardi: Regarding Brickset getting money to stay online: That's why I try to remember to use the associate link to lego.com when actually ordering sets, rather than just checking on an existing order, or something like that.
@drewtstew said:
"...It's not at all obvious that they will go away if you have an account..."
On the sign up page ( https://brickset.com/signup ) it says in BOLD:
Enjoy the site free of adverts
My only nitpick with the line is that they need to make regular figures (or buildable figures like the other character) of the main heroes. The electronic versions work well for play, but display terribly with their dead black eye sockets...!
It's very easy to condense the 'set pieces' in these expansions in to really nice designs on the shelf otherwise.
I also want to add that it constantly amuses me that a huge part of the AFOL community - literally grown adults playing with kids toys - don't seem to know how to relax and have fun. Weird.
Maybe the reason we don’t hear much about these ya is because kids are too busy playing with them and not really discussing them much online.
@drewtstew said:
"I don't know who needs to see this, but the video ads on mobile are going to make me stop using this site. Get rid of them, they are ruining your website."
How many people sign in to post this very comment, but have the ‘eureka’ moment before they hit post?
@darthsutius said:
"I also want to add that it constantly amuses me that a huge part of the AFOL community - literally grown adults playing with kids toys - don't seem to know how to relax and have fun. Weird."
Your comment is hilarious.
Oh, I think they probably do. But, the nature of the web turns people into strange creatures. Also, the behavior of the Lego company since the pandemic has made a lot of people (myself included) more negative on this site than they might be otherwise.
Since we're into the fourth year of Super Mario LEGO sets, I think we can consider its "apparent popularity" to be confirmed.
All I can say to those in the apparent popularity group is that my daughter who has never had even the slightest interest in Lego prior to seeing the Peach starter set, started begging for the set (and of course I obliged). Now all she wants for her birthday is more Mario sets, to go along with Mario, Luigi, and the 10 expansion sets her brother already has.
Perhaps AFOLs think this line is a mistake, but I’m sure that Lego is laughing all the way to the bank with these sets and the new Lego fans they are creating.
I have to say that this set looks relatively boring from a play perspective compared to other similarly sized sets, and even some smaller ones. I could be wrong, and perhaps my kids will be intrigued by this set, but it doesn’t really offer anything new and really just looks like a collection of 50-100 piece sets that have been bundled together. I think the key to this whole line is innovative play features that offer lots of movement, and flying has already been done quite a few times.
@560heliport said:
"Since we're into the fourth year of Super Mario LEGO sets, I think we can consider its "apparent popularity" to be confirmed."
I agree. I've bought quite a few at great clearance prices for the cool characters and nice parts.
Then again, they always seem to be on clearance. And, personally, I think I have too much already and not desirous for more.
As an afol that loves the super mario theme, i am not really blown away by this set. Of course i’d like to get PomPom (would be cool if she had also a shuriken to choose from), but i already have pink Yoshi and i think the big balloon is not interesting enough for me. So this set i’ll skip.
I know a lot of people wanted a minifig super mario theme, but building these figs is just so satisfying and they just look so good when build. I only would like a way to give eyes to the digifigs when turned off.
Looks fun enough. I will be getting it especially because the Pom Pom figure looks excellent.