New Lego Super Mario and Sonic The Hedgehog sets are rumoured for next year, along with a brand new line of Animal Crossing toys.
Lego has been embracing video games more and more over the last few years, with everything from a Pac-Man arcade machine and Atari VCS to a Tallneck from Horizon Forbidden West. That’s in addition to a new line of Sonic The Hedgehog sets and forays into new video games of its own, with Lego 2K Drive and a rumoured new football title.
It’s Nintendo that they seem to get on with the best though, with both companies having a similar obsession with secrecy. However, unlike Nintendo, Lego secrets regularly leak out ahead of time and at the moment all kinds of details about new sets for the first half of next year are being rumoured – and several of them involve games.
Actual pictures only usually leak out a few weeks before a new product’s launch, but there’s still a lot that can be gleaned just from prices and piece counts.
The rumours about Animal Crossing started with talk of a new, unidentified Lego theme starting in March 2024. As a hint, the leaker mentioned Fabuland, a line of anthropomorphic animals (instead of the normal Lego minifigures) from the 80s that are curiously similar to Animal Crossing.
Then the rumours just flat out stated that Animal Crossing was getting its own theme, with five sets scheduled for release at prices ranging from $14.99 to $74.99 (roughly £12 to £60).
That’s pretty cheap for licensed Lego, which together with the piece counts suggests they’re fairly small sets. For comparison, this is what a £12.99 set with a similar piece count looks like for Star Wars and here’s another Star Wars set for £64.99.
The big question, from a Lego perspective, is whether these will be regular Lego sets with ordinary minifigures (like the Lego ones) or if they’ll have some kind of gimmick like the Bluetooth compatible electronic Mario toys.
Since the Mario starter sets, with the Bluetooth figure, are £54.99 it seems unlikely that Animal Crossing will follow the same pattern, but that in itself doesn’t confirm minifigures.
However, you’ll note that one of the sets is more expensive than another with more pieces. That’s usually a sign that it has a large number of minifigures, which jack up the prices. Although in this case it could be some other recurring feature.
At the same time, Lego Sonic is rumoured to be getting two new sets in January, one for £17 and the other for £28.
The Super Mario line will also get five new sets in January, ranging in price from £8 to £35. However, it’s believed that theme is preparing to wind down – although whether that means traditional Super Mario minifigures in the future is unknown.
Earlier in the year there were also convincing rumours of a one-off Zelda set. That hasn’t been mentioned again but there’s often a long gap, of six months or more, between a product being leaked and it being officially announced.
It’s not been listed as part of this group of rumours yet but there are four unnamed Lego Icons sets due out early next year, at prices ranging from £40 to £63. The Pac-Man and Atari sets are both part of that line, which is used for miscellaneous high-end sets aimed at adults.
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