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After months of speculation and a couple of persistent leaks, the Lego Group has announced its latest video game collaboration: Lego Sonic the Hedgehog.
Sonic has appeared in Lego form before, of course – first in the Lego Dimensions toys-to-life video game, and later in a brilliant Lego Ideas set depicting Green Hill Zone. Unlike that set, however, the new official Sonic range is squarely aimed at kids. As it should be.
The Lego Ideas set was more suitable for grown-up fans of Sonic and nineties kids in need of a dose of nostalgia. Set up as a diorama of a classic Sonic level, it wasn’t all that ‘playable’. It even shipped in a black box, which is Lego’s signal that they consider the set an 18+ product. The new sets are the opposite, with suggested age brackets ranging from 6+ for the basic set up to 8+ for the most intricate.
As a grown up who should know better who nevertheless spends well into four figures on Lego every year, I can’t help but be ever-so-slightly disappointed. And yet, in my heart, I know that this is the right path. Sonic is for kids, after all, and these sets look brilliant.
It’s a similar path to that taken by Lego for its Super Mario series, but with one key difference. The Mario sets aimed to gamify the Lego experience by featuring bluetooth-compatible figures of Mario, Luigi, and Peach, and scannable codes on bricks. This allowed you to set up Lego layouts, record them in the mobile app, and actively rack up high scores in a sort of bridge experience between Mario video games and Mario toys. You can even play it co-op. Sonic takes it back to basics.
These are Sonic sets, but they’re strictly toys. Sonic can be made to dash up ramps and through loop-de-loops by putting his minifigure in a sort of Lego hamster ball and then putting it inside a launcher that’s cutely been decorated like one of Sonic’s iconic carnival springs. Load him into the ball and then slam your fist down on the launcher to send Sonic flying.
Two of the four revealed sets recreate sections of the Green Hill Zone, complete with brick-built badniks, custom-molded Flickies, and power-up TVs. The larger of these sets – the biggest of the bunch – also includes Robotnik/Eggman himself, in a new minifigure form based on his modern era design.
The sets are then rounded out with a Tails’ Workshop set including the iconic Tornado biplane, and ‘Amy’s Animal Rescue Island’, a cutesy play set that has Amy looking after several of the small animals that pop out of defeated badniks.
With figures of Sonic, Tails, Amy, Eggman, and a range of Flickies and Badniks, there’s obviously scope left for Lego to expand. Knuckles is the most notable absence, of course – but then there’s Shadow and beyond.
The sets start at £24.99 and range up to £94.99. The prices are probably the worst of it, in fact – part of a general squeeze that has seen Lego prices leap a few times during the pandemic. But the charm of the sets is undeniable, and it’s great to see another gaming icon get a brick-built run-out.
It’s worth noting that the leak pegged five sets in the Lego Sonic series, so it seems there’s one missing. The set numbers range from #76990 through #76994 – but #76993, which was on the leak, is missing. The leak pointed to that as a mid-high range set, around the £55-60 mark. That could be a set for adults, or it could be another more intricate play set – in the reveal trailer for the Sonic range, there’s a glimpse of a brick-built Death Egg Robot, from Sonic 2 & Mania, at 48 seconds in. That could be the missing set, or just a promo video exclusive.
Regardless, though, it feels brilliant to see Sonic get love in this way. He’s a perfect fit for Lego, and it’s right and proper that these sets are built for chaotic kids play – sending Sonic skittering across the carpet, smashing into brick-built badniks who’ll dutifully explode. It’s franchise-appropriate.
As for us would-be pensioners, us 90s kids? Well, I’ll probably be buying these anyway – but it’s not unreasonable to think Lego will probably throw us a bone sooner or later. Lego Super Mario is squarely aimed at children, but so far Lego has released one 18+ Nintendo set a year in the form of things like the Lego NES, the Mighty Bowser, and the Mario 64 Question Mark Block diorama. Leaks also tell us an 18+ Zelda set is very likely on the way.
Here’s hoping we get the same for Sega. Brick-built Mega Drive, anyone?