Lego: Adventures With Peach Set Review 71403

Lego is one of the hottest toys out there right now,  and for good reason. It’s more than just a toy; it’s a system for building that allows infinite results. Lego is also extremely popular partly because they’ve figured out how to tap into the fandom markets. Take, for example, the Super Mario sets: Super Mario is a hugely popular video game series from Nintendo, and Lego was able to take the public’s desire for all things Mario and adapt that into a series of sets. Not only do those sets contain the look and feel of Mario characters from the games, but Lego has also added an electronic interactive component that’s pretty unique. Today, we’ll look at one of the starter sets to help you ease your way into the world of Lego Super Mario. Our review is Adventures with Peach Starter Course (71403.) The set contains 354 pieces and retails for $74.99 Canadian. In this review I’ll take a look at what’s inside the set, what we can build with it, and how much fun it may be.

A bit about me and why you can trust these Lego reviews you may start finding here on TechGadgets; I’m a Lego artist and create custom Lego mosaics and post about them on my website, BrickWares. I’ve created over 90 Lego mosaics since 2006 and even built pieces for Academy Award winners, television personalities, and cultural icons. Peter Dinklage called my work “Brilliant”. Richard Taylor (CEO of Weta Workshop) said tit was “Exquisite”.  I know my Lego.

Lego: Adventures With Peach Set Review 71403

Opening the Set

You’ll find seven bags with pieces and a quick-start instruction set when you open this set. You’ll first want to take out the Lego Princess Peach piece and find a small screwdriver and two AAA batteries. Before opening the compartment to add the batteries, you’ll probably want to grab your favorite tablet or phone and download the Lego Super Mario Lego. I recommend doing this sooner than later, as downloading the app might take a while.  I also found that once I had downloaded the app, it took a few more minutes to update the software within the Princess Peach figure, and that would be another short delay. If you’re building this with your kids, consider downloading that app and having everything ready to roll before you open this set. That way, you’ll minimize the downtime.

New Instruction Model

One thing I noticed with lego supermario starter course 71403 is that there is no paper instruction booklet. There is a quick start guide that will tell you to go and download the Lego SuperMario app, which will act as your building guide. Once you’ve downloaded the app, it will walk you through building all the various components of the set.  From an environmental perspective, it’s one less booklet being printed that will likely end up in the recycling bin. Still, on the other hand, paper booklets do allow you to build at your own pace, and I indeed found a few times that I was waiting on the app to refresh the next page while I was building, so it probably took a little longer to build than it would have if I had had a paper booklet.

The First Few Bags

Once I added the batteries to the lego Adventure with Peach figure, I pressed the Bluetooth button on the front, and it began trying to connect to the tablet. The connection happened quickly, but I had to wait a few minutes for the app to update the software within the Princess Peach figure. I also needed a small screwdriver to open the battery compartment. Fortunately, I do keep an electronics screwdriver set on hand because it’s a very small screw. Once Peach was up and running and connected to the app, she started displaying an icon on her front, and her eyes began to move back and forth. This is a pretty neat feature that kids will enjoy, as it seems to bring the character to life.

This set of lego supermario adventures with peach starter course 71403 is all about mini-builds that will all eventually work together to form a level of Super Mario. The first piece you’ll build is the starting chute, which is pretty simple, with only a few pieces involved. The really interesting piece here is a printed tile that has codes or bars on it the same way a UPC code might. The Peach character interacts with this, so anytime she goes near one of the pieces that have these codes on them (and there are quite a few in this set,) she will interact in different ways with them, often making a sound or sending information to the app to record.

The adventure with peach lego will walk you through building each of the small bits that will form the larger level. They’re broken up by those characters or features. Each build is relatively short and never takes too long to get done. After I had built the starting piece, the ending flag for the level, as well as one of the little fire creatures, I was able to click the play a level icon in the app and went through the motions of moving Peach across the little fire guy and then towards the end of the level.l When you place Peach on the icon at the end of the level near the flag, the app will read back all of the different items or creatures that you encountered and give you some virtual coins based on that, scoring the level for you which is a pretty neat feature that allows you to pretend like you’re playing the actual game.

The remaining bags in the set were similar in that each mini-build was one portion or creature you might run into along the way. Very wisely, it went from easier builds to trickier ones as we progressed through the bags, which is perfect for younger or newer builders to get some confidence before moving on to things that might be trickier. The online instructions were fine regarding which color of piece to use, which can sometimes be an issue with the printed instructions, and I always found things straightforward and easy to follow.

Playing with the Set

Once everything was built, I lined the parts of the set up from one end to the other and had Peach run through the entire thing. I found that I was moving too slowly and started to hear the hurry-up music that appears in the Super Mario games, so I knew I had to rush a little faster to get all the way through the level. The interesting thing is that the way the readers work has no set order, so you don’t feel like you have to put things in a certain way when you’re putting your level together. That allows you to make a square or a line or put anything in whatever order you choose. You can even leave out or add in other things. As Lego Adventures with Peach is part of a much larger world of Super Mario sets, you can also add things from different sets to create even larger and more complicated levels.

Overall Review: Lego Super mario Adventures with Peach

My first impression when I opened the set was that $75 seemed a little much for a starter set that only had 354 pieces. You get the Princess Peach Bluetooth piece, allowing you to play any other Super Mario set without buying another starter piece. There is a lot of stuff in lego 71403, and there are a lot of pieces that you end up building to create a reasonably expansive level.  The amount of building you’ll do and the fun that you’ll have putting these pieces together and then trying them out seems right for the cost. Apart from the code reading pieces, which are very clever and quite interesting on their own, there were only a few other pieces that were special or of note. The building techniques used here were pretty simple, but that’s what you’d expect from a starter set, so that’s on point here. The headdress or fan bit on the final bad guy that you’ll build (Lemmy) is very interesting in how it’s put together, and newer builders will take note and be interested to see how pieces can be used in different directions to create a head fan.

Lego Adventures with Peach is a fun set. It’s a pleasant building experience that will only tax you a little but will leave you satisfied.  There are several things to build, some pretty cool looking Mario figures, and the set is a really interesting and clever way to add electronic aspects to a Lego set. As it’s part of a larger world of Mario sets, it also acts as that starter set, giving you the Peach figure, and doesn’t skimp on other things for her to do within that first set. This one is definitely a decent set for the price, a set that you’ll have a lot of fun with, especially if you’ve got younger builders in the house or if you are a big Super Mario fan.

You can find Lego sets from Lego’s website or from Amazon.

This review is part of an occasional series on Lego and Lego gadgets. If you like this content and want to see more, be sure to let us know in the comments.

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