Chain Chomp Jungle Encounter

I got these for my son to go along with his now ever growing and expanding Mario Lego set and both he and I love them. Lego has hit a home run with the Mario Legos in general. My son is 4 but with the way they are now doing their instructions he's able to build sets designed for 8+ with little to no assistance due to the ease they created. It makes him feel great and keeps him busy for hours. Then once its completed the way he engages with the Mario sets keeps him playing for hours since its actually interactive and they track what sets you have and new ways to add them all together. more less

Overall it's a bit underwhelming. It looks quite cool I suppose but it doesn't really add much to the gameplay. It requires no skill and is easily mastered once you've discovered the force required and the position to hit. If you have, or are planning to get, 71382 Piranha Plant Puzzling Challenge and 71383 Wiggler's Poison Swamp, it will combine with them to make a nice large soda swamp section of gameplay and that might be reason enough to get it, but if not, I suspect you'll have more fun elsewhere. more less

It's a little bit of a disappointing set, in part due to the difficulties in trying to loosen the Chain Chomp from its moorings using the power of LEGO Mario's stomp jump. The idea is good, it's execution is just a little off, maybe a shorter Technic axel rod would have made it slightly easier to loosen the Chain Chomp from its tree-based realm. Still, it's nice to expand the gang of foes for LEGO Mario to take on and once integrated into a larger play level, this will certainly look rather nice. more less