Lego has announced that they will have a huge Mar10 related event, scheduled of course on March 10, 2023.
Of course, Nintendo came up with Mar10 Day, AKA Mario Day. They came up with this day as the words Mar 10, look like the name Mario. Nintendo started celebrations of Mario Day in 2016, a good deal of time after the Year of Luigi.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Lego’s event is called the Lego Super Mario YouTube Premiere, and it is part of Nintendo’s upcoming Mar10 Day celebration. The event is said to offer “exclusive content and a big reveal by your host, Jack Gardner.”
Lego also shared a tweet showing host Jack Gardner filming for the presentation.
Lego is one of the few toymakers to receive an official license from Nintendo. While Jakks Pacific has the main license for articulated Nintendo action figures under the World of Nintendo trademark, many other toy companies also have Nintendo toy licenses.
That includes Mattel’s Uno card game, Hasbro’s licenses for Monopoly and Jenga, as well as Hotwheels, and more. Nintendo itself makes their own amiibo toys, and licensed Japanese figure companies like Good Smile Company, Medicom, and Max Factory.
On Lego’s end, they only recently returned to licensing other famous franchises relatively recently. While they saw success licensing Star Wars in the 1980s and 1990s, management and business issues prodded them towards making original IPs in the 2000s like Bionicle.
More recently, Lego has successfully tied their toy franchise to other licenses again, so much so that there is a Lego Batman movie, and dozens of newer licensed Lego video games, including Lego Marvel, Lego DC Universe, and Lego Harry Potter.
The Lego Super Mario franchise is unique, even in this sea of Lego licensees. Starting with Adventures with Mario Starter Course in 2020, these playsets have come with figures of Mario and other characters, which have their own LCD screens and speakers. These toys interact with blocks and structures in unique ways, both hearkening to the video games and providing unique play patterns.
Thus far, Lego have released 62 Super Mario playsets. The pending release of the Super Mario movie could mean Lego has something special planned for it as well. But Lego could also make new toys in connection to the Super Nintendo World theme parks, especially with a branch of this park now open in Universal Studios Hollywood. We’ll all find out soon enough on Mario Day.