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Floating Mountains: Site 26 & RDA Samson

A cracking little Samson helicopter that has to carry a set priced a bit above its weight.

Brick Rated Score

3.7/5

Set 75573 · 2022

Pieces887

Minifigs5

Year2022

Set number75573

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The verdict

The SA-2 Samson is the reason to own this one, and honestly it is better than a set at this size has any right to be.

LEGO packed real Pandora atmosphere into 887 pieces, glow plants and all, and gave us the first ever human Jake Sully with that clever new wheelchair. The catch is the original 99.99 dollar price, which felt steep for what you get. Now that it is retired, grab it if you can find it near or under RRP, and it is an easy yes for Avatar fans who want the whole scene.

Best for: Avatar fans who want the Samson helicopter and the full Pandora scene on a shelf

The full review

What it is

The Samson is what got me. I went in expecting the helicopter to be an afterthought bolted onto a diorama, and instead it turned out to be the best thing in the box. The twin rotors tilt, the cockpit reads right, and for something this modest in footprint it has real heft and character on the shelf. Around it you get Site 26, the mobile link station where the human drivers connect to their Avatar bodies, plus a Direhorse, glow-in-the-dark Pandoran plants, and five minifigures that are all exclusive to this set. It is a proper little slice of Pandora rather than one hero build sitting on a baseplate, and for an 887 piece set that surprised me in the best way.

The catch

I will be straight with you about the money, because every reviewer who touched this set landed in the same place. At its 99.99 dollar (89.99 pound) launch price, the part count just did not add up, and in a year of climbing LEGO prices that stings more than it used to. There is nothing wrong with the build, it is simply that you are paying a premium for the license and the exclusivity of those figures rather than for a mountain of bricks. The other honest caveat is the palette. This is the RDA side of Avatar, which means military greys and blacks, so if you loved the neon jungle look of the other Avatar sets, this one will feel comparatively muted. And the link station sits on four pneumatic-looking supports that, disappointingly, do not actually move.

Who it's for

So who lands on the yes side. If you are an Avatar fan, this is the only set with the human Jake Sully and that new wheelchair, and the Samson alone earns its keep on a shelf. It displays beautifully and there is enough here to play out a scene with kids too. If you are a pure engineering builder chasing clever mechanisms, or you judge every set strictly by price per piece, you will find this one hard to love at full retail. Now that it has retired, the smart move is to wait for a copy near or under the old RRP. At that number it flips from a tough sell into a genuinely satisfying buy.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

The build itself is a pleasant few hours rather than a marathon, and it never drags because you keep switching between very different jobs. One stretch you are shaping the sculpted grey panels of the Samson, the next you are on the boxy link station, then you get the little Direhorse and the glowing plants as palate cleansers. It is the kind of pacing that keeps a mid-size set feeling fresh from bag one to the end, and the Samson in particular rewards you with that satisfying moment where a pile of angled slopes suddenly reads as an aircraft.

For parts hunters there is real interest here. The Direhorse arrives as a new mould in bright blue with light blue detailing and flexible Tsaheylu bond connectors, which is lovely and unique to the Avatar line. You also get a fistful of first-appearance recolours, a 1x4x5 train door in sand blue, a big round Technic beam in dark grey for the rotor housing, and transparent brown glass panels. The headline part, though, is Jake's new wheelchair, a compact three-wide design that rolls through a standard LEGO doorway and positions the minifigure's hands right on the wheels. It is a genuinely thoughtful piece and the standout reason a parts person will remember this set.

Fun facts

01This is the only LEGO set to include a human Jake Sully minifigure, complete with a double-sided head showing a smile on one side and a breathing mask on the other.
02Jake's wheelchair debuted here as a brand new element, designed narrow enough to pass through a normal LEGO door and shaped so the minifigure's hands grip the wheels.
03The set includes glow-in-the-dark Pandoran plant elements, so parts of the display quietly light up after the lamps go off.
04The Direhorse (Pa'li) is a new mould that connects to the Na'vi figures using two flexible rubber Tsaheylu bond pieces, recreating the neural link from the film.