LEGO Avatar 40554 Jake Sully & His Avatar | Review (2022)
This is set 40554, Jake Sully & His Avatar. Two BrickHeadz are included in this double pack. As the name of the set suggests, they are Jake Sully in his human form and the other in his Avatar/Navi form. It contains 246 pieces and retails for $19.99 in the US. That’s a price per piece of 8.1 cents.
Let’s first take a look at his human form. To my knowledge, I believe this is the first time a BrickHeadz set has included a wheelchair. The arms are angled outward using hinge plates as opposed to the typical method of 2x2 plates. There are no prints or stickers on this character. They seemed to have based this version of Jake with his jeans and black T-shirt. It would have been more interesting if they based this build of the same look used for the minifigure included in set 75573, Floating Mountains: Site 26 & RDA Samson. That look is a gray t-shirt with a silhouette of the RDA Samson, instead of the Marine Corp logo as seen in the film. It would have been nice if they went with a tank top and had printed tiles on the arms for his tattoo sleeves.
The worst part of this build is the hair. At the beginning of the film, Jake has a buzz cut with even shorter hair on the side. It later grows out to be somewhat unkempt from being over focused on being in the Avatar body and letting his personal hygiene and diet go to the wayside. This build uses plates and tiles for the hair in a somewhat weird way.. I think the best way to do Jake’s hair would be to use two layers of plates on the top of the head and tiles on the side. The mixture of plates and tiles on the side confuses me.
The second character in this pack is Jake in his Avatar body. This is by far my favorite character of the set. Printed tiles are used for the torso and the arms. It would have been nice to also include prints for the legs. It just seems a little naked without the legs being printed.The legs are also 2 1x2 bricks tall as opposed to standard BrickHeadz being only one brick tall.
The yellow printed round tiles are a new piece in this set. They are similar to the standard BrickHeadz eyes with the two white square catchlights. The only difference being, other than the color, is the addition of a black circular pupil in the center.
The best part of this build is the hair. It does a great job representing Jake’s braided mohawk as Toruk Makto. Since his hair style and headdress clearly indicates this is his look during the climactic battle, prints for the tiles on the face for his orange and dark blue war paint would have made this character perfect. Also, two blue studs are partially exposed on the top of the head and that bothers me. A slight redesign could have made those exposed studs medium blue to match the rest of the skin.
If you are a fan of the original film, these are a great addition to your BrickHeadz collection. If you are a casual fan, I would pass on these until they go on sale. The laziness in the design of Jake’s human form really drags down the value of this set. Adding a few more prints to the Avatar form and slight redesign of the top of the head would have made that character perfect.