Review: 71429 Nabbit at Toad's Shop
Posted by SetToBuild,
As the name of 71429 Nabbit at Toad's Shop implies, Nabbit is indeed at Toad’s Shop. Is he doing some shopping or something more sinister? Toad has good cause to be nervous about this known thief. Will Nabbit grab some goods or is he just out to steal our hearts?
Summary
71429 Nabbit at Toad's Shop, 230 pieces.
£17.99 / $19.99 / €19.99 | 7.8p/8.7c/8.7c per piece.
Buy at LEGO.com »
Toad’s Shop is a nice place to take a break and grab a snack, but the play features could have more imaginative outcomes.
- Another chance to nab a Nabbit
- Printed instructions
- Less engaging play features
- Redundant concept
The set was provided for review by LEGO. All opinions expressed are those of the author.
Characters
The Yellow Toad that is included in this set is almost identical to mar0113. However, this shopkeeper Toad is standing rather than taking a stroll. The Toad figures don’t change much except for their expressions. The same goes for this happy little guy, though he’s a whizz with the soft serve machine.
If you missed the adorable Nabbit figure in the fifth series of the Character Packs, this is a good way to pick up this elusive thief. His structure hasn’t changed much since his last appearance. This time, instead of a 1x1 double bow, his hand is a 1x1 clip which is much more fitting for a character that grabs treasures.
The biggest change for this figure is the bag he carries on his back. Now the bag can open to store an item, so it’s up to the player to decide if Nabbit is up to his usual tricks. There are no suggestions from the set or from scanning the barcodes that Nabbit actually steals anything.
Completed Model
This charming small shop sells all the essentials; snacks and toys. What else do you really need? There is a trolley to load up your merchandise and a nice 2x4 rounded tile with a “Shop” print. The small green bush to the right of the shop is a simple, but effective design. This might have been done before, but having built it for the first time, I thought it was clever.
The other side of the shop features a cosy fire and a soft serve machine. Remember this set the next time you’re asking for something that is out of stock at a store: what you want isn’t hiding in the stockroom, because the stockroom doesn’t exist!
If your hero figure is going to make it through your entire course in under 60 seconds, they will need some energy. Luckily this shop has them covered, but it’s a shame there isn’t a barcode to show Mario chowing down on some pizza or pretzels. There’s an apple too if you fancy a healthier snack: remember kids, an apple a day keeps the Nabbit away!
The other items in the store include planes, trains, and… ducks?! The duck on wheels is likely a subtle nod to the LEGO wooden duck. However, unless also referencing LEGO history, I’m lost on why there is a train or a plane for sale. Sometimes the Mario Kart games feature a train as an obstacle. The advent calendar-sized toy models are fun to build as they only use a few parts to great effect. They’re cute, but I don’t quite understand why Mario needs to be able to buy these things.
Play
After scanning the shop’s barcode and then quickly removing your hero figure, you are presented with one of four different items that you can either consume yourself or give to an ally: an ice cream cone, a red apple, a green apple, or cookies. This is reminiscent of the Toad Houses from Super Mario Bros. 3 in which you are given three treasure chests to choose from. While you think that you have a choice, in reality, these items are random.
To get the full shopping experience, keep your hero figure positioned on the barcode. The Toad House song from Super Mario Bros. 3 will play, and all of the items from the shop are shown on the hero figure’s screen. When you see the item you want, remove your hero figure from the barcode to obtain it. The toys in the shop cannot be acquired via this method, so just think of them as gifts with purchase.
Scanning Nabbit gives you coins, a super mushroom, an invisible star, or adds time when running a course. Knowing Nabbit’s tendencies, it would have made more sense if there was a chance that something could be taken away from the player. Even further, it could require the player to track Nabbit down somewhere else in the course to reclaim their item.
The play experience left me struggling to figure out where I would place Toad’s Shop in a course. Unless you can get some extra time on the clock from Nabbit, the course must be completed within 60 seconds. Therefore, you’d have to channel your inner Supermarket Sweep contestant if you wanted to make it to the goal in time.
Conclusion
Toad’s Shop offers a satisfactory scene for your hero to stop by for a power-up, but that’s all it is. There are many other sets, figures, and costumes that offer power-ups, so this set feels redundant in a theme that has been going since 2020. In fact, the wave seems even less cohesive than previous LEGO Super Mario waves, as if it was just a collection of leftover ideas.
I would have blamed the price point for the lack of features, but the following set in this wave actually has a clever gimmick that was fun to experiment with. Grab a coat and stay tuned!
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22 comments on this article
Maybe if this was Captain Toad and a character other than Nabbit, this set would be worth it, but to be honest I see this one as a dust collector.
"Pick a box. Its contents will help you on your way"
Printed instructions as a plus? Isn't that just normal for most Lego sets?
Printed pieces and no stickers, that's the real plus here!
“As the name of 71429 Nabbit at Toad's Shop implies, Nabbit is indeed at Toad’s Shop”
This gave me a good chuckle. And it’s informative. Great review!
I feel like this set works better as something you play with on its own terms, rather than as an accessory for the LEGO Super Mario (tm) experience. In fact, I’d argue this newest wave of LEGO Super Mario sets has been designed to explicitly appeal to people who’ve overlooked it before now - which the presence of printed instructions may support.
@WizardOfOss said:
"Printed instructions as a plus? Isn't that just normal for most Lego sets?
Printed pieces and no stickers, that's the real plus here!"
The Mario sets all had digital instructions that you could only access on the LSM app or on lego.com. I think there was a stint in 2021 where some Mario sets had paper instructions, but I'm not sure
I feel like that's how most of these Mario sets are now: add one interesting gimmick in a set that's otherwise a huge dust collector and people will supposedly buy it. The fishing minigame in 71422 is the prime example of this.
"Nabbit at Toad's Shop" just sounds like a really great slogan.
What's up with the poor duck - no eyes??
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! I can explain the the train reference! The hint is in the colors but it’s deep cut stuff!
The train is the black and red train from Kalimari Desert in Mario Kart 64 (the black body and dark red wheels are a dead giveaway):
https://www.models-resource.com/resources/big_icons/30/29333.png?updated=1556317484
Not as sure on the plane, as the colors don’t match Mario’s personal airplane (a yellow number called the Sky Pop), but the train is super clear.
I’ve let PPP dictate my thoughts for too long but this is when I finally break out of it. I have no idea what the draw is here, aside from Easter Eggs that most people won’t get.
@AverageChimaEnjoyer said:
"I feel like that's how most of these Mario sets are now: add one interesting gimmick in a set that's otherwise a huge dust collector and people will supposedly buy it. The fishing minigame in 71422 is the prime example of this."
I haven't bought any of these sets myself, but I feel like the main "selling point" of both that set and this one is that they offer new, playable versions of Mario's house or a Toad House for people (especially younger kids) who'd missed out on sets like 71367 and 71368. In that respect it's not unlike the repetition that inevitably occurs in other KFOL-targeted themes like City, Ninjago, or Minecraft after they've been out for several years.
While the shopping mechanic is certainly fairly gimmicky and offers ambiguous strategic value during "timed" gameplay, I agree with the reviewer that it's a neat way to recreate the role Toad Houses and shops in various the Mario games! I also appreciate that it gives the set an interactive feature tied specifically to this "shop" setting (rather than the model just being a generic spot to interact with Toad, or a hiding place for a generic item like a coin or power star).
A lot of aspects of this set like the shelves of food and toys, the shopping cart, and the clip attachment on Nabbit's left arm (as opposed to the rounded mitten in his previous appearance) also seem primarily geared towards imaginative role-play, rather than interactive play features for the Mario/Luigi/Peach figures or mechanical/kinetic features like slides, lifts, and catapults. The character selection also suits this style of play: Yellow Toad can be a protagonist in his own right, while Nabbit can be either a fellow protagonist or an crafty foe depending on what kind of story you want to tell.
As such, compared to some earlier sets this size like 71363, 71381, or 71405 (which contained only "enemy" characters), this one feels like it has a lot more role-play/storytelling potential on its own (even without pairing it with an electronic figure from one of the starter sets). A lot of the other 2024 sets likewise seem geared towards play scenarios that give the included characters interesting stuff that they can do without needing to involve Peach or one of the Mario Bros. Perhaps this, like the printed instructions, is meant to make the sets more appealing to folks who'd be less interested if a separate set or app were strictly necessary for a complete play experience.
Thanks for the detailed review! While the theme is certainly retreading old ground a bit with some of these sets, especially smaller ones like this, I also feel like the overall design quality remains strong. Moreover, the freshness of some of the larger 2024 sets (like Bowser's car and the theme's first "underwater level") give me plenty of confidence that the theme has not yet exhausted its potential. I will definitely be eagerly anticipating Brickset reviews of these other upcoming Super Mario sets!
Paper instructions are a good first step. Now, give us minifigs.
Otherwise, (yawn) this is beyond redundant. It makes me bored and sleepy just looking at it.
In more interesting Lego news, they have hired strike busters in California to try to keep the Legoland employees from forming a union.
Boy, KKK really likes his billions!! Just like their position on print quality, their position on strike busting is the exact opposite of what Lego claims to be.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/28/legoland-california-union-ride-techs
Question: Does buying Lego mean that we are all now complicit in unfair labor practices and anti-union strike busting?
@AverageChimaEnjoyer said:
"The Mario sets all had digital instructions that you could only access on the LSM app or on lego.com. I think there was a stint in 2021 where some Mario sets had paper instructions, but I'm not sure"
Ah okay, don't think I ever noticed that in reviews so wasn't aware. So yeah, then it sure is a plus.
Maybe I missed something, but what does the barcode on Nabbit's backpack do?
Saw this at my local Walmart just last night even though it has 2024 year on it. Also the 71430 Penguin Family Snow Adventure set and 76995 Shadow's Escape from the Sonic the Hedgehog theme.
@AverageChimaEnjoyer said:
"I think there was a stint in 2021 where some Mario sets had paper instructions, but I'm not sure"
The only Mario sets to have come with paper instructions are the collectable minifigures and the separate standalone sets (not intended to be part of a course) such as the large '? block' 71395 and the NES console 71374. All of the rest have simply included a sheet that directs you to the app.
@Binnekamp said:
"Maybe I missed something, but what does the barcode on Nabbit's backpack do?"
Yep, second to last paragraph in the Play section. "Scanning Nabbit gives you coins, a super mushroom, an invisible star, or adds time when running a course."
I would love to hear from parents of kids that actually play with these sets as intended.
I appreciate I'm not the intended audience, but scanning barcodes doesn't sound fun to me (unless it's barcode battlers... anyone remember them?!)
"Unidentified item in the bagging area" comes to mind.
@Andhe said:
"I would love to hear from parents of kids that actually play with these sets as intended.
I appreciate I'm not the intended audience, but scanning barcodes doesn't sound fun to me (unless it's barcode battlers... anyone remember them?!) "
I'm not the intended audience either, and while my kids love Mario, I tried to keep my kids away from these sets for as long as I could, since I knew what a money pit they are once you start collecting them. That being said, my older kid (9) decided to save up for the Mario starter set a couple of months ago, so I can give you some perspective as to how my kids play with these sets.
My older one really enjoys building LEGO sets, but then never really plays with them afterwards (it complements my younger kid fairly well, who kind of likes building them, but loves playing with them once built). The Mario starter set is the first set in a long time that I've seen my older kid really enjoy playing with too. He likes setting up different variations of courses and interacting with them with the battery-powered Mario as if he's actually playing the game. (My younger one largely likes playing with them like any other playset.)
Now, that being said, they go through spurts where they'll play with LEGO Mario a lot for a good week or so, and then not touch it for a month until they get another character pack or small expansion, and then the cycle repeats: my older kid will set up different courses for himself and see how he does with the interactive Mario, but then loses interest after a week or so. Still, I've been impressed with how it focuses his creativity, since he otherwise doesn't have one central outlet for creating stuff from his imagination (he really enjoyed building in the Mario Maker game awhile back, so these LEGO sets seem like a natural, real-world extension of that). He asked for the Luigi starter set to further create complex courses, which will suck him back in for awhile if Santa is good to him.
I imagine every kid is different with how they approach these Mario sets, but I hope my one perspective helps shed some light as to how kids get on with them. I will say that it's interesting that the latest sets seem to be more playset-focused (like the houses, the Donkey Kong-themed ones, etc.), rather than course-building expansions. I think that's just LEGO trying to expand their appeal, though, rather than kids losing interest in their original intent.
It puzzles me. Why duck has not printed eyes?
I don’t get it why they use Nabbit here. Just like the little Yoshi set with no recolored versions in it. If they made this with a new character it would be so much better. Who needs more Nabbits? More toads i get, but more Nabbits? They should have made a Snifit. A Snifit seems like a good choice for going to a Toad’s Shop. Plus Snifits ride ostriches.