 Lego Mario is finally here. But he does look a little odd. In collaborating with Nintendo, the Lego group has decided that Lego Mario should not be a traditional Lego minifigure, but instead a larger, chunkier figure with a built-in screen. While there's no guarantee we won't get a proper Mario minifigure in future, for now, Lego doesn't want this to happen. Why? Because the classic Lego minifigure simply would be too small for all the electronics they've jammed into Lego Mario. Work on Lego Mario has taken five years from the point when Nintendo and Lego first started talking about a collaboration. The two companies felt that they had a lot in common, both producing creative products aimed at helping families to play together. Enter Lego design manager Jonathan Benink, who was given the brief to create something that combined Lego and Mario. The brief was deliberately vague as to what this should be, so Jonathan and his team put together eight different pictures for how this collaboration could work. Six or seven of these pictures involved a digital Lego hybrid approach, as the team agreed that this would be essential to making something that reflected both Nintendo and Lego. Indeed, Lego has been experimenting with this kind of play for several years. The team had learned from the successes and pitfalls involved with the toys-to-life game Lego Dimensions, as well as the similar hidden-side Lego sets which connect to a smartphone. In truth, Lego has been struggling for a few years to find the perfect technologically savvy approach to toys. While the company is one of the biggest toy manufacturers in the world, their sales have been suffering in recent years as a result of the rise in smartphones and tablets. A collaboration with Nintendo likely seemed like the perfect opportunity for Lego to learn how to compete with their digital rivals. The upper management at both Lego and Nintendo were shown these different design ideas and voted on which one they liked best. They picked a Mario solution that had a small screen embedded in his front. While the team had initially considered making Mario a traditional minifigure, there was just one small problem with the plan. The screen technology simply wouldn't fit inside a figure that small. Said Jonathan, the problem is the size of the technology. He had to have batteries and a display and a speaker. We tried different combinations of technology and to put it all in a minifigure was just physically impossible as you can imagine. A claimed Nintendo developer Takashi Tezuka said, first we spent a long time examining the size and design of the Lego Mario figure. Additionally, while Lego Mario will react based on the color sensor and take action based on what is read, it is unable to read actions such as Mario's traditional action of hitting blocks from below. Once the direction for the collaboration had been voted on, both Nintendo and Lego went away to create prototypes. According to Jonathan, Nintendo made a prototype because they are just really good at all those digital devices with screens in it and they had a bunch of parts lying around. The two companies compared notes to find a good balance between the classic Lego form and Nintendo's understanding of how the technology inside should work. Said Jonathan, from there we decided that he needed to be square. It is easier for the technology to fit in a square so you can make a smaller figure, but also Lego bricks are generally square, the most iconic ones. So we felt it made sense with Mario coming to Lego form if he is square. Nintendo wanted us to make certain elements more organic like the cap because it is so iconic. Then, once both Nintendo and Lego had agreed on Lego Mario's appearance, Lego dropped their prototype on the ground 5000 times to test that it would definitely be sturdy enough to endure all kinds of play styles. They sent the finished Mario prototype to Nintendo, who also dropped it on the ground 5000 times to ensure that it was tough enough to sell. Apparently, both Lego and Nintendo have very similar standards when it comes to product longevity. Joy-Con drift, notwithstanding. So, Lego Mario was unveiled to the world not as a minifigure, not as a computer game, but as some kind of cross between the two. It remains to be seen whether this approach actually proves popular in practice, but if it does, it's likely we'll see more similar products from Lego in future. The moral of this story is that it's good to learn from others. Both Nintendo and Lego had specific skills and talents that they brought to this collaboration, and the result is something that builds on their many combined strengths.