Review: 40490 Ninjago 10th Anniversary BrickHeadz
Posted by Huw,
To commemorate a significant anniversary of one of LEGO's most popular themes, 40490 Ninjago 10th Anniversary BrickHeadz has been produced.
It's now available as a purchase with purchase (PWP) in LEGO brand stores during June: when you spend $85 / €85 / £85 on Ninjago products you can buy it for $10 / €10 / £10. It will then be sold more conventionally from 1st July, priced at $29.99 / €29.99 / £29.99.
The set contains three very different blocky versions of Ninjago characters: Nya, Lloyd and Firstbourne the dragon.
Nya Samurai X (#146)
There have been numerous minifig versions of Nya has Samurai X released over the years and this BrickHeadz appears to have been fashioned on her appearance in 2015, the Tournament of Elements and Possession variants, which have dark green torsos, a red belt and a round gold motif on the front.
The helmet is the most interesting part of the figure, although it doesn't seem to bear much resemblance to the minifigure version. Characters with elaborate hair or headgear always result in a more appealing BrickHeadz and this one is no exception.
Note the shoulder pads, created using wheel arches.
Firstbourne Dragon (#147)
Firstbourne the dragon made an appearance in Ninjago Hunted set 70653 Firstbourne in 2018.
Although quadrupeds have been modelled many times as BrickHeadz this is the first one that is not sitting down or standing on its hind legs.
Two large horns protrude from the back of its head, which is embellished with a scaly texture. A curved tail extends from its back.
The wings are hinged so can be angled at various positions. Unusually for a BrickHeadz it does not have the two-squares printing on its eyes. The beast has an unattractive underbite that significantly detracts its overall appearance.
Golden Lloyd (#148)
At first glance this figure looks to be the least interesting of the three but in actual fact it features a few novel building techniques in the body to allow the figure to be constructed from a limited selection of gold parts.
Its square, blocky head is made only slightly more interesting by the addition of a headband.
I believe it most closely resembles njo499: Lloyd (Golden Ninja) from 2019.
A 'Ninjago 10 years' printed tile is provided to embellish the base. Other than Nya's eyes, it's the only printed piece in the set.
Verdict
This is an unusual set of figures that will particularly appeal to Ninjago fans. Nya is my favourite of the three on account of her elaborate headgear. Lloyd looks a bit too square and featureless, and I'm not entirely convinced by the dragon, which is unattractive and doesn't really look much like one to me.
Nevertheless, as a PWP for $10 the set is a bargain, although of course it would have been better if it was an outright gift with purchase.
40490 Ninjago 10th Anniversary BrickHeadz is available as a PWP in brand stores now, and will be sold at LEGO.com from July 1st.
Thanks to LEGO for providing the set for review. All opinions expressed are my own.
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12 comments on this article
I'm not a fan of either BrickHeadz or Ninjago but I think these look quite good - especially the textures on the back of the dragon's head and Nia's helmet.
What does for the dragon are those goofy teeth, IMO. Take those away and it might look rather more appealing.
Very good to know they will be on regular sale in July. I really like the Brickheadz but I did not want to make a 85€ Ninjago purchase
WAIT WHAT- My local store is closed due to *Obvious reasons* so I'm so grateful that I'll be able to buy it after.
Great news about general release, Im no where near a Lego store and not the best idea to be racing about on public transport just to get a PWP. Of course for £55 I can get one on Ebay…….or just wait.
Lego if you are listening why not give people PWP's on the internet. Id pay £20 PWP to save me going to a shop.... but in this case I'll just wait.
Sorry but that dragon looks absolutly horrendous.
Even though its back indeed looks great.
Cool figures but very odd choices. It would’ve been an instant buy for me if it were any of the original 4 ninjas in their iconic costumes.
The Firstbourne is ugly cute dog-like. I kind of like it.
Surprised you find Firstbourne’s underbite unattractive! I feel like while it’s not a perfect representation of her large, pointed fangs (two 1x1 plates with tooth spaced further apart might have been preferable), it does result in a cute, bulldog-like expression that recognizably evokes the impression of her powerful lower jaw while also adhering to the BrickHeadz series’ general chibi/superdeformed look.
Her rough-textured scales and curvy, muscular neck and tail also feel very authentic to distinctive aspects of the original set, even if the small size and simplified structure of BrickHeadz legs and feet do not allow for any approximation of the original set’s formidable thighs. And shrinking down the original set’s large, antler-like horns surely can’t have been an easy feat to accomplish!
The SNOT techniques for the Lloyd figure’s torso and head are a clever way to maintain the minifigure’s entirely gold color without relying on new recolors, and also adds some texture which I think helps compensate for the lack of printed elements here compared to many other BrickHeads sets (especially licensed ones). It is a bit of a shame that the designers didn’t bring back the green version of the standard BrickHeadz eyes from the LEGO Ninjago Movie version of Lloyd for this set.
All in all, the designers did a very nice job choosing three distinctive and iconic characters spanning several different seasons/story arcs yi include in this set. Likewise, they made fantastic use of brick-built detail to emulate the torso decorations, headgear, and shoulder armor of the two human characters in this set.
While I lack the patience for an elaborate lore-dump like Bionicle characters often get when they appear as Brickset’s random set of the day, I would like to share a few details on Firstbourne for anybody interested, because she is a VERY cool character:
As suggested by her name, she was the first dragon to exist, and is known as the “Mother of All Dragons”. As such, she is the oldest character in the entire Ninjago theme, and a predecessor of not only every other living dragon in the theme, but also of the First Spinjitzu Master (Wu and Garmadon's father, and Lloyd’s grandfather), who was the hybrid offspring of the dragon and Oni species which inhabited the First Realm.
She controls the four elements which make up the power of Creation (Fire, Water, Earth, and Lightning), as well as the power of Wind, and passed these down to her various dragon progeny. However, unlike the First Spinjitzu Master and his son Wu, she can only control these powers individually, and can only manifest the power of Creation by using one of its component elements in tandem with three other dragons which control the other three necessary elements.
Before I saw this would be available later for $30 I was a bit worried. I hated having to spend $80 something on Harry Potter legos to get the hagrid and buckbeak one. I’ll buy brickheadz no matter what, but don’t want to be forced into buying other crap. I guess that’s why they do that...huh?
Loveeee these!!!
PWP is quite strange, I haven't personally seen Lego do that before
It's weird that they didn't do green BrickHeadz eyes for Lloyd, I'm pretty sure they did that for the Ninjago Movie version
This set seems to have absolutely no parts budget. No new prints or recolors as Brickheadz normally have. Only generic black Brickheadz eyes and the anniversary tile from the current Ninjago wave. It seems like the designer tried to work around it by brick building torso detail and throwing in a dragon, giving Llyod transparent eyes and mixing nougat with gold on his outfit.
Samurai X is great, could have been improved with armor extending over the upper back and incorporating the 19141 scabbard piece to hold the included katana. That is, if they had a budget to reproduce it in black.
Firstbourne looks almost nothing like source material, (Lloyd as well, but is accurate to the legacy version rather than the canon Gold Ninja) nay, nor a dragon at all. Looks like a Carnage-Xenomorph-devil thing. Garmadon would have been a more recognizable and fitting inclusion in my opinion, no matter the number of arms.
Lloyd just seems like too much of a repeat of what has been thought of as one of the worst Brickheadz of all time, 41487, due to his bland and simple construction. The golden version is undoubtedly better with the brickbuilt detail and attractive color scheme, but if they couldn't bring back those green eyes they should have used the black eyes and designed around the original version from the show (which only had a gold outfit, as opposed to the minifigure which had Lloyd's skin and eyes turned to gold by Goldfinger, so was slightly different.) It would have more interesting shaping with the more loose-fiiting mask and shoulder armor. Do the executives really want to continue pushing the designs from the movie, (a trend started with the 2018 wave, with the misconception that the movie was gonna be a hit like the previous two and bring flocks of new fans to the regular sets and show) even in the context of the tenth anniversary which shouldn't only recognize the past 3 years of character designs. Let alone a Brickheadz which wouldn't entail reproducing exact copies of the old minifigs like more accurate Legacy sets would. But alas, Llyod has glazed over dead-looking eyes. The issue of including Llyod with the currently endorsed green eyes could have also been sidestepped completely by including another character, (I personally would love Samukai or purple!Pythor, or any of the excellently-designed villians) but the Golden Ninja makes sense given the anniversary's theme of golden minifigs.
Long winded rant aside, I really hope PWP doesn't become the new normal. Its nice to get something free which may introduce you to a new theme, given the disappearance of impulse sets/polybags. Also stuff LEGO would never sell as a retail set, like the train anniversary set. If everything is a PWP going forward that isn't ever sold separately like this, there would be quite an outcry. But if they were sold seperately, they would need to be considered viable to retail and not compete with other products. They wouldn't want a polybag with figure and build giving consumers a comparison to the obscenely overpriced CMFs which would be similar price without any build.
Less long winded worries aside, this really is a subpar set, and it shows. LEGO seems to have given no new parts budget, setting it aside from other Brickheadz.