REVIEW: 40552 Buzz Lightyear

[Oky]

“BUZZ LIGHTYEAR! The world’s greatest super hero now the world’s greatest Brickhead!” That’s right, the toys are back in town as the February 2022 wave of LEGO Brickheadz brings us characters from the Toy Story franchise, and with Buzz getting his very own origin movie this summer, it only makes sense for his Brickhead to get a standalone set. But is this space ranger out of this world or does he fall without style? Let’s take a look and see what all the Buzz is about. To the review… and beyond!

Set Number: 40552
Name: Buzz Lightyear
Theme: Brickheadz
Subtheme: Disney
Year of Release: 2022
Ages: 10+
Pieces: 114
Price: £9.99 / $9.99 / 9.99€
Online Shop description:

Quote

Celebrate an out-of-this-world character with this LEGO ® BrickHeadz™ style buildable figure of Disney and Pixar’s Buzz Lightyear (40552). It’s a super gift idea for kids and fans aged 10 and up, who will love authentic details such as the extended wings and printed tile command board. With a baseplate for display, this colorful little construction toy will make an eye-catching addition to any Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story fan’s collection.

The Box

The box features the same branding as the Toy Story 4 sets with the light blue rays in the background, even though it has the generic Toy Story logo, along with the usual LEGO Brickheadz logo and the name and number of the Brickhead at the bottom. The back of the box has a picture of the Bickhead from a slightly different angle that shows that it is detachable from the base as well as pictures of the Woody & Bo Peep Brickheadz. Some pretty blatant cross promotion, but it makes sense.

On one side of the box, it has a picture of Buzz from the movies and another set of logos, and on the other side it has some choking hazard warnings.

The top of the box features a picture of one of the wing wedge plates for scale while the bottom has some legal info.

Contents

Inside the box there are three unnumbered bags, a loose 6x6 plate, and the instructions booklet.

Instructions

The instructions are pretty easy to read and they have a progress bar going across the bottom that shows you how far along you are in the build. This is a new feature that can be found in all instructions this year and is pretty neat.

Once you reach the end of the build, There is an explosion of stars behind the illustration to signify the completion of the build. It certainly helps to make the end of the build feel more eventful. And once again we have some more cross promotion with a full page ad for the Woody & Bo Peep set which matches that set’s box art.

Notable Parts

Like in all Brickheadz sets, all the decorations are printed. Aside from the eyes, there are the wing wedge plates and the command board for Buzz’s chest. The latter is a highly simplified version of Buzz’s chest from the movies. The Star Command logo lacks any detail and both the “Space Ranger” text and the “Lightyear” name in the name tag are missing. This is likely an artistic choice to fit the Brickheadz style, but it feels a bit too overly simplified to me. On the other hand, this makes it a more versatile piece. Especially the wings should be very useful for MOC builders.

The Build

The build is pretty standard for a Brickhead. One thing to note, though, is that inside Buzz’s torso there are four blue round bricks with silver tips which are meant to represent the Buy’n’Large brand batteries that Buzz has in the movies. Half of them are even placed upside down just like real batteries. These are not accessible once the build is finished, so they are just there as an easter egg. It’s a shame they aren’t printed, but it’s a great unexpected touch all the same!

Spare Parts

There are several little 1x1 bits left over after the build. Nothing out of the ordinary.

The Complete Set

After a short build, Buzz is ready to leap to the rescue! He looks fairly accurate, although he is not the most elaborate Brickhead and as I mentioned before, his command board could be more detailed. His face looks very generic as well, but I guess there is not much the designers could have improved about that except maybe if they included that little curl that he has on his chin.

Funny enough, the Brickheadz proportions make this representation of Buzz look a lot more like Mini Buzz, the Fun Meal toy version of Buzz from the Toy Story Toons short “Small Fry”.

Did I say that the chest is not accurate enough? Well, I take it back because the arms are way worse. The Space Ranger badge on his left arm is simply represented by an unprinted 1x1 tile while the button for the wrist laser on his right arm is lacking any of the markings around it and is offset from the lightbulb. I know that using jumper tiles to center them probably would have made the arm too thick, but maybe they could have used printed tiles instead. Anything would have looked better than this. The color blocking on Buzz’s body is a bit off as well. The plate around his neck should be lime green and so should the back of his feet.

Another big problem is evident when you look at Buzz’s back. There is a big gap between the top of the wings and the jet pack. It just looks… what’s the word I’m searching for?… bad. Actually, the word I’m searching for I can’t say because there are preschool toys present. I do like how they designed the jetpack itself however, with the details on the spine and the trans-red showing through the exhausts.

However, the real issue with the wings is visible when viewed from the top. They are not two, not three, but FOUR plates thick! They’re about twice as thick as his arms! I doubt Buzz could even fall with style with these things, let alone fly. Years of academy training wasted!

On a brighter note, I never noticed until now that modern Brickheadz stands are built to look like a Brickhead face. That’s pretty neat.

As you may have noticed, they wings are each attached only by a single clip which means that they can easily be bent back which should not happen. Everything about these wings is just wrong.

The reason for all these problems is likely that the wings were meant to be easy to pop off in case you want to display Buzz with his wings folded in. It’s a nice thought that worked well for the Buzz Lightyear minifig, but if you do that here you are left with these awkward clips sticking out of the sides of the jetpack, so even that doesn’t really work. I’m not sure if this is indeed an intentional feature since neither the Shop description nor any of the images on the box or instructions allude to it. Either way, I think they should have either tried to find a better, more permanent design for the wings or omitted them altogether. I suspect that this terrible design must be the work of the evil Emperor Zurg!

Here is a picture of the Buzz Lightyear Brickhead MOC that I built 5 years ago for comparison. While it’s certainly not perfect, I think its much better than the official one, especially around the wings.

Ratings

Design:
Well, it does look like Buzz, even if an overly simplified version of him, and the batteries are a nice touch, but it’s definitely losing some points for those awful wings.

Build:
Fairly standard build for a Brickhead.

Playability:
You can pop off the wings… yay.

Parts:
No special or new parts, just a couple of printed ones.

Price:
Over 114 pieces for $10 make this one of the better valued Brickheadz.

Overall:
If you know me, you’ll know that Toy Story is one of my all-time favorite franchises and Buzz Lightyear is my favorite Disney character, so I had high hopes for this set, but I’m sad to say that I was let down by it. I know you can’t expect too much with Brickheadz, but I think they could have done a better job than this, especially on his jetpack. It’s a mediocre Brickhead at best, but it does have a decent amount of parts, some of which have some useful prints, so if you don’t have as high standards for a Buzz Lightyear Brickhead as me, it’s not a bad purchase.

If you do want to buy it, this set will be released on February 1: Lego Shop (US) Link

Thanks for reading through my little rant and thanks to LEGO for sending this set for review. What do you think about this set? Was I too harsh on it? Let me know in the comments and in the poll above.

Next, I will take a look at the other Toy Story Brickheadz. Here is a little funny with one of them.

[Murdoch17]

This set is a strange, sad little model and it has my pity.

Why? I think you covered why already, and I'll add to the pile that Buzz really needs a half-visor behind his head. (It just looks weird without it!)

There is a bright side to this set however: printed parts, such as those matching printed 2x3 wing parts. (I need them for the Space Ranger meets PUG-Z mashup / MOD I just finished in real life.)

This set doesn't look perfect (not even the same solar system as Perfect) but in my eyes the price is too good to ignore for the value in parts.

[Jim]

I actually quite like him.

Thanks for the review!

[MAB]

I think he looks really quite nice, as much as a Brickheadz can. It captures most of the important features at a similar level to most other BH. The downside is the lack of a helmet, but I'm not sure how they would do that and still look BH-like.

 

[MKJoshA]

Your criticism is warranted, but I have to agree with Jim that Buzz doesn't actually look too bad in this form.

[Oky]

On 1/25/2022 at 6:50 PM, Murdoch17 said:

This set is a strange, sad little model and it has my pity.

Why? I think you covered why already, and I'll add to the pile that Buzz really needs a half-visor behind his head. (It just looks weird without it!)

Hehe, I thought about using that quote in the review myself.

I disagree on the helmet. I was never a fan of the half-assed helmet on the minifig Buzz and I think it would look even worse here, so it's all or nothing for me, and the only way to do the full helmet would be to put a big bubble around his head like on the Small Fry Buzz, but I don't think that would work either.

[Feuer Zug]

Good review. I agree on the wings. Way to wide.