After getting Lego Mario, this is the set my son has been talking about for months. Obviously it is the biggest set in the Mario line, and it includes Bowser, but it was watching a video of how you play with it that my son so excited. Luckily, the price per part on this set is great, which is definitely not the case with other Mario sets, so spending $100 on this is certainly more justifiable than buying one of the other larger sets.

Now this set delivers on everything, from playability to the building experience to size. Certainly a 1000 piece set will always take a kid a lot longer than a 200 piece set, but unlike other Mario sets where you have a handful of small mini builds and land to walk on, this set is an actual Lego building set, as enjoyable to build as a Star Wars set, and this is something that my son definitely appreciated. You are actually building Legos and not just putting together a toy to play with which is the case with the smaller sets.

Now one problem is you still don't get instructions, and I'm kind of ok with that since the app teaches you how to play, but due to the size of the set and the time it took to build it, our iPad's batteries died and my son had to wait until the next day to finish building the set. So make sure your iPad is fully charged if you are giving this set to your kids. Now like other sets in the Mario line, the build is a little too easy in places and my son would just jump ahead 10 steps from simple assumptions that were always right. However there were also parts that he had to follow step by step, and that gave him great satisfaction.

Once completed this set is massive. This a 1000 piece set and it sprawls out in all directions. It is easily three times the size of a Star Wars set with a similar part count. Now this is a good thing from a playability perspective and the fact that it looks awesome, but there is a problem with it as well, besides needing to buy a bigger house to keep it in. The set is basically just a facade. Now it's ok to have a facade from an aesthetic point of view because you will never look at the back of it, the play all occurs in the front. However without a solid structure the set is fairly fragile. In just a few days the Bowser statue has had both arms, its mouth, eyes, and nose all fall off and need to be repaired (all simple repairs). Not to mention that the structural bridge between Mario and Bowser's bridge fell apart about 10 times during the building experience. And a few other pieces, including Bowser himself, have broken as well during play. While I appreciate Lego keeping the part count down to save me some money, another $5-$10 worth of bricks would have given it some much needed structure and would have been well worth the price, although I realize that $99.99 is much better looking than having that first number be a 1.

As for play, your kids will love it! Let's start with the little stuff. You get Dry Bones who is simply a single jump enemy but he gives you 15 coins (you can only kill him once). You have a Lava Ball who sits on a mini catapult and can be killed multiple times. Then you have Boo who flies around a turret which has a spinning platform for Mario just like in the starter set, but with a twist. Boo flies around the turret faster than the platform spins (some great engineering for your little ones to understand), so not only do you have to balance, but Boo can also push you down! To further improve his play value, he can only be killed while invincible (which leads to your kid asking for Mario's house since it has a Star block). Once killed he offers a boatload of coins, and the can be killed over and over again, for less coins, even when not invincible.

Now for Bowser, who by the way will allow you to collect at least 100 coins every game (we are getting close to 200). You start by jumping on the two levers that push his statues arms up tj reveal a Mystery Block and a Time block (30 seconds more). Raising each arm tilts his bridge down a bit and sends him sliding a bit as well (another engineering lesson), and then it's time to get some coins. You place Mario in the spinner and go back and forth collecting more coins the faster you go. If you just do this for 90 seconds and don't even kill Bowser you will get 100 coins easily. Sometimes when you do this Bowser will fall down almost instantly, other times he will survive the earthquake for 30 seconds, I think it has a lot to do with how far he moves whe you start doing this, the more momentum he builds up, the quicker he falls. After falling you jump on him 10 times and get a lot more coins. Even without the coins, this is easily the most fun play feature we have seen in a Mario set, and we own 4 expansion sets!

Of course while the aesthetics of the brick wall in front and the turrets are incredible, Lego Mario is meant to be rearranged constantly so while I would like to see the complete set as it should be as it reminds me of playing Mario in the 80's, my son would rather totally rearrange it. But good for him, he is figuring out how to get the most coins out of it and having a ton of fun.

Of all the expansion sets out there, this one is easily the best as well as the best value. Yes, you could buy 4 smaller expansion sets for the same price and have a greater variety of enemies and activities, but this one is just too much fun, and it really does take a very sizable chunk of your now 90 seconds! If you can splurge on the price of the starter set, there is no reason why you shouldn't splurge again on this one. Just pretend like it's 1988 and the console cost you $100 and each game is $50 more, at least now inflation is on your side! Your kids won't need video games if they have a real life video game!